A Cavalcade of Lesser Horrors

Pimping My Muse

164 Pimping My Muse From time to time back before I became one of the new has-beens of advertising, I used to go talk to advertising school classes about creativity. There they would be, all those fresh-faced, eager young minds out to master the alchemy of advertising, pens poised, ready to take down every word and thought. There I would be, regretting my role in encouraging them. “Go back,” I wanted to stage-whisper to them. “It’s a trick. If you have any talent at all, someday you’ll regret wasting it in advertising.” But the young people with the poised pens weren’t there to hear that. They wanted to learn how to be creative. They or their parents had paid thousands of dollars for them to go to ad school, and they expected more than a punch-drunk old ad man felt the subject deserved—more respect, more thought, more inspiration. Here were advertising’s true acolytes. They thought it was an art form and that advertising copywriters and art directors were creative gods who deserved to be treated as a breed apart; they fervently hoped that someday they, too, would be able to flaunt eccentricities and cash in on whatever talent they had in the hothouse culture of an ad agency creative department. What they wanted from me—what I had been brought in to deliver—was a set of moves that, once applied to their sample creative pieces, would land them their first job in advertising, as if that first job were a level to beat in a video game. PIMPING M Y MUSE 165 I couldn’t bring myself to burst their bubble. I couldn’t tell them that, in advertising, as in other so-called creative endeavors , persistence plus mediocrity trump true creativity every time. In advertising, as elsewhere in life, the truly creative person has neither the focus nor the tenacity to succeed. Advertising creativity has always seemed pampered, pretentious , self-indulgent, and mediocre to me—the triumph of form over substance. Well, that’s not exactly true. It hasn’t always seemed that way. For the first couple of weeks, it did seem pretty fun and important . The veneer was thin, though, and soon it began to crack and peel. This wasn’t creative. Not really. In real advertising, the truly creative person wanders the halls in a fog, an idiot savant, inept, isolated. Then one day, under the pressure of a deadline or with a big account on the line for the entire agency, lightning will strike or their muse will crap an advertising pearl, and the truly creative person will give birth to the idea that saves the day. Everyone will say “oooh” and “ahhh” for a moment, admiring the little skyrocket the genius touched off as it bursts overhead. Then some less talented, more persistent “creative” person will steal the bolt from the blue and take all the credit for it, leaving the truly creative person to disappear back into that fog and wander some more. You know how some ants keep aphids for the honeydew they secrete? In advertising, real creative people are the aphids. The persistent but mediocre people are the ants. “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence,” that most mediocre of American presidents Calvin Coolidge said. “Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb . Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” 166 PIMPING M Y MUSE I could have preached the gospel of persistence to those eager young minds, but as an unsuccessful man, an unrewarded genius, and an educated derelict, I didn’t want to give Coolidge the satisfaction. It would have sounded bitter. Besides, the persistent but mediocre students in the class would have known this already, and the truly creative people would never figure it out. Their talent is the baby from whom the persistent but mediocre perpetually take candy. Standing in front of the class, preaching the gospel of creativity , horror lay out there in front of me in layers, each layer exuding its own wince and tang. All those young people, relatively bright, and eager to sell their souls to corporate commerce. Oy. What...