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Madness: How Ad Agencies Used to Be

By: Dallas Baker

I am often reminded that most workplaces are not like ad agencies. I should say, they aren’t like agencies used to be. Even agencies have gone all HR and PC these days. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if an article like this one were forbidden on some agency servers today. What a shame. This business is too great to be like everything else.

I remember, at my first agency, learning the business with people I still love and respect today. We shared a collective attitude that the ridiculously low salaries and sacrifices we made were just part of the game. We loved being there and being in our group. We also loved the hope for bigger and better things that came with our lowest-rung positions.

Back then, we would sometimes brown bag it for lunch for weeks at a time, or skip lunch altogether, proclaiming that we were in “scrimp and save” mode. We didn’t care. Someone in the group always ended up bringing in food to share, or could finagle a lunch meeting order to have leftovers to sneak back to the Creative Department. We were always saving to go out on weekends or pay our rent, and living check-to-check.

We’d also work all night without any expectations of comp time or pay. We’d finish mounting stuff by morning, glassy-eyed and reeking of vodka and Bestine and get a big pat on the back from our new biz guy, instead of a judgmental once-over and a lecture from HR.

We smoked dope with the VPs of the agency and attempted to bed the junior AEs with occasional success. We napped under our desks on Monday mornings, again, reeking of booze and Bestine (why a copywriter always smelled of Bestine, I never knew). And we usually went out at least four nights per week. We liked hanging with each other, because ad people were the only ones who kept those kinds of hours with sufficient capacities to keep a job and a few other plates spinning. We worked hard and played hard.

We had Christmas dinners together when we couldn’t make it back to our homes. I even had an AE show up at my door with a decorated Christmas tree for my bare apartment, the year my wife kicked me out for being more married to my job and colleagues than I was to her. Wow, was she ever right.

Many of you are reading this and shaking your heads, pitying the lifestyle I described. You probably also had to hit Wikipedia to search “Bestine.” I get it. Times have changed and most likely changed for the better.

My nod is to the rest of you, though. Somehow, you made it through. I’m not sure if that kind of living helped or hurt our work, but I do believe this: we loved our industry more than people seem to love it today. I think it was better then, too. I know we always had plenty of Bestine around…

Please, share your war stories, as long as HR isn’t reading.