the MARTINI SHAKER

A telephone conversation I had yesterday reminded me of an exchange I had with a student when I visited Kansas State University earlier this month.

I spoke to the Principles of Advertising class about exploring fresh ideas for clients and some possible cutting-edge (for now) technologies that will likely become de rigueur media channels when these students hit the job market. It’s one of my favorite topics to cover because I enjoy looking into the advertising crystal ball to see what I might find.

During the Q&A session, I had a lot of the usual questions that I receive¹, but this particular day I got one that I’ve fielded before, but not quite in this exact way.

The question went something like:

So, yeah… when I get out of school, I want to work at a place like Barkley. So, um… what I want to know is what can I do to ensure that when I get out of school I’m immediately working on award winning, nationally recognized advertising and making a whole lot of money doing it?

Of course, I’m reading between the lines a little, but that was the gist of the question. It had either an entitled or naïve tone to it (I’m still not sure which), and it just seemed terribly misguided.

My short answer to this student was, “That’s not going to happen.” But, then I stepped back and qualified with one of my famous 5 minute asides² that it might just work out for him that way because I don’t know his talent or his ambition, but most likely he was going to have to go the way of virtually all of us who really, REALLY try to get better at our craft and take his lumps in the trenches.

Because, you see, here’s the thing. I’ve yet to meet more than a handful of people who have the talent and discipline to make it at such a high level right out of college. I consider myself pretty successful in my career, but I can guarantee you I wasn’t always this way. My work sucked. My work ethic was only slightly better. As such, I got a shitty job doing relatively shitty advertising for shitty pay.

But you know what? I had a blast. Because even though I knew that I didn’t want to make the type of work I was making for very long, I was learning a lot and making good friends and connections along the way.

And because of that, my career eventually expanded to working a less shitty job doing less shitty advertising for less shitty pay, but I still knew that I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I continued to work. HARD.

Being creative is hard work and there’s no amount of short cuts or excuses that will get you anywhere.

It took me seven years of applying to Barkley before I even got one phone call asking for an interview. You can imagine that it was certainly disconcerting³ never to hear anything for years, but that just gave me more drive to improve my work to the point that they couldn’t help but call me in and hire me.

This career doesn’t come easy. You have to make sacrifices based on how good you want to be. The tone of yesterday’s phone conversation painted the picture that many students today don’t realize (or are unwilling to make) the sacrifices necessary to be successful. These students are just expecting success to fall into their lap.

This may be true, but that’s not specific to this generation. I was a dumb-ass slacker kid too, just as there were dumb-ass slackers in the 80s, 70s, 60s, and so on until the beginning of civilization. And that’s OK.

And, it’s also true that not all students are this way. Many have got this whole “destiny” thing figured out and are taking the steps necessary RIGHT NOW to make it happen. Watch out for those guys.

But, hey… I say if you’re going to be a dumb-ass slacker, now’s the time to do it. And, please, do it well. But don’t be disillusioned. The time is going to come when you’re going to have to shift gears if you intend to make anything out of yourself.⁴ You just have to decide when it’s time to shift that gear. And certainly don’t be entitled. The world owes you nothing.

But, you already knew that. Didn’t you?