arturo in Advertising
01-09-08
What has advertising got to do with cooking?
I’ve been sick for the last days and it’s the third time I’m sick this winter. My taichi teacher form Costarica, Bob Backer, thinks that when you are sick it means that you have to rest. I also believe that when you are sick you are externalizing your emotions. Somehow it’s a reflection of your inner self.
If that is true I would like to talk about my sickness. I am sick of advertising agencies, sick of their crazy fake schedules, sick of extremely young cute account executives, that believe that just because they are pretty and there, what they say is what has to be done.
There is only one way I can explain my feelings about this, and it is exactly how I explained it to a very good friend of us, who is an excellent chef and cooks the best “tortilla de patatas” on earth. This is how it went:
Imagine that you have a client that comes up to you and he says:
“I had this great idea: Why don’t you use grape seed oil for making your “tortilla de patatas”?”
You look at him and very politely say:
“Sorry, but I use Virgin olive oil from our Spanish vineyards”.
Then you carry on working as if nothing had happened. But he comes back to you and says:
“Well, you know what… I’m the client and I want you to do it with grape seed oil! I’ll pay for it, don’t worry about that.”
You try to explain to the client that in order to make the best “tortilla de patatas” you have to use the best virgin olive oil. Your tried it with sunflower oil, with vegetable oil… and the only way you can make it good and authentic is with virgin olive oil.
He insists until the point that you say…
“Whatever… He will pay a lot of money for it, I’ll do better stuff when I work for other clients.”
New clients come and they ask for the same old shit. “What’s wrong with them?” you ask yourself, but no answer comes to your head. Suddenly frustration strikes you… “What the hell am I doing?”. There is no motivation on the job you have to do, it doesn’t taste good anymore, you don’t learn because you start to think that it’s impossible to make good things for them… And then, the worst part. They take forever to pay.
Then another question comes to your head: “Am I crazy? Or are they Crazy?”
There is only one answer, if you don’t like what you are doing, either you accept it or you change it. My decision and my partner’s decision is to change it, accepting things is an adult way of thinking, but when you are in your 30’s, you have the chance to risk changing.
That’s what we are going to do, I will keep you posted with our new projects.
Please keep on looking at these two:
