Month: January 2023

It’s been over a decade since I worked in advertising. I miss only a few things about the industry, which is generally the fellow creatives. I don’t miss the deadlines and the hours.

So, it is with trepidation that this week I’m working at an advertising strategist and creative. The brief has been written; Tuesday is the start of the answering that brief. If it’s been signed off.

I’m working with someone I’ve not met before. Which I’m not concerned about. I think it’s a strength, as we will definitely have different backgrounds and perspectives. Different worldviews and trajectories. Gender, too. And age.

Another reason it’s a weird week. I hit a milestone birthday. A proper one. The one that tips you into the decline. And for me, given my current and historical health challenges, means it’s quite possibly the last decade I will see. I don’t write those words lightly.

What’s even weirder is, I am more worried about the week of being an advertising creative than I am about the medium-term challenges.

I decided to unsubscribe from some long-subscribed-to email newsletters. I reasoned that since I hadn’t read them in quite some time they were no longer truly valuable to me.

Part of my not-reading tactic was that they were delivered to Gmail and therefore searchable. However, most, if not all, of the email newsletters I unsubscribed recently never appeared in search results for things I am interested in now. They were connected to a previous me, one that no longer needs to know if the idea he is creating has been done before, has some sort of legacy to draw upon or is plain stupid. I’m not in the business of ideas now in the same way I was before.

I will need to do the same with books, at some point. I tend to pass on paperbacks, the buy-one-get-one-half-price types from a specific bookseller. However, all my hardbacks and first editions I keep. The signed ones especially. I buy more books than I could possibly read in a year in amongst work and study; however, I realised I was leaving the big hardbacks alone because they looked like they might take me a long time to get through.

That changed recently, too, when I finally plucked up the courage to read a book that’s been sat in my unread book pile for a year. To Paradise by Hanri Yanagihara. In a short time (relative to all the reading I have to do for work and study, you understand) I have almost reached the halfway point. It’s a compelling read. I’m enjoying it, so much so that I am reading for half an hour longer each night than I might normally do. I am more tired as a result, but I am happy to be making progress.

Daytime reading is non-fiction and academic papers. Often, but not always, on a screen. I’m taking notes, critically reading things and identifying where they support, or deny, other authors’ claims. I am also writing my own thoughts based on these critical analyses that I use to build out my research proposal and dissertation.

I enjoy reading. I think it’s the single thing I love most about life. The ability to open up a book and disappear into a new world, or a new idea. Books change you. Mostly in good ways, but not always. Still, the change happens regardless. The patterns shift. Your worldview tilts, blurs, refocuses.

I might read some of those newsletters I ditched recently. One day. After all, at some point they shifted my reading and thinking patterns and they should be allowed the opportunity to do so again. I might even end up resubscribing.

Back in 2010, I remember downloading Instagram and spending hours on the app, even though most photos I take are awful (in terms of composition and lighting and everything). I was also, at the time, a heavy user of Twitter.

Neither of those apps have remained. I found Instagram a bit spammy and ultimately a way for people to show off. My life is too boring nowadays to warrant posting pics. So I archived everything and moved off. Twitter has imploded, mostly down to its new owner’s weirdness that I don’t want to go into. He’s not worth the radio airtime. In that, we share a commonality, but let’s not get into that, either.

The move from being a creative to being a strategist has, arguably, made me less social media shouty. Strategy decks are not visually appealing (compared to art directed ads) and I spend 99.9% of my time at home surrounded by cats. Yeah, dull.

When I picked up Mastodon, I thought I would probably not bother to use it. That has mostly been the case, with the occasionally flurry of replies to someone else. I delete posts after 7 days, so I quite enjoy the ephemeral nature of the experience that I’ve introduced to it. It’ll save deleting a huge amount of posts when the inevitable happens and I get bored, die, or the platform fails to live up to other people’s expectations. Not sure which one of those will be first.

The ebb and flow of platforms and apps and so forth is interesting. What makes something stick around, like a framework (2/2 grids, for example) or other social technologies (standing on the right on a London Underground escalator) for long periods of time? Is it that there are no better alternatives (other grid sizes, lifts for those who can’t walk up stairs), or another reason?

Is there an Instagram version of a long-standing social technology that’s become obsolete (or only used by a niche group)? I’m sure there are plenty. I don’t mean social norms, like wearing a bowler hat to work in the City of London’s banks and insurance companies, or even writing Dear [name] to begin a letter. I mean the things that create connections between people and other people, people and things, and things and things that enable people to ‘do’ things.

Perhaps there are examples. I’ll keep thinking.