Oh, The Commerical IS The Point

Last week I interviewed at a very large and well-known ad agency. They'd said they were looking for someone to do some freelance information architecture work, but once I arrived in their huge and somewhat creepy industrial space it became clear that they'd sort of lied about the freelance position and were really looking for someone full time. This was immediately apparent by the fact that I was forced to meet with the human resources lady. When someone wants to bring on a freelancer they don't make you go through human resources.

So the HR lady sat me down at a big round table and asked me a bunch of silly HR questions that had nothing to do with anything, and then she popped a video tape into a nearby VCR and said, "I'm going to let you watch a short video about [insert big ad agency name here]." Then she left the room.

The video started, and it was pretty standard stuff, about ten minutes or so on the company, and why it was such a fabulous, creative, edgy place, and how they made such great ads, and I sat and stared out the window because information architecture has nothing to do with creating television ads and I could have cared less what kind of work environment their copywriters and art directors subsist in.

And then the commercials started. There was a cute ad involving cows that entertained me for a minute, and then we got on to some boring pain relief ads and hotel ads, and before I knew it I found myself reflexively looking around for the remote so I could fast forward through the commercials. At which point it occured to me that there was no remote and there was in fact no TV show to fast forward to., because of course the only thing on this tape was commercials. Duh.

I've spent a lot of my professional life working in and around ad agencies, and I am always amazed at the fact that people at ad agencies think commercials are art. And I knew then that I was not going to be taking any projects for the big, edgy ad agency. I knew it later, too, when the VP of information architecture came in to meet with me and he was about 15 and acted all uncertain about whether my 10 years of experience would really be enough to qualify me to design a web site for laundry detergent.

I might have been upset and pissed off about the whole experience and how it was such a massive waste of time, except that then I went home and I kissed the baby and I kissed my book and I kissed my husband and I patted the cat, and none of it really mattered that much after all.