I am a Jewish copywriter. I put the word Jewish before copywriter because I am one of the privileged copywriters who get to take off the two extra holidays a year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the “Jewish holidays”. But I still have to feel guilty about it, which is easy because Jews are taught to feel guilty about everything as children. They are taught this by their Jewish mothers and are later reminded by their Jewish wives or girlfriends.
This Jewish copywriter lived in New York City when he started his career in advertising. Which is not surprising because New York City is filled with Jews, and Jewish copywriters. Every advertising agency has at least two or more Jewish copywriters and two or more Italian art directors, who usually work with the Jewish copywriters. I was the exception though; I worked with a Japanese art director. The Japanese hate the Jews more than the Germans do. Or so my Japanese art director told me. She told me this the day we met, and every day she proved it to me.
A lot of the people who work in an advertising agency live there too. When one leaves at 5:00 it usually means it’s a half-day, or they are going to lunch. Advertising is very important to the people who work in it. It is more important to them than their wives or husbands, children or even lovers on the side, all of whom they rarely get to see except on major holidays and the twelve weekends a year they don’t have to work. People who work in advertising make up 50% of the divorce rate in the Untied States. When a copywriter talks about his or her “baby” they are referring to the detergent commercial they wrote.
Along with copywriters and art directors who “create” the ideas for advertisements, an advertising agency consists of: The chairman of the board–who’s job it is to spend all the money an agency makes on big houses yachts, and a Rolls Royce; the president–whose job it is to spend whatever money is left, on smaller houses, sail boats, and a Mercedes; creative directors–who run the creative department through ulcers, heart attacks, and sometimes even after death (Creative directors are over worked). Producers–who are like jugglers because they must handle the production of TV and radio commercials and have to keep production costs down while keeping agency commissions and production values up; research people–who’s job it is to kill as many great ideas the copywriters and art directors come up with as possible; media directors–who place the advertising that doesn’t die in research, and who have the difficult task of deciding whether to run a 60 second commercial once during the Super Bowl, or a 30 second commercial sixty times during reruns of Gilligan’s Island; traffic people–who handle the production of print advertising, which is called “traffic” because it is a very stagnant job and they are stuck in it; secretaries–who’s job it is to type the copy copywriters write, but who in reality do most of the writing, and everything else for the copywriters; receptionist–who must look like Bo Derek, speak English, and be able to pronounce the name of the agency to qualify for the job; people who work in the mail room--who must have an I.Q. of less then 6 in order to qualify for the job; and of course account services. No one knows what they do.
