Living to tell a lie and earning a living out of it

Advertising is a strange buiness, some say only the dregs of society walk into it. On hindsight, I feel it's very true. If I look at myself, when I finished degree I was at my wits end and absolutely clueless about my life and career. Then, for lack of any other capability, I started out in an ad agency as a copywriter.

Since then many people have asked me what I do for a living and I try to explain the whole process, mostly meeting with blank stares. Many professions are quite hard to explain, perhaps advertising is the hardest of them all. Simply because the essence of advertising is to persuade people to buy things that they actually can do without. Now that's only a very crude explanation of a complex business.

At the end of a lifetime, will I be satisfied? Or will I be trapped in the lie and go on and on until some kindly soul enlighten me?

Advertising is enshrined in a shroud of mystery because the intended consumer is not a classification like SEC A, B but a thinking, living, reacting individual called your wife as David Ogilvy famously declared. Tons of research data are available on the consumer thanks to the deep pockets of clients who want to somehow map the consumer and feed them with messages that will translate into sales. Much of this advertising money is spent cluelessly, much of advertising too is a waste.

Can a line or a visual change mass perceptions? There are many examples, but the best ones are outside of advertising, like quit India, and Marx's famous exhortation to the workers of the world.

Is advertising intersting? quiet so, because the truth, whatever it is, is never interesting, lies are.