Tall Advertising People Suck.

It’s been said that I have a Napoleon complex. That, being of compromised height, I’m quarrelsome, too challenging, a bit too extra. That I’m always spoiling for a dust-up.

However, and in the words of the late Dame Edna Everage, this is a phallus I want to explode.

I don’t dispute that I’m a passionate person; I think most creatives would lay claim to that, and with pride. But the reason for this isn’t my limited distance from the ground. Nor is it from being born a gadfly. Rather, it‘s driven by a spirit of righteousness.

For better or for worse, and as a professional consequence, I like being with people who want to defend the high ground. I want to work with advertising people who believe that what we do is meaningful and worth standing up for. 

I particularly want to work with people who cherish imagination and endeavour, and who, as a result, understand that bending a knee to safe, predictable, thoughtless practices isn’t what any of us signed up for when we first got into the business. 

We didn’t imagine a world where we’d have to stop working on a project because a timesheet said so . . . or that winning creative awards wasn’t evidence of excellence. And we most certainly didn’t imagine working in a world where processes were consciously, deliberately, and happily embraced by management as ways to suffocate any possibility of expressing ideas or developing creative messages.

Sod that.

I’m at An Agency because there are more people like me. Maybe not as righteous or as short, but like me. 

They’re agency professionals who come in every day excited about the chance to create something remarkable. Built on real brand strategy and burnished by years of experience and craftsmanship. Agency professionals who go home every evening weary but proud, exhausted from doing their best, and braced by the knowledge that they’re only allowed to stop when the work is ready.

These are my people. These are the people we court as clients, as creative partners, as advocates, and as allies. This is why I work here.

Or as Napoleon said: Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

Pip Pullen
Advertising Guy