In an Adweek article last week, prominent ad people were asked, “It’s Thanksgiving this week. What are you thankful for?”
Among the pithy comments were these, which caught my eye because they were both in the same article:
Court Crandall of Ground Zero who said, among other things, “I’m thankful this will be George Bush’s last term.”
Neil Powell of Margeotes Fertitta Powell who said, “I’m thankful the American people finally seem to be waking up to the fact that the war was a horrible mistake. Hopefully, many of our soldiers will be home next year to have Thanksgiving with their families.”
While to some those aren’t exactly controversial opinions, it’s interesting to see prominent ad people take political positions. Now, I’ve worked with all sorts of people, including an admittedly Republican Creative Director (whose design skills were stuck in the Reagan administration). In general, though, creative people rarely cop to having conservative values, because we tend to seek progressive ideas and influences to stay “cutting-edge,” or simply because it sounds uncool.
But working in advertising means we do the bidding of large corporations, whose interests lie squarely in a more laissez-faire business environment, which would favor Republicans. Right? So how do you justify those contradictions to yourself? Do you ever get into those sorts of discussions with fellow ad people?
