Morally torn – By @LeonoreLeitner
By Leonore Leitner
Morally torn
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t feel like any one of us students came into SCA with the intention to just sell things like overpriced sugar cereals to kids, even if we know they’ll make them obese. I do think most of us had bigger goals.
In the last couple of weeks, amazing mentors were talking to us and some sentences that kept falling were things like “you are the viagra of capitalism”, “you are the mouthpiece of capitalism”. That’s not surprising – as it is true – but it’s something I pushed from my consciousness into my subconsciousness. I don’t want to feel like what we are learning will simply be used to make people buy stuff.
I’m also not a big fan of capitalism. Some of my favourite books are about how capitalism is making the rich richer and the poor poorer, how it’s splitting society even more. Obviously brands are a big player in capitalism and are even more powerful than most people realise.
As I do feel like I have morals and a problem with the issues capitalism is bearing, I had to defend the path I chose to go against my parents and grandparents – who aren’t the biggest fans of advertising – a lot. But there are negative sides in every sector.
Nothing in this world is black or white. Nothing, nearly no job that exists is entirely good or bad.
I also don’t think you have to believe brands and all they do are good, if you work in advertising. We are in a sector where you should question everything and we’re always on the search for truths.
So I was thinking about these sentences from the mentors and what they mean for me, here in SCA. It is true that we are the viagra of capitalism when we work in an agency. But what we learn here goes way deeper. It is about having ideas and making them happen. It’s about finding real problems and a solution for them. You are learning to be a problem solver – something I always aimed to be. You learn how to use lateral thinking and if you use it for good or for bad is your own choice.
There are so many problems in the world, so many complex situations that still need a solution. If I compare my ability to look at a problem, break it down, research and get to a solution, it is way better now than it was when we started. So I guess that’s a start .
And I also think that the whole branch of advertising goes deeper than just selling stuff.
It would be blue-eyed to think that there are agencies where all you do is for a bigger cause, a big problem that we have to solve. But I do think there are some with a good balance. The ones where you not only sell stuff, but also use your creativity for good. And what an aspiration it is to chase after a job, where you can not only have fun with what you are doing, but also get paid for finding solutions.
Advertising is only the devils work, if you have no bigger ambitions.
The copy scores 73.6 in the Flesch Reading Ease test