What I want to be when I grow up

Let’s at the outset say that I am what I always intended to be as a grown-up. Whether I have indeed grown up is the only question left unanswered. I spent 30 years in advertising. And that is what I wanted to do. It was a productive time for me. It taught me many life-skills that—had time remained my friend—would have got me a job in just about every profession I could name. I compiled a list of a few. I could have become:

A teacher

In advertising, I learnt to be adept at seemingly retaining my fervour for the job whilst secretly seething with frustration. It wasn’t that the job was not personally rewarding. It was. And for a teacher able to shape young minds it must be doubly so. But in teaching as in advertising there is always an expectation for you to sell something you don’t entirely believe in—like The Treaty.

An airline pilot

Back in the 70s and 80s we in advertising flew high. We mastered the art of doing so with very little substance below us and only the rarefied air of being on top of the world to sustain us. Of course, there was always the possibility we would come crashing to the ground—as we did in the mid-80s—but we never lived for tomorrow. We lived for the day and couldn’t remember it tomorrow.

A Hamilton librarian

In Auckland advertising we were good. But those working in Wellington were better. We learnt early to handle the frustration of being second-best or being even further down the totem pole if we accept that most of the great advertising of the time emanated from the United Kingdom. So, I could handle the Hamilton humiliation of being at best second best. At least a Hamilton librarian has the facility to think of books less as a vocation than as an escape.

Leader of NZ First

Of all the jobs I am qualified for, this comes pretty close to the top. The reason is that advertising taught me one essential skill—one precept, one I share with the current leader of NZ First: “it is not what you want to say, it is what they want to hear.” I am good at that.

A televangelist

Possibly the easiest for me to master, given my advertising background. Essentially it is sales. No more, no less. Once you manage to lose that frustrating little albatross some call a conscience and replace it with the knack to selling with fervour, passion and naked belief something in which you have no belief—you are made. Advertising is second only to car sales as providing the necessary skills for televangelism.

Local body communications manager

Top of the tree for me. Requires only the essential skill (learnt in advertising and PR) of seemingly saying something when you are not. There is a skill in that. An even greater skill, requiring greater imagination, is finding a way to say nothing at all. After all, you are an expert in communications—not conveying it, just creatively avoiding it. That’s what council pays you for. Only problem is I would probably have to change my name to Dick, because that is what everybody else would call me.

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