In praise of the crappy jobs

A long time ago, when we still had to walk to the agency, barefoot, 16 miles in the snow, every day, I was a junior copywriter. Sometimes junior creatives are given crappy jobs. And during my first few weeks at Saatchi & Saatchi, in Johannesburg, I was given a crappy job.

A producer came in carrying an almighty high tower of U-matic tapes. On them were loads of British Airways and Qantas ads that were sent over from the Saatchi mothership in London. These were global ads that might be flighted on local TV. But before that could happen, they had to be approved by the local advertising authority.

We didn’t have the scripts to submit them, so I had to watch every ad, and then write the script as if I was creating the film in my mind.

If you think that sounds like a crappy, monotonous job, you’d be right.

A job for a machine!

Except.

That experience taught me invaluable lessons on how to format and structure a script. It taught me about proper scripting conventions and most importantly, taught me to look at deeper detail that reveals itself in how a commercial is constructed. This experience became invaluable to me in my career when I started writing my own ads.

The world of AI is so amazing, I am sure nowadays it would be possible to create a tool or plugin to do this kind of crappy, monotonous work automatically.

But, what are we losing? Especially as junior practitioners of any skill learn the basics of their profession? I’ve read somewhere that briefs in legal firms, that used to be written by junior associates, are now written by LLMs. What will happen in the future to the foundational knowledge of those associates when they become partners?

If we still value the power of human creativity and intelligence we have to have a pretty good think how we co-exist with AI in a way that retains our foundational knowledge of how to do things properly.

For a start, let’s not give all the crappy jobs to AI.