Once upon a time, before the true nightmare of reality had worn him down to a fine paste of vitriol, Baby Oli, fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked, and straight from a Russell Group graduation ceremony (not that I actually went to my graduation, rebel youth innit), wanted to work in the advertising industry. Before you form the very understandable desire to punch me in the mouth, please let me explain myself.
I was scared. Shit scared of entering the adult world without a career path already laid out for me. All I was thinking about was attempting to justify my existence and look like a big boy in front of my peers. I figured that, well, I’m a creative guy, right? I can use that creativity to make money in a place where my daily workload won’t be full of stuff I’ll completely hate, and who cares if it’s all just to make a bunch of ‘brands’ richer? Unless you were just born with ‘superior artistic genius’ and a PR team that works for you as if they were an extra limb, everyone has to sell out eventually, right?
As part of a wider advertising campaign, Rami Malek appeared in a video for hotel chain Mandarin Oriental in January 2019. The video perplexed many and became a minor internet ‘meme’.
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As the director of the shoot chats behind the camera with the PR rep, Rami has a moment to himself, the first time all day that he’s just sat on his own with his own thoughts.
Just briefly, he thinks back to his days post-graduation, when acting work was impossible to find. From the back of his mind, he remembers the order of ingredients he added to the falafel wraps he served at the restaurant, when hope was fading and depression began to set in.
‘It was worth hanging in there, after all’, he thinks.
‘But I was so close to throwing in the towel.’
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These were the questions that rattled around my mind as I left the comfort of the sofa, the PS4, and perpetual Seinfeld marathons, to journey out to various advertising agencies dotted around Britain hosting ‘Open Days’ for poor unfortunates hoping to score an (unpaid) internship at one of them.
These Open Days were, of course, perverse little experiments for scurrying middle class rats (i.e. me) to clamber over each other in an attempt to use the most corporate buzzwords possible within earshot of one of the employees. Apple for Teacher, Synergy for Marketeer.
At one particularly outstanding Open Day in London, tasks that Apprentice candidates would have baulked at were thrust upon us, all with a ‘feel good – you’re all winners!’ air as if we were in an advert ourselves, being sold the fantasy of a desirable office job in a trendy part of the big city working with bright colours and dreams all day long. I suddenly felt a great empathy with livestock as they enter the abattoir.
This feeling didn’t subside once I began work with my makeshift team on our pitiful task – to come up with a multi-media marketing campaign for a leading gin manufacturer. The NHS website states that “In England in 2017, there were 5,843 alcohol-specific deaths”. The Independent states that “This is a rise of more than 6 per cent on the year before, and an increase of 17 per cent in a decade.” And none of those figures count the multitude of deaths, assaults and general life-ruining activity that are caused or exacerbated by the influence of alcohol.
I’m not teetotal, so I’m not going to proselytise, but if there really was a God, the people who manufacturer and sell alcohol would be strung up and dropped into an eternal nothing to atone for what they’ve done. The truth of alcohol is one of destruction, and it’s a damning indictment of humanity that we need it just to survive at times. At this advertising agency open day, it was up to me and my fellow lost souls to find a way to sell it as a fun, social event for party-ing 20-somethings (AKA Cunts).
Pele was the undisputed King of Selling Out. His endorsements are one of the main reasons celebrities are so ubiquitous in advertising today.
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“Okay Rami, we’re going to take it from the top. You remember the lines right?”
Rami remembers the lines. He’d only been given a bare-bones script a couple of hours ago, which he was happy to help embellish. Mandarin was shelling out for this one, so a little bit of extra work was no issue. But man, Rami is tired. He’d flown in just for this commercial shoot, then it would be back to Hollywood for awards season. Rami quickly attempts to calculate how many hours of sleep he’ll be able to get in before the Academy Awards. He may score an extra thirty minutes if this thing goes quickly.
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We didn’t do a very good job of doing so. Our multi-media strategy was as bland as it comes: TV advert! But also billboards! Don’t forget social media, it’s so important nowadays! And it has to be diverse! Yeah, so diverse! We have to make sure people from all different backgrounds get addicted to our liquid poison!
Needless to say, my team and I did not come across as budding ad-people to-be. We could have just been told that then and there, allowing us to leave the agency and get on with the rest of our day. But the carrot of a full-on job for the ‘winner’ of the Open Day remained dangled in front of us, and we were left to find out after a gruelling one hour lunch break whether we’d be staying on for a more formal interview process in the afternoon. I did my best ‘networking’ attempt over the course of the hour, but mainly I was staying for the sandwiches. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, but if you’ve lasted that long, you’re more than entitled to chow down.
Diet Coke selected Duffy to be a long-term spokesperson for their brand in 2009. The first advert bombed horribly and is considered by many to be a reason her music career ended.
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“I’m a fan of looking sharp… …regardless of the occasion…”
Rami glances around as he delivers the lines. He thinks about how lucky he is to be famed for his drowsy voice.
‘They’ll actually be happy I’m speaking like I just got out of bed’, he thinks.
He gets through the take relying on the last dregs of his backup source of acting power. This is why he studied and obsessed. This is why he kept the dream alive. To be able to do it when anyone else would be so bored, tired or agitated that it would be impossible for them to deliver. This is why he’s winning the Oscar in a month. This is why it’s okay to be selling out.
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And finally, after what must have been a truly arduous, Herculean selection process undertaken by the agency employees, us rats were herded into various rooms to be told whether we’d made it or were just a bunch of shit balloons. I was a shit balloon. We all knew we were shit balloons the moment we walked into our shit balloon room, dark and squalid, a clear contrast to the rest of the bright and shiny office. The woman who told us we were all shit balloons clearly couldn’t give a fuck about the twenty-odd dreams she had dashed (or more accurately the twenty-odd mornings she’d completely wasted).
Someone asked “Will we get any feedback?” The woman said “Of course, we will try to get feedback to all of you within 3-4 weeks”. I never received any feedback.
Nowadays it’s not just regular celebrities slanging tat at you, but perhaps more dangerously, youtube personalities are in the game too. This particularly vapid human mildew selling spyware has annoyed me on several occasions.
After several more similar experiences, the dream that had been implanted into me by warped social value systems and well-meaning, but ultimately disastrous, advice from confidants and loved ones, was smashed to pieces. It was clear that I was not cut out for corporate culture, fake courtises and ‘creativity’ that seemed to be literally anything but.
The actual, proper creative abilities that I possess fell into disuse. Everyone around me said that it would all be okay, if I just did the things that they told me to do. My creative muscles waned horribly. I became a people-herder, a life coach with only one client, and then, finally, a professionally sad man. I hadn’t been able to sell out to a corporate advertising agency for money, but I had thoroughly succeeded in selling myself out.
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Rami is on the charter flight back to LA. He flicks open his banking app and sees that Mandarin have already sent the money through. It’s not bad for half a day’s work. It’s more money than he ever made making falafel, that’s for sure.
And now he’s on his way back to Tinseltown, to create, to dream, to trail-blaze. He has helped into existence countless creative projects, and inspired millions of people from all walks of life across the world. He has reached the zenith of culture.
He’s a fan.
He’s a sellout.
But he hasn’t sold himself out. Only his ‘celebrity’.
And he’s fucking earned the right to do that.
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I only bought myself back when Oli’s World began. Not when the first episode launched in October 2019, but in June, when the very first kernels of ideas that eventually became part of the show popped up in my head – a karaoke-obsessed upper-middle aged man with a vendetta against youth culture (the Karaoke King didn’t change too much), a door-to-door meat salesman (Tobias/Viscera Foods was originally going to be much more shyster-y), and the most important idea of all – to just start doing what I’m good at doing. Making audio, doing funny voices, writing something every day and actually putting it out there.
My very first page of ideas specifically for Oli’s World. Note that ‘weird mouse thing’ and ‘nightmarish doodle’ didn’t make the cut.
It seems such a mad idea in this world, and no-one I know ever suggested it to me – to just do what you do. What you enjoy. What you’re good at. Whatever comes naturally to you. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to do that of course, but that just means I owe it to them to go absolutely all in on what I do best, do it well, and create something that they can enjoy and gain some happiness from.
Go all in or go home. Go all in or go home. Go all in or go home.
And don’t sell yourself out.
Scrunched Disconsolately 