We're all individuals

My last post got me thinking again about the old 'we're all individuals' rhetoric. This is something that probably the bitter part of me associates with the thing that got on my wick when I was looking for my first job in planning. I appreciate agencies want a diverse group of interesting individuals and I myself enjoy working with them, but I think it has gone a bit too far - it all feels a bit elitist and a touch on the tedious side at times. Richard Huntingdon posted this over at Adliterate a while ago which pretty much covers some of this debate. First of all I don't believe groups of people, who in actual fact have very similar backgrounds are as interesting as they could be if you mixed them up with people who have different backgrounds and experiences.

Looking back at my life at a 'new' University, my housemates, who are still some of my closest friends had such different backgrounds - it certainly made life there much more interesting both academically and socially. Living with the son of a working class builder who supported QPR, a public school boy who kind of followed Aston Villa (probably because of Prince William) but was more of an egg chaser and finally another public school boy, who as well as being an annoying Gooner, was Jewish and the son of a London cabbie. I'm pretty much a middle class (Brighton fan) with my Dad being a hardworking sales manager for a greetings card company and my step mum a nurse. That may all seem pretty average and stereotypical but when you put them all together that is where you find the conflicts, the enemies and the enthusiasm that many people such as John Grant and Russel Davies often talk about.

My second and final point relates to some peoples attitudes towards 'uninteresting' people and why they shouldn't work in the indusutry even though they slogged their guts out from the age of 18, got in thousands of pounds worth of debt only to discover that their careers advisor should have told them to do Zoology if they wanted to work in advertising. To give you an example this is the sort of small minded opinion that makes me ashamed of the industry at times. Taken from a coment on Richard's post, Asi says: "I've never met anyone with a 'degree' in marketing or advertising who was remotely interesting". This is all he had to say, very interesting really isn't it? It's is a very old fashioned and archaic attitude that really is an attempt to make themselves feel better.

For some reason people think that if you do a degree and yes it is a degree, you aren't interested in anything else. I have always believed in John Locke's theory on ideas. Locke states that ideas come from both knowledge and experience. The point is that people's knowledge and experiences are different, therefore shouldn't the industry do its best to find a a good mix rather than finding 'individuals' that aren't actually that individual. When we recruit people we don't have any guidlines such as how interesting is this person, or how nice, our aim is to recruit a mix of people from a variety of backgrounds and so far it has served us well. It doesn't have to be so black and white all the time. The interesting part is the grey bit in the middle.