Imagine yourself in a room filled with a bunch of crazed yo-yo salesmen. That's where I found myself one particular Saturday afternoon -- at a sales meeting with the sales force of a company that makes yo-yos.

The big news at this meeting was the introduction of a new yo-yo called, "The Whizzer". (Not the name I would've chosen.) So, there's the marketing director upfront like General Patton rallying the troops, raving about this yo-yo like it's some new secret weapon. Everyone in the place is hooting and hollering -- it was scary. I don't think they actually believed The Whizzer was gonna save the world, but they probably realized that if they sold the crap out of it they'd keep their jobs for another year and maybe save a little toward their kid's college tuition.

Like with the The Whizzer, every advertisable product has a hidden army of sales-people who pack their suitcases with pencil erasers or Malibu Barbie doll accessories or whatever it is they're selling, and take off to places like Wilmington and Boise and Greenville trying to make quota to keep their jobs and do the same thing another year. One of my clients was an umbrella company that made decent umbrellas -- they didn't break with the first gust of wind. My contact at the company was a brilliant marketing guy, but essentially he was an umbrella salesman. He'd travel to these towns with his case full of umbrellas: "The Standard", "The Mini", "The Micro-Mini", "The Full-Size", "The Golf", "The Automatic", "The Semi-Automatic", "The Cane Style", and "The Designer Line". The guy worked hard and must have spent 80% of his waking hours thinking about one thing: umbrellas.

The ad business, thankfully, is different. We get to work on a variety of accounts during our careers. I've worked on 137 at last count. And if these product vendors are the infantry doing the grunt work in The Great Sales War, we ad folks are the airforce. With the latest high-tech weaponry we attack our markets with precision bombing or use hit-and-run guerilla tactics if the client can't afford the big guns. To most ad executives it is a war with a "win at all costs" mentality.

Despite the fact that many have this Do-or-Die attitude, there's another different philosophy that's summed up in three words; "It's only advertising." It means that saving someone from Ring-Around-the-Collar isn't exactly like saving someone from AIDS. Yet, when millions of dollars rest on a single sales rating point, it can be a hard thing to remember.

No matter what link on agency food chain you are, there's pressure. The creative person feels it to get good work produced. The account person feels it to keep his client happy. The president feels it to keep winning business. The chairman feels it to keep making a profit and make his Board happy. And the Board feels it to keep the agency stockholders happy. Constant deadlines and often brutal politics add to the stress. And every agency staff member knows that a failed campaign, new management, or a lost client can mean a lost job.

When people are subjected to this kind of pressure they can do some funny things. I knew an art director who once attacked his account exec with a metal T-square for being told to make the logo bigger. Another guy used to motor around the office on a skate-board. He'd get pissed off when the account guys told him he couldn't bring his board to client meetings. I remember a writer who had a couch in her office that she'd use for mid-day naps. If her door was shut you knew she was probably sleeping. Many creatives comfort themselves by regressing back to childhood by filling their offices with favorite childhood knick-knacks. One woman's office looked like an 8-year old girl's bedroom. She had a doll collection and about 20 stuffed animals. When you walked in you could barely move.

Somewhere there was some kind of survey about careers with a ranking of the ones the public respected most. I'm not sure which ranked the highest, but I know Advertising Executive ranked somewhere at the bottom. (I think between Lawyer and Used Car Salesman.) All I know is that when I reveal my profession I get varied responses. Many think it's cool and then some react like I'm Satan. A friend who grew up in an intellectual family told me a story about a childhood recollection of her mother's hushed voice when mentioning that her friend's father was (hushed voice) "in advertising." She said it was as if he was afflicted with some form of mental illness.

I don't know anyone in advertising who doesn't admit that it's a crazy business. Especially when you realize that there's woman working on a cure for AIDS in some lab cubicle somewhere making her 25K while the guy who came up with "It's Bubblicious!" is sitting in some corner office making half a mil.