• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, January 2, 2009

Lost among the yearend obituaries on the U.S. economy was this startling notice.

Starting Jan. 1, the pharmaceutical industry agreed to a voluntary moratorium on branded baksheesh such as Viagra pens, Zoloft soap dispensers, and Lipitor coffee mugs meant to foster awareness and, some would say, encourage doctors to prescribe more of the drugs. It is one thing for the mortgage lenders, brokers and bankers to have looted everyone's savings, but on top of that to now take away freebies, the primary structural economic underpinnings of entire industries like, say, media buying ... well, that's just wrong.

While I am somewhat confident that doctors can live without black T-shirts with rhinestones that spell out B-O-T-O-X (perhaps not, since pharmaceutical companies annually spend more than $6 billion on such nonsense) how are media buyers, the galley slaves of the agency bidness, supposed to live without branded baksheesh from the various outlets competing for their budgets?

While the Media Big Boys trot off to the Olympics with Sports Illustrated, the Oscars with Vanity Fair or to the Super Bowl on NBC's dime, the foot soldiers stay behind in the trenches scavenging for squirrels and rabbits to feed on, waiting for someone to toss them a vinyl carryall, some nuts from the bar bowl or a couple of brats when the home team plays the second-to-last-place team in the league (and the Big Boys won't go).

"It's a hard knock life," says one New York media agency grunt. "We get paid next to nothing so we have to live in rat-infested tenements, three to a bedroom, just to be able to tell someone we meet at a kegger that we live in Manhattan. We live cocktail weenie to cocktail weenie at the complete mercy of media companies that feed us, clothe us and provide most of our writing utensils and tableware. If it weren't for their umbrellas, we'd walk in the rain. If it weren't for their theme parties we wouldn't have red hots to eat or T-shirts to work out in. A few years ago the MPA had a contest where we could win a cruise just for reading one of their research reports. I downloaded it 187 times, but still didn't win."

Worried that if the pharma companies back off goodies it might set an example for other industries, media buyers in Chicago have organized in a loose confederation that promises to watch low-rated TV shows and actually pay for an occasional magazine, if the providers will continue hosting pizza parties, movie nights and lunches at Morton's and the Palm. "We can't afford the creamed spinach at a steak house, much less the main course," says one of the confederates who asked not to be named, fearing the agency is on the prowl to cut staff anyway and seeing no sense drawing attention to yourself in Over the Line.

It is difficult to determine if mouse pads and customized M&Ms have shifted dollar one of a media buy, but they have kept buyers hopeful that as they ascend the corporate ladder they can look forward to spa trips, home games against ranked teams and golf outings in Palm Springs.

"I could live off the unreported income that my boss gets from media sellers," says a Los Angeles-based media buyer. "But for now I am content with his table scraps."

The story you have just read is an attempt to blend fact and fiction in a manner that provokes thought, and on a good day, merriment. It would be ill-advised to take any of it literally. Take it, rather, with the same humor with which it is intended. Cut and paste or link to it at your own peril.