Eating the long lunch for breakfast.

I was having dinner in a very nice restaurant in the financial district of New York (as you do) with some colleagues a few weeks back and the subject drifted, as it sometimes does with those who lived through it, to the time of no-good-shenanigans that our beloved industry used to, while not exactly condone, certainly allow in the 80s, 90s and 2000s.

You know, drunkenness, drug abuse, worker abuse, sexist abuse, all the abuses.

The thing is, despite the appalling behaviour of (let’s face it mostly men) it’s tempting to look back fondly at those times as some kind of wild-west town, outrageous and deadly yes, but…well…fun.

‘Madmen’ obviously revealed to the world how 60s adland was a thinly veiled pit of alcoholism, sexism and…well all the ‘isms’.

But the 80s and 90s (let alone the 70s) gave the 60s a run for its money.

If you’re a relatively young ad-person you’ve probably heard all the stories.

And as a result you may wish you still had the leeway today we had back then, but don’t fire up the DeLorean just yet.

I caught the tail-end of the 80s but in the 90s there was still a lot of money sloshing around and the ‘lunch’ was the primary conduit for misbehaviour. Agencies were paid on a fee basis whether there was anything to do or not, so time became more elastic. No timesheets? amazing!

It was a time when photographers and production companies greased the wheels of creatives with lunches in Charlotte street, in a kind of quid-pro-quo arrangement not dissimilar to what the suits were doing with their clients. You take me to lunch and that packshot is in the bag.

‘I’m going to get Barney (or whomever) to take me to lunch’ was a not unfamiliar announcement around 12.45pm as an office door would be flung open and plumes of smoke billowed into the creative department from a small gas chamber. The art director would then, with a certain flourish, disappear into Soho and wouldn’t be seen again for the whole afternoon. It was, obviously, a time before smart phones so you could just say you were doing research…well there was no internet either, so who would know?

As long as you had ideas ready when they were needed you had a pretty free reign over how you managed your time. And as most creative departments had a majority of undiagnosed ADHDers, that meant two weeks of musing in the pub and 24hours of furious work. The mind boggles at how much Bolivian marching powder was consumed in those decades to keep those concepts coming.

But account people had their own challenges to face.

My colleagues at dinner recounted troubling tales of clients asking to be procured hookers, these days you could barely call them a cab without a job number.

On a different note, the first client I worked for, as a lowly junior art director, was the Marketing Director for a large department store chain. I know for a fact that the agency paid for her holidays abroad and it was all just accepted.

There really was no sensitivity around what you might call ‘soft corruption’ or what was inappropriate for the work place in those days (at least by today’s standards) and no limit on what you were expected to do to keep a client happy.

Inappropriate you say Olly?

Well, I hope she doesn’t mind me saying this but my wife, who was once a senior PA in at least three agencies of note, reminded me that one agency had a ‘best bum in the agency’ competition. The winner’s name was posted on a notice board.

Full disclosure, she probably remembers this specifically because it was her name on the notice board. So while she agrees it was obviously appalling, she might not have had quite so fond a memory of this as some of the women who weren’t as unfazed by the objectification..or whose posteriors remained uncelebrated.

But, while my chums at dinner all wistfully agreed that, in retrospect, it seemed like fun at the time especially if you were young and creative or blessed with an expense account, there was of course a frat-house vibe about those times which was intoxicating, literally and figuratively, that also had a rancid flip-side which has left a more lasting hangover.

This is just one personal example.

Speaking of my wife, when my daughter was born, as she often reminds me, I wasn’t allowed to take that week off, probably some shit reason like a long-since-forgotten pitch. That seems rather cruel by today’s standards where fathers can even share maternity leave. But there was no HR, no third party to appeal to. I feel rather sorry for our younger selves, my wife and I, but at the time it was just part of the deal, and like an idiot one just accepted it. Thank God for my mother-in-law.

The deal with the devil that we all made was this – yes, have fun in the pub or that long lunch, enjoy those shoots in LA but if I need you this weekend for concepts by Monday, your life, your plans and your marriage is MINE.

As one infamous Creative Director is often quoted…”If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother coming in on Sunday”.

Working mothers and fathers didn’t have the option of being there at bedtime, or nipping out to do the school-run thanks to hybrid or remote working like they do today.

Ignoring the media agencies who might be still flying that flag, the ‘long lunch’ may be a thing of the past in creative agencies -but weekends are broadly your own again. (okay some exceptions presumably) and you don’t have to hang around the office till 7pm just to look like you’re ‘working hard’ these days. You don’t even have to be in the same country as the office. If you even have an office.

Every cloud.

With DEI policies mostly commonplace there’s now a chance to broaden agency department profiles and get so much more access to so much more talent. (Back in the day hiring young male northerners was considered DEI and some big network agencies had a policy of only hiring attractive people!)

So be happy it’s 2025. This is the Golden age.

We are definitely more sober as an industry in every sense of the word. And the better for it. I guess there are still the odd office affairs that still happen – people will be people – but when you were stuck in an office five to seven days a week and late nights and alcohol was part of the mix, it was not surprising so many marriages and people were broken.

Maybe I’m getting old, but I’ll take a more sober workplace for a slice of that work/life balance cake.

A good friend of mine was in media during the 80s and 90s, a top salesman for SKY amongst other platforms. His job was frankly, to take clients out to lunch and ply them with drink. Day in day out. We were chatting last weekend.

“Was it fun?” he said “undoubtedly”

“Did we create alcoholics in the process? absolutely”

For him it was unsustainable. He now runs a successful cleaning company.

So my young creative chums, don’t look at those times with rose tinted spectacles if you feel you missed out. Your time is a golden age.

Technology, Lockdown, Me Too, DEI and the increase in female leaders has cultivated a much healthier environment, from what I can see. A place where you can do your best work. There’s always going to be exceptions, tyrants, bullies, sexists, et al but now you have so much more ammunition to keep them at bay.

And there’s no long lunch that is as intoxicating as doing great work.

So let’s drink to that.