Job seeker asks for whom the blog scrolls
BY LEWIS LAZARE SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
What do you do while you’re searching for an advertising job in a market where jobs are tough to come by?
If you like to write and have a yen to serve up your observations on the industry, you start an advertising blog. About 10 days ago, that’s exactly what David Burn, 39, did when he launched www.AdPulp.com from an apartment on the city’s Northwest Side.
The uneven collection of postings so far include an item about Euro RSCG’s new chief creative officer Steffan Postaer, with whom Burn has traded e-mails discussing interactive advertising, as well as job possibilities at Euro RSCG, which Postaer is trying to rebuild as a creative powerhouse. Not surprisingly, Burn seems to be sucking up to Postaer when he suggests in his blog that the ad exec now has a chance to make his mark in the city in a much bigger way than he did when previously employed at the shuttered LB Works and its parent Leo Burnett.
But Burn also displays some healthy skepticism in an entry about a recent Chicago magazine article on the 25 best places to work. He points out that three ad agencies — DDB, Foote Cone & Belding and Draft — all made the list, while BBDO scored an honorable mention. Burn also suggested it made sense for a magazine that solicits advertising to make nice with ad agencies.
Because we happened to call to find out what he was up to, we were turned into a posting in which Burn mused about what we’d make of his new project so far. Well, Burn still has a ways to go to make his online effort as juicy and opinionated as it needs to be to draw readers regularly.
Having arrived here a year ago to be with his girlfriend and following stints in the ad business in Denver, Omaha and Salt Lake City (where he fell into the business as a copywriter at a technology agency called BOWG), Burn is still trying to figure out the local advertising community and what aspects of it might make the best fodder for his blog.
If nothing else, Burn has discovered it’s not easy finding full-time work in advertising here. But while he’s looking, he hopes to turn AdPulp.com into a money-making business.