Last month I found myself in Abu Dhabi on a whirlwind work trip, a blur of brainstorming sessions and client pitches. Forget visiting the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque or spending all my money in Yas Mall – my first time in the United Arab Emirates was spent commuting between my hotel and a few meeting rooms.

But I still got to have a creative review with my feet on the sand, see the sun set behind a literal palace while we finished a presentation, and discuss potential future projects while eating the best hummus of my life. This is not meant to sound like a flex (although I’m conscious it also kind of is), but rather a perspective.

When my plane touched down in Amsterdam a few days later, I couldn’t stop thinking how lucky I was: I had visited somewhere completely new – geographically and culturally – and what got me there was the same thing that pays my bills every month. Beyond beaches and hummus, the trip reminded me why I love working in advertising.

Whether you’re new to advertising or several decades deep into the industry, chances are, someone close to you will eventually raise a judgmental eyebrow when you tell them how you spend your days. According to them, advertising is a profession you’re supposed to feel at least a little bit guilty about pursuing (and even guiltier about enjoying) – a selfish career path, founded on unethical principles of capitalism and consumerism and making people buy things they really don’t need.

As advertisers, I see our responsibility as transforming those unavoidable eight minutes of advertisements during a 30-minute TV show into compelling, entertaining content

I’m not sure whether this sentiment has grown in recent years or if my awareness of it has simply sharpened as I grow increasingly annoyed, but I want to offer a different viewpoint. I really like working in advertising, and I won’t apologise for that. I don’t even feel the need to. It’s what I always aspired to do, and the fact that I get paid to be creative, to build narratives, and to make things more interesting sometimes feels like a privilege. I honestly do not feel guilty about it at all.

Here’s the thing, I’m not naïve: whether we like it or not, we do exist in a society where money is a part of our day-to-day life, and with that comes the perpetual need to make it move from one place to another. If you have reservations about capitalism, then the advertising industry is likely not an industry in which you want to work, and I absolutely respect that perspective.

However, I also think we need to be pragmatic here: the birth of advertising wasn’t also the birth of all things capitalism. Neither was it the birth of all things evil for that matter. And as advertisers, we don’t force anyone’s hand. I personally believe in everyone’s freedom to make their own choices, and I extend this belief to whoever we’re calling our ‘target audience’ (I hate this term just as much as you do) on any given day.

Instead, as advertisers, I see our responsibility as transforming those unavoidable eight minutes of advertisements during a 30-minute TV show into compelling, entertaining content. And this is why I love this job – I see this as an inherently enticing challenge. It’s one thing to script stories that people pay good money to watch or create art that offers a final touch on a beautiful environment. But when else do people actively pay money not to experience your content? None of us can deny that most of the time, our eyes gaze down at our phones at the mere hint of a commercial break, while even my industry colleagues are guilty of browsing with Ad Blockers.

If you have reservations about capitalism, then the advertising industry is likely not an industry in which you want to work, and I absolutely respect that perspective

Isn’t it incredibly cool that we get paid to try and change that? The way I see it, those 30-60 second advertisements will always be there, those rectangles and squares dotted around the news article you’re trying to read will always be there, and lord help us, those unskippable six-second videos on YouTube will always be there. Our job is to try our very best to make them a bit more interesting, if not outright fun.

Even on the gloomiest winter days, when getting out of bed is hard and trips to Abu Dhabi feel very far away, working in advertising is unequivocally fantastic. While some other people my age are wearing starched suits and sitting in airless boardrooms, I get to turn up to our office in my Toms and ponder concepts like how to challenge the guilt we all feel about ordering takeaway.

Sometimes ‘work’ consists of taking a field trip to one of the best breweries in the Netherlands, on other days it’s a three-hour brainstorm about how we could potentially use BDSM culture or an obscure sports league to launch a new flavour of ketchup. There aren’t a lot of other professions out there that can say the same. This is the heart of advertising – the fusion of creativity, strategy, and the thrill of competing in an ever-evolving landscape, while being able to leverage every hobby, interest or curiosity you have to do so.

Critics may argue that advertising is manipulative, making people desire things they don’t actually need, and I agree with this to some extent: we are in the business of manufacturing desire, and sometimes that is a desire for things like fancy cars or expensive phones. But here’s the thing, that might be the case a lot of the time, but occasionally we are also lucky enough to be tasked with creating desire for more worthy pursuits, such as helping out underrepresented communities, or contributing to causes that need both attention and visibility, or brands that are making an actual positive impact in the world.

This is the heart of advertising – the fusion of creativity, strategy, and the thrill of competing, while being able to leverage every hobby or curiosity you have to do so

And this is why I think it’s important to maintain a sense of optimism, if not enthusiasm, about advertising. Because if you become cynical and convince yourself that no good can ever come from it, you might miss those windows of opportunity to make a real impact.

One great example of this is the American Express Small Business Saturdays campaign, which the bank originally launched in 2010 as an antidote to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I love this campaign, because it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and lollipops. Nobody is professing to save the world – it’s still a bank, promoting business transactions. But rather than being just that, it pours billions of dollars into small businesses every year. Cynicism wouldn’t have come up with that idea. It’s the kind of thing that demands you to enjoy what you do, and to see the potential in it.

It’s true that these big opportunities to transform society are few and far between, but if you’re not enjoying your work on a day-to-day basis, you’re much less likely to create campaigns that you believe in, too.

Whether we’re changing the world or not, we shouldn’t underestimate how privileged we are to have jobs that feel fun. From the occasional exotic business trip to having meetings where you get to doodle on a whiteboard, we are incredibly lucky to do what we do, and I won’t ever apologise for enjoying it.

Bruno Steffen is head of strategy at Gut; gut.agency; Top image: Shutterstock