Young marketers don’t get such a good deal

The “cheap child labour” (those aged 20-28 years?) that the Thatcher greed revolution put in place, as Ken Robertson argues (Letters, DW 9 October), cannot be out shopping instead of learning how to spell c-r-e-a-t-i-v-e c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-i-o-n, because as child labour we are not paid enough to shop. Certainly, the hours that we are working are far more than the opening hours of Top Shop and Karen Millen.

There are a lot of young guns in the marketing industry who are looking to their “elders” for coaching and leadership.

For the past few centuries most industries were built on this apprenticeship partnership. But this mentoring relationship has been demolished in the past 155 years by industries, leaving us-oh-so-youthful, frivolous, inexperienced, materialist, lucky-to- have-a-job, overgrown teenagers to run amok producing technically challenged, two dimensional, haphazardly successful work. Relatively expensive results could be limited with better guidance by those who have now been considered too old and out-of-touch for the job.

So instead of letting Ken Robertson sit in his bath chair commiserating about the kids nowadays, I suggest that industries bring back the toothless experts to show us how it’s done. This will stop us working 14 hours a day figuring out what creative communication is. This would then give us more time for window shopping while getting a bit of discipline into the industry.

Annika Bosanquet

Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE2 4AE