Millennials and Gen Z, gather ’round your blue lit glowing laptops as your Uncle Boomer tells you a tale of a bygone time. A treasured era when advertising creatives gathered themselves together and went on a brief self-healing and nurturing journey. A time when creatives talked about work, joked about work, complained about work, and sometimes, got tipsy. It was a time we lovingly called, “lunch.”
That’s L-u-n-c-h, Millennials. In case you didn’t know how to spell it.
The first recorded appearance of this phenomenon occurred during the early to the mid-17th century. Lunch was a meal that could be any time between late morning and mid-afternoon. During the late 17th and 18th centuries, this meal was gradually pushed back into the evening, creating a greater time gap between breakfast and dinner. A meal called lunch came to fill the gap.
The Hobbits called lunch, “Second Breakfast.”
When I entered the halls of advertising in the early 90s, lunch was a five-day event. It happened between noon and two, Monday through Friday. We arrived at work, had coffee, and in between concepting and meetings, we planned lunch.
What will we eat? Where will we go? These were pertinent questions. If you were lucky enough to have an assistant, which I did not, they would make reservations for lunch. Lunch was fun. Lunch was anticipated. Lunch was necessary. Now, lunch is gone.
Today, lunch is a meeting sandwich slapped between two slices of meetings. And these meetings are scheduled by yes, Millennials, who seem to have no problem eating while they work. The song is Whistle While You Work. Not Eat. But now, we do so regularly. Status meetings are scheduled like clockwork during lunch. Working lunches are not out of the ordinary. They are ordinary.
And this is just wrong. It’s not healthy for us. Or the creative output.
When I got into the business, the time between noon and two was sacred not only for creatives, but for the entire agency. After a grueling morning of meetings and more to come in the afternoon, we needed that break. It was a time for us to become humans again and stretch our brains and legs.
My predecessors told me tales of the legendary three-martini lunch which had fallen by the wayside. I heard stories of legendary art directors who would do a bump of coke for lunch (I’m not endorsing that) and then go present a new campaign for Draino to their client. Famed advertising icon Jerry Della Femina would light weed and incense around the creative department for visiting lunch clients to remark, “They’re so creative!” Then they would happily go eat.
I witnessed great creativity happen during lunch. The Budweiser Ants, Did Somebody Say McDonald’s?, the Gatorade Sweat, my own Sexiest Ad of the Year for LUGZ come to life. All born of lunch.
However, somewhere between 2007 and now, the art of lunch disappeared. The time period between noon and two has now been replaced by meetings and meetings on top of meetings. I watch creatives, myself included, struggle over work sitting at desks and ordering Postmates.
That’s a stock photo we are using as our hero image. It shows happy co-workers having a meeting and eating pizza. They are laughing it up. Lies! IT’S A STOCK PHOTO. Office lunch meetings are not fun. Especially when the company is not providing the food.
Lunch does not mean just intaking food or in many cases, inhaling before the next meeting. Lunch means taking a break, both mentally and physically. How many times have we now heard our stressed-out co-workers say, “I didn’t even get to take lunch.”
According to NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) approximately 1 in 25, or 9.8 million adults in the U.S. have and/or will experience a serious mental illness within a given year.
And research has found poor nutrition and diet can directly affect one’s mental health. Where an 8-hour work day used to consist of five and half hours of work, a half-hour of socializing and two hours of lunch, it now is just 8 hours of work. Compound that with ridiculous tight schedules, we now come home exhausted and mentally taxed. And hungry!
REELated:
Besides the fact that we need the mental break, there are other health reasons to take a lunch:
Metabolism Booster – eating lunch keeps your metabolism active. According to the Weight Control Information Network, “people who regularly skip meals tend to weigh more than people who eat throughout the day.”
In training for the new Deadpool film, Ryan Reynolds eats every 3 or 4 hours. He doesn’t skip lunch.
Blood Sugar Level Balancer – eating lunch re-energizes your body and increases blood sugar levels. During those long afternoon hours when focus and concentration are likely lagging, and you have to come up with a third concept, eating even a small meal can give your body the needed ‘boost’ to complete the day’s activities.
Mindful Eating – in a recent study by Harvard University it was found that people who ate while distracted actually ate more food. Whereas ‘mindful eating’ has been linked to eating less and making healthier food choices.
Friendships – yes, that’s right, your midday meal maybe the perfect way to connect with family, friends and colleagues. Thus, putting the ‘busyness’ of the day’s activities aside and making room for the ‘present’.
See? The proof is not just in the creative output, it’s medically proven. We are not doing ourselves any favors by skipping lunch or having lunch at our desks. There is a reason they say sitting at a desk is, “the new cancer.”
Yes, things change. Business models change. Budgets are smaller and schedules are tighter. People get butt hurt far too easily now. When I was full-on in advertising, my Dr. Pepper 7-UP client, John Clarke, was of the three-martini lunch era. And even though my art director and I were shocked by his ability to pound three dirty ones at lunch, John did it proudly. It was a badge. Guess what? Those Dallas lunches were fun and filled with laughs and wisdom about the business.
But here’s the thing – provocative creativity and trust were also built on those lunches. Lunch served as the foundation for genuine business relationships. We could be frank and not hurt anyone’s feelings. We also learned how to trust each other. Today, ad agencies are treated more like vendors and not creative partners. A lot of that I believe has to do with lack of lunch.
Lunch is where I learned Spike Lee loved to have a White Russian with Kahlua. Lunch is where Dr. Maya Angelou told me, over home-cooked fried chicken, about her writing process and I follow it to this day. Lunch is where my art directors and I came up with “f*cking creative ideas” that scared people.
Most advertising ain’t scary anymore.
In New Jersey – my earliest days of advertising – I had lunch every day with a woman who would eventually become my girlfriend, then wife, and finally, the mom of my two daughters. Think that would have happened during a meeting every day?
In New York, I had three female art directors I would lunch with. Lunch meant going shopping and me being their human hanger while they tried on clothes. I didn’t mind. It was fun and they helped style me. I had another art director who used his lunch to go to Paradise. This was a strip club.
He may have come back smelling like cheap perfume, sweat and God knows what else for the afternoon, but his ideas were from heaven. And they sold. My Manhattan lunches were spent either practicing with my softball team, going to the gym or occasionally getting drunk.
Yes, I got drunk at lunch at least once a week. Sometimes with my co-workers. Sometimes with a director. Sometimes with a rep. But never alone. It was acceptable. It made coming to work not feel like we were coming to work. I came back from lunch and took the adage to heart – “Write drunk. Edit sober.” This is probably making a Millennial or two cringe right now. But I speak the truth.
Lunch is where we conceived ideas stress-free. Lunch is when we let our hair down and ideas came to us. In the Mad Men pilot, Don Draper scribbles an idea on a cocktail napkin that he will sell later on. As The Mandalorian says, “This is the way.”
Can you imagine if we actually prepped our kids for adulthood by taking lunch and recess away from them? “Sorry kids, you have to compare triangles by two o’clock or read Catcher in the Rye because a surprise report is due tomorrow. But let’s meet about it first.”
Riots would happen. Dogs would mate with cats. Hostile parents would roam the streets asking how we can torture children like this. Well, I ask the same question to ad agencies and their clients – how can you torture your team who works nonstop like this?
With the advent of working from home, it is now a regular practice to receive calls at 7:00 AM, even 6:30 at times. It’s common to text each other into the night. And this is not for booty. It is for the next day’s due date. We work weekends, nights and even when we are not working. My brain does not suddenly turn off at five or six.
The state of California requires that we take at least a half-hour lunch. This is the law. But it’s a law that we typically ignore. What if we ignored other laws like running stop signs? Stealing? Well, in Los Angeles you can pretty much steal without consequences. Bad example. You get the point.
Trust me on this, Millennials. If you take a two-hour or hell even an hour, the world will not end. We might actually become nicer to each other and craft some campaigns that become a part of the zeitgeist.
So, try something. Start slowly with this. Try one day not to schedule meetings between noon and two. Then make it two days. Then go crazy and make it a week. Let us have our lunch.
In a world where everything is ‘busy’, taking a break to reconnect, feed your mind and your body is not only wise – but also, essential for one’s overall productivity and health.
Adults need recess, too. Now, what’s for lunch?
Colin Costello is the West Coast Editor of Reel 360. Contact him at colin@reel360.com or follow him on Twitter at @colinthewriter1
