Not long ago, I was having a quiet lunch with some backpackers in the lazy fishing village of Mamallapuram, India. The topic of our occupations came up. It turned out I was seated with a cook and a schoolteacher from Britain, an architecture student from Sweden, a conceptual artist from France with her boyfriend, and a French factory worker employed by Airbus to paint its planes.

“So, what do you do?” the Frenchman asked me pleasantly when it got to my turn. Let me stop right here to say that if you have been in this business long enough, you know what is coming next. As much as I would have preferred to keep chatting about the heat, Deli-belly, and Barack Obama, I knew it was time to take my whoopin’. I put down my Kingfisher, straightened up in my seat, leaned forward, looked him in the eye, and said, “I work in marketing and advertising.” Then I sat back.