Morning Conference Call With London

I’m sure my counterpart in the London office loves these status calls just as much as I do. Takes me 5 minutes just to get acclimated to his Manc accent and him to my non-descript American accent that ends every sentence with a question mark.

Drinks, Anyone?

I’ve been sitting in the same chair for 14 hours with the same 2 people sitting on either side of me…..ideating. I’m sure they’re tired of looking at me too, but I don’t think it’s quite the same. You know you’re tired when you tell your boss “that slide sucks..take it out. I can’t believe you even wrote that crap.”  Need alcohol now. Check out this Saatchi ad that was on FFFFOUND! for 42 Below vodka. I’m too tired to even think through the pictures, but it has something to do with drinking too much and cross dressing, so I automatically love it.

(via FFFFOUND!)

Wait Until This Afternoon…

…for more posts. I’m in and out of some god-awful client meetings today.

Wound Too Tight

I just walked out of a meeting to go over a project pitch for one of our largest clients. The presentation was entirely too copy heavy, so I mentioned to the creator of the pitch to add more visual elements, less text. His response to me was:

“Fine. Fine. Fine, fine, fine. FINE! FINE FINE FINE! You add your fucking pretty pictures. I communicate using words.”

Okay.

Monday Meetings At The Shop

Email from our SVP of Client Services on Sunday night:

The following is the agenda for the Monday morning meeting. Please keep in mind that the focus of the meeting tomorrow will be to maintain our momentum on our process and follow through. When it is your time to provide an update to the group, please keep your speaking points to a high level, as we’d like to conclude this meeting within the allotted 15 minutes.

• Intro and setup – SVP Client Services
• Office News – Managing Director
• Latest creative updates – ECD
• New Business – Biz Dev VP
• Account Status – Group Account Directors
• Media – Media Director
• Technology – IT Director
• Process Update – Project Manager Lead
• Strategy Process – Strategic Director

HAHAHAHAHAH. 15 minutes? I’ll give up shoe shopping for a month if this meeting gets done in 15 minutes. Give me an effin break. Everyone’s ego is so huge on that list (everyone’s except mine of course), that they have to hear themselves talk for at least 10 minutes to feel good about themselves.

UPDATE: Total time, 1 hour 34 minutes.

All Staff Meetings And Me

For the past hour and a half, I’ve been in a whole-agency meeting about process and QA. One slide in the Powerpoint (who needs a Powerpoint to have a meeting? Our strategy folks, that’s who.) was called “Process and You”. I felt like I was reading a sex ed book. Luckily, I brought my laptop into the meeting and both caught up on my email and had several conversations via IM. I did manage to write down a few notes during the meeting:

“I need to call the salon and make sure my waxing appointment is buttoned up. From my POV and ideation, if I miss it, there’s no way I’ll be wearing that new lingerie I just bought anytime soon. Stakeholders and linear models be damned.”

I Gave You My Heart But You Wanted My Soul

We responded when you said you wanted us on site more often to work with your in-house team. We came to your home for dinner and met your bizarre wife and evil children. One account manager has turned into your servile sycophant. We even donated to your favorite charity.  I’m okay with all that. Well, I was okay, until this morning. One of my ae’s on the account couldn’t make a status meeting at the client’s office and calls me to fill in. I call the client and let him know I’m on my way.  He asks me to pick up coffee and, I’m not joking, his dry cleaning. “It’s right next door to Starbucks! Please?” Come on. Too bad they were closed. I mean, I think they were. It was hard to tell while I was driving past.

Out of Control Meetings

I don’t know about you, but my Outlook calendar looks like a game of Candyland. There’s blue and purple and stripey things everywhere. Seems everyone in our agency has to have a formal meeting about everything. Yesterday I met with the creative team for an hour about the background color of an expandable banner. A little excessive. Today I have NINE meetings on my calendar. None of them will last long, but it ruins my train of though. And my ability to actually get out of the office and visit clients. A novel concept.  No wonder I have to stay at work until 8 every night – I can only get things done when half the office has left.

Moving the Needle

In yet another lame sales meeting today where we get pressured on when clients will sign SOWs and how much we can “move the needle” on pricing.  If our New Biz guy says once more: “baked in”, “pipeline”, “on the come line” (which totally makes me think of a money shot), I will scream.

They’re firing our CD today – was supposed to happen 8 minutes ago.  Not that I’ve been counting. I think we’re getting some Berliner as the new CD soon.  I’ll need to learn how to say “these comps suck” in German.

I Tossed My Cookies

A client came in to the shop today to discuss some potential projects. We ordered lunch to be delivered (Corner Bakery is so yummy) and had a fabulous meeting – the client loved our ideas. At the end of the meeting, we all got up to shake hands. With my left hand, I grabbed the plate of cookies and cupcakes (to put in the break room for the vultures) and went to shake the client’s hand with my right. I lost total control and the desserts went flying across the boardroom table onto his suit. Then I couldn’t stop hysterically laughing. I’m sure I’ll be fired by the end of the day!

Speaking of cookies, Chips Ahoy has these cute, addicting advergames on their site, that are obviously aimed at kids, but I love them! I especially like the Chunky Dunk because the name sounds like a fetish porn site.

Big Breasted Bust

You know you’re SOL when the client starts talking about competing agencies during the pitch. Even our surgically-enhanced project manager (complete with one too many buttons undone and her unmentionables peeking out) couldn’t grab their attention. It all started out so well – the CD brought his uncharged Mac sans power cord, the projector died and the client’s brand police gave us a shakedown. It totally made my day! Our new business manager seems to think we still have a chance. I think when you get hired for that position, HR issues you horse blinders along with your insurance package and laptop. Try making your own horse/co-worker analogies – it’s fun!

Social Networking Bandwagon

Yesterday our agency had a meeting to determine which social networking sites we can create pages on to show as examples to clients. Some that were brought up were Virb (which has Bright Eyes on the home page today!), Last.fm, Kaneva, MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, Xanga, etc. We’re too late! The bandwagon’s long gone and is not taking any more passengers – we could have bought tickets a year ago, but not now. We’re still going to do it, but I think it would be a mistake for our clients (mostly Fortune 20s) to create profiles on these sites. One, their demographic isn’t necessarily participating, and if they are, they don’t want to be “friends” with a corporate behemoth who only wants their email address for marketing purposes. Second, a lot of retailers are already doing it and seeing backlash. But my job’s not to opine on these dilemmas, it’s to make the client believe that this is the correct path and to get them to write us a big fat check to design and market their page! I wonder if any corporation has really seen a lift in awareness, sales or leads using social networking as a marketing tactic – Aquafina has 14,000 some friends on MySpace, but has this really prompted someone to buy the water? I’d be willing to bet my new Kate Spades not. Okay, I wouldn’t bet my Kate Spades. Maybe I’d bet my old Target flip flops. Take a look at their page and see what you think: