Like it makes a difference

If you’ve spent more than a year in advertising, you’ve met up with quite a few situations that make you belch out the above title. Pick your tone, obnoxious, bitchy, pissed off, brimming with apathy, whimpering acquiesce? The point is you’ve probably thought this on more than one occasion.

Case in point would be when you get your ass chewed out for stupid shit. By stupid shit, I don’t mean a typo or cutting the bleed an extra two inches, I’m talking about not taking away a coma that might or might not be necessary. I’m talking about putting that extra exclamation point so the ad REALLY sells. I’m talking about the bullshit moments where an AE plays the role of Client liaison and wants you to tweak different things so it’s just right. Like it makes a fucking difference.

You think people give a flying, landed or floating fuck if you chose picture one or picture A when we’re talking about a shitty ad? Right. Of course they do. They also happen to count the stripes on a referee’s shirt to make sure there’s the right amount and that the white is the exact pantone for white that they have to have on to make it official. Of course people will give two shits if you say fine rather than dandy. We’re talking about a huge crisis for people who do or don’t see the quotation marks on a word.

Constantly I’ve been berated because of ramshackle ads that don’t mean a shit. Retail ads with ten thousand revisions. Oh and to make matters better, I have an AE helping out by bringing me and my artist preliminary changes we can work on while they figure out what else they want to shit on about the ad we made for a product that won’t sell because it blows or sales representatives suck roadkill puss rather than give attention to their clientele. But wait, if I change this word in the body copy, THEN it’ll work. Hell, how the fuck could I even imagine that an ad could work without THAT specific word? I’m such an idiot… no wait… I’m a copywriter. And I actually should know a thing or two about words…. Nahhh… who am I kidding? Of course someone who has a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting and who stumbled into marketing after getting fired from two firms knows more about language than me. It’s obvious that a full fledged corporate douche puppet knows more about what word is better in a certain context because I’m viced from working so much in advertising, because it makes such a fucking difference.

Lucky for me though, I have the light of Xibalba shining down on me and the grace of enlightenment comes in the shape of a client who should have been a cumshot safely captured in a condom tied with a double knot. But no, their daddy needed to slam three shots of J & B one night and I have to pay thirty years later because he didn’t have the decency to pull out and spare reality the joy of having to deal with another moron. Heaven knows we don’t have enough.

But I’m not the only one. No, no, no. The fun is not exclusive to Chef Joker and I hear friends of mine telling me shit that makes me think it’s Groundhog day. But wait a minute, guess where changes don’t make a difference. In job orders, in briefs, in revisions, etc because “we know what they mean”. Of course I know what you mean… That’s what they want to hear, but there’s no way you can make sense out of Red Bulled bigots who dance around whimsically, mistaking gut feelings for caprices and making me work longer hours, because it makes so much of a difference.

Your ad has legals??? Wait a minute… should we use bullets, asterixes or numbers…. Oh no… I don’t know…. Because it makes such a fucking difference. Can you put this element of the artwork in movement? Sure thing boss, because it’ll make the whole difference in the world. But it’s not important to verify telephone numbers, license number, varying rates etc, because heaven forbid me thinking it’s more important to focus on that rather than a better word than particular, because particular doesn’t particularly sit well with the client and they start that fucking clicking noise with their tongue because they can’t think in silence and they make any type of noise to reassure us that something’s actually going on upstairs.

But guess what, it does make a difference. Every little change that is asked of creative makes a gigantic difference. Each one, not one excluded. And you know why? Because each dimwit change we’re asked to incorporate (heaven forbid us evaluating a “recommendation”, also known as an order, and decide not to include it) takes us ever closer to that Nirvana Disaster where we fantasize for days upon days of all the bloody ways we could murder you and process your body waste to finally serve a righteous purpose.

Cheers fuckfaces… know someone hates your fucking guts and fantasizes with your destruction because you make such a splendid difference in my life. Oh and next time you have a great idea, here’s a great one of my own… don’t share it. Be a selfish prick and keep your recommendations to yourself so I can drink my tea, caress my sack and get out at a prudent time rather than diddling with an ad for an extra three hours so you’re totally happy even if you’re farther from the target than Stevie Wonder playing horse-shoe.