Oct 21, 2008

Meaningless Shit in the Advosphere© Volume 1: The Guided Tour

No matter where you work there are a series of inane activities that either drive you bat shit, amuse you or as relevant to you as Indonesian cheese is to an Alaskan hermit during a weekend spiritual retreat. Every single day there are things that people swear make the whole of a difference or that it really matters when us passersby simply look idly asking when they’ll realize just how much of a cock knock it is that they’re experiencing.

That being firmly established, let us see our first order of business in this 5 part series: The Guided Tour.

If by any chance a client reads this blog, doubtful as it may be since so much of you are on my hate list, just realize that what you see when you’re offered a tour is fiction at its best. Just think of a fast food restaurant when they’re told someone from management will be swinging by and you’ll get a great idea of what happens in a Creative department once we’re told that we have to ship up for a visual inspection courtesy of your client.

An email gets sent to do any of the following:

• Clean up your desks

• Cover, hide, eliminate or ingest any layouts regarding other accounts

• Do not wear fuck you shirts and if one is being worn make sure to wear an over shirt, a coat, a jacket or consider wearing your shirt inside out for the duration of the visit

• No loud noises (apparently clients are like cattle and can be easily startled)

• Buy something from or relating to their brand and casually place it in pretty much everyone’s line of sight

Then comes the calm before the storm of ass kissery you’ll be treated to. I’m talking MEGA silence as the clock chimes 3 and the client strolls in with the lackey of choice for said tour. You make brief eye contact, you nod and smile and you best keep quiet or you’ll get the hose.

What a client gets to see is the farthest thing from what really goes on in Creative. People aren’t boisterous, the idea of a dick joke is nowhere to be seen and peace reigns supreme as everyone works diligently on the well-crafted jobs that help us deliver your layouts in expeditious fashion. By the way, the only time the department is that clean is when they clean the carpets, which buys about 3 days at the max.

Feel free to know you are being offered an illusion of what our work place and not facsimile of a real day on the ad job.

To Creatives, berating the lackey in question is always fun especially in front of the client where they don’t feel the freedom to name drop or use their supposed rank or CEO relations.

Cheers.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

haha so true and my personal favorite-

make sure you're working on something interesting/cool possibly something we can sell to client

because god forbid they see we were actually working the 15th round of revisions for their ads

Ad Broad, oldest working writer in advertising said...

Love the Guided Tour, Joker. My favorite GT moment was watching a management supe lead a client around. The client seemed a bit miffed b/c she kept pulling away from him. Why? She didn't tell him she'd just come from her kids' school where they'd both been sent home with head lice, and she was afraid she might have them too :)

Anonymous said...

In an agency I used to work for, they'd forbid us to leave our desks, made sure the phones didn't ring, and--worse--they'd choreograph exchanges. Like "OK, you walk to the printer, smile at the client. You, here's your script when we come and introduce the client."

Then they'd practice and practice until everyone sounded like robots. It was deathly silent while clients walked around. They must have thought we were incredible uptight.

Anonymous said...

I once worked at a DM agency that would hire temps for the day to sit at the empty desks, hang out in the print and data processing departments, etc.

Nothing says 'solid business relationship' like starting out with a big lie about who we really are.

stewbie2 said...

If you're not using THEIR brand of laptop, take yours and grab a shitty one from the basement. Hey, at least it has the right logo on it...

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