AD BIZ: THE ANCIENT WISDOM

                   Free Advice from Dean Christopher

 

   Hey, interested in a glamorous career in advertising? Here, in a nutshell, are some important basics; the distilled wisdom of my twenty years among the Ad Biggies.  This briefing accurately reflects the most widely accepted views on the principal job categories in Ad Biz. Once you understand these few simple facts you’ll be on your way!

 

 

·      Creative people are interchangable, dispensable hacks. Copywriters and Art Directors are loony irresponsible showoffs who want to embarrass the agency and make the client a laughing stock. Their clothes are no damn good. They like to wear beards or handlebar moustaches, especially the men. Their offices are cluttered with cutesy props like barber chairs, old banjos, and gas masks. Ha ha ha. They put clever graphics on their walls to show how “creative” they are; but don’t be fooled—they are all burnt-out grinds. Creatives are seditious, drunken punsters who will surely lose the account for us and end up as murderers, suicides or worse.

 

 

·      Account people are bootlicking politicos in empty suits with inflated salaries and understaffed imaginations, who exist mainly to play golf and eat costly meals with the client. They write long memos choked with statistics and nonspecific exhortations to do better. They are like used car salesmen who dress well and know when to use the subjunctive mood. Account People surely coined indispensable Ad Biz phrases like “Could work if properly handled,” “Is this okay with Legal?” and “What do you think, Dick?” Because of this intellectual clout, Account People end up with all the top-level jobs, except for one token Executive Creative Director whom they allow on the Executive Committee so they can tell prospective clients that the agency is “really creative.”

 

 

·      Media people are number-crunching sluts who read everything out of Meeting Books prepared by researchers. They never smile during conferences. They breakfast, lunch, and sup with clients and with hucksters from broadcast and print media who pretend that their medium is the best deal in history for the agency’s client. The Media sluts keep right on chewing and pretend to believe this claptrap. It doesn’t matter, as long as the meal is paid for by the huckster, which it always is. Unlike Account People,  Media folks never buy anything for anyone, not even on their expense account. They also enjoy freebie trips to adorable warm places and try in vain to get laid under the palm fronds. Nobody knows exactly what it is they do for a living, but they are ashamed to admit it.

 

·      Research geeks sit around all day processing mounds of high-brained psycho-babble. They claim to know the exact location of consumers’ “hot buttons.” When no one is looking they lick their computers. Their bookshelves bulge with volumes with titles like “Grapho-Graphic Sub-Strata Analysis” and “Evaluating Consumer Paratrends.” At night they slip into black hoods, sift through goat entrails, and inhale strange fumes. This methodology results in reports that convince the client that the agency’s strategy is brilliant and 100% certain to triple his profits by sundown. Research proves that the Creative is wrong, wrong, all wrong. Research people always have pasty flesh and teeny privates and wear undershirts. They grind their teeth in their sleep.

 

 

·      Agency Producers are to commercials what Scotch Tape is to the Space Shuttle. Their job is to remind the client that making commercials is a superhumanly difficult task, never to be entrusted to unshepherded film companies. Producers therefore endure travel, posh hotels, and long long hours casting for gorgeous actresses who must be, um, validated over dinner. You know, to make sure that the chemistry is, uh, just right. Producers always have their picture taken with the client on the set, often seated together smiling astride a Mitchell crane. They eventually leave the agency to become movie directors because advertising just isn’t challenging enough any more.

 

 

·      Clients are arrogant fools without a brain in their heads or the faintest idea of what makes good advertising—or  why. They want their company logo larger, ever larger in the ads, much larger. They say things like “Could we lose that humor? There’s nothing funny about selling this product, you know.” Clients exist mainly to cause huge running sores in the stomach linings of ad people, and to make sure that the agency wins no Clio Awards. Clients have ugly wives or weasely little husbands, sometimes both. They are much richer than ad people. Clients always beat agency people at golf and everything else, but never ever suspect why.

 

   Sometimes the abovementioned Wisdom isn’t properly absorbed and the odd—usually the very odd—advertising person therefore blunders into self-destruction. Newcomers often fail to appreciate that everyone outside their department (and most within their department) is either an actual or a potential enemy, and therefore naively associate with people in disciplines other than their own. Some misguided neophytes stray from the path and actually cooperate with colleagues rather than competing with them! Can you imagine? Others are foolish enough to offer assistance—real, not feigned assistance—to their fellows in their agencies’ sister offices. Still others commit egregious no-no’s like expressing their true opinions, or working overtime without first making sure that the Executive Committee is aware of it.

 

   Fortunately for advertising, these goofballs are few and far between—and getting even fewer and farther as the business shrivels. They are the first to be weeded out and returned to the street, to “the beach,” or to the sad grey world of penny journalism.

 

   Don’t let that happen to you! If you hanker for a long, happy, safe safe  SAFE  SAFE   S A F E   career in advertising, re-read these pages and take their content to heart. Remember, your fate is in your own hands—and those of the client. And your bosses. And everybody else. So take no chances. Cover your ass. Volunteer for nothing.  Point out the mistakes of your equals and inferiors, but ignore the mistakes of your superiors. Better yet, praise them. And when they finally get around to firing you, which they will, don’t forget to take the Rolodex. You’ll need it.

 

The Marketing Corner

 

SORRY, HE’S IN A MEETING

 Of course he is. He’s always in a meeting. After all, he’s in advertising, isn’t he? He’ll get back to you.

 

 But don’t hold your breath. It may be a long meeting. Or worse yet, a long series of meetings.

 

 In any collaborative business, meetings are unavoidable. And since few businesses are as collaborative as marketing and advertising, ours is a meeting-intensive environment.

 

 Meetings exist to exchange information, to brainstorm and to review work in progress. But sometimes they also exist for their own sake, out of pure habit. Unless consciously brought under control, they chew up huge slabs of time. How often have you burned up two hours of your life in a meeting, only to realize that the only decision made was the time of the next meeting? Oh sure, clever things were said. Everybody was smart. Coffee and designer water were sipped. Issues raised. Points made. Clients dissed. Project statuses discussed – all or most of them “ongoing.”

 

 So, how did that make the company’s work any better, or improve your day?

 

The two basic species of meetings are (1) Internal, with colleagues and/or clients attending; and (2) External, at the client’s office or pitching a new business prospect. These vary in size from one-on-one to dozens of people, depending on circumstances. But they don’t have to be endless windbag sessions that yield dinky results or no results at all.

  

Nobody here but us employees.

 We don’t expect you to be a drill sergeant. But don’t let attendees get too comfortable. (One best-selling business guru suggested providing no place to sit in the meeting area. We stop short of such showboating. Nor do we endorse waterboarding to get ideas out of your personnel.)

 

On the other hand, it’s better not to serve refreshments. This is not a party, and besides, they’re your own people. No need to impress them! Discourage note taking. The physical process of writing distracts from the mental process of listening. Anything worth writing down should be memorable enough to write down after the meeting.

 If the meeting is to disseminate information (statistics, budgets, production schedules, etc.), prepare a page or two – the less verbage the better – to hand out at the end of the meeting. It’s a good idea to distribute that information by e-mail before the meeting. That way you don’t have to waste time writing stuff on a display board so everyone can waste more time copying it down.

 

 Nobody should be allowed to get away with saying twice, about the same assignment, “I’m working on it” or “It’s still in the pipeline.” Pipes are only so long, and deadlines are real. By meeting #2, “it” must be finished.

 

Realistically, revisions are necessary, but impose a cutoff point. Broadway shows go through revisions during rehearsal. But eventually the producers simply must “freeze the script.” No new lines. No new bits of business. No plot switcheroos. No new songs. Here’s the show we’re presenting on opening night, so get it straight.

 

 

 Client or prospective client meetings.

 Never waste time meeting with anyone – at your office or outside – who can’t sign a check or generate a purchase order for anything grander than a box of staples. Better no meeting at all than a wasted meeting charming some executive’s underlings, who are (like script readers at film studios) typically empowered only to say “no,” but not “go.” They can’t initiate projects or approve budgets. They know the political risk of recommending anything that might not excite their Higher-Ups. It’s career-threatening. Far safer for them to turn your proposal down than to espouse it and risk the scorn of their Betters.

 

It bears repeating: subordinates at client meetings are there to filter out unwanted advances, but have no authority to advance the flirtation. At best they can arrange a follow-up meeting – the one you should be having in the first place. The common practice of pre-meeting meetings, in one piquant Polish folk saying, is called “chewing the same cabbage twice.”

 

 

 Make meetings meatier.

 Whatever the purpose of your meeting is, whether with clients or your own people, just get into it. Executives and subordinates alike will appreciate your appreciation of the value of their time. A strict agenda and time limit will help you control the meeting. Be sure to limit the meeting only to people directly involved with agenda items. And end the meeting as close as possible to the pre-agreed time.

 

 This will take some practice, but you’ll find it’s worth the effort.

 

 It’s all about discipline. Time management means you manage time, it doesn’t manage you.

 

Keep an eye on the stall indicator.

 

 If you’ve ever been in a courtroom, you know how often the outcome of a hearing is a “continuance” – the legal term for stalling.

 

 Don’t let your meeting stall, marooned on some detail that can be assigned for someone to work out later, at latest, by the next meeting. One sign that the meeting is floundering is when you notice several people saying the same thing in different words. Or worse yet, saying different things with the same words – a symptom of imprecise definitions of the problem. 

 Some companies employ a secret code word to be used to inform the attendees that it’s time to wrap tings up. This is particularly useful when clients are present – unless, of course, they have broken your company code.

 

 

But cut people some slack.

 In the case of brainstorming meetings, there are always some people whose best work is not spontaneous. They like to ruminate for a few hours or days. Wise managers take that into consideration, and allow for post-meeting responses. After all, taking the time to think things over isn’t such a bad idea.

 

 

Just like meetings, advice about meetings should be brief.

The best meeting is the briefest meeting possible that can end with decisive actions taken. By the time everyone leaves the room, at least one cake should be baked.  

 One efficient executive told me that if 12 people meet for one hour, but accomplish less than 24 man-hours of work, they have wasted time that could have been much better spent over martinis and dinner.  

 End of column. Time for a martini.

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