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| All I know, I learned from Bazooka Joe. |
Last Tuesday, I got briefed on the fifth of what is slated to be ten projects from a Fortune 100 company. The first four of my assignments have gone well. The people I'm working with are pleased (they keep coming back) and the client is pleased (they keep coming back.)
Unlike with Herpes, coming back is good.
Like so much of the world today, however, there was a wrinkle. New marketing people at the client meant what we had done to date might be deemed not right for the new marketing efforts or simply, 'not invented here,' and therefore thrown away. When you're less-than-halfway done with a large assignment for a large client, the last thing you want to do is leave money on the table.
My direct contact--the intermediary between me and the client--called me and explained the situation. No one likes when personnel changes threaten their livelihood. My contact asked me if I could do some work--framing the campaign, making sure it aligns--to help lessen the threat posed by the new people.
Without hesitation I said yes.
I'm a loyal guy. When people are good to me, I'm good to them. Within reason, that's the way the world works.
I believe that loyalty should be divided, like Caesar's Gaul, into three parts.
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| Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. (Kit Katia est omnis divisa in partes duo.) |
1. There's loyalty to your client and your co-workers.
2. There's loyalty to your craft. Loyalty to doing a good job.
3. There's loyalty to yourself. That's demanding that the work treats you as well as you deserve.
This aggregate job and the people I'm working with answered the bell from all three of those spheres.
And so, I was duly briefed.
Confused. Complicated. And much more work than I was told.
Like I said, I was briefed on a Tuesday and thought a bit the same day. I downloaded the appropriate files, read through the docs and organized the docs I was sent into some folders. By Wednesday at 10, I was ready to think. By Wednesday at 12, I had an idea I knew could carry the exigencies of the assignment.
I sent a note to my contacts.
I wasn't "done" with the work I had to do, but I was ready to put pressure on myself.
"I'll be ready to show you work on Thursday at 9," I tersed.
"Wow, that's fast," they replied.
We agreed to meet on Friday morning.
Feeling that pressure, having the intensity of a promise hanging over me, I buckled down as I do. I'm not called "Old Iron Ass" for nothing. I can sit in expensive upholstery and before long have six manifesti and 75 ads.
I worked.
I tinkered.
I worked and tinkered some more.
I was happy with what I did long before our Friday meeting. And things went well on Friday.
But one of the reasons things went well was the pressure I put on myself. There was no "timing" on this. No project management breathing down my neck. Or client workshop we had to meet.
Just the idea--the motivating force of agency.
I spent the first 20 years of my career with traffic people who would check in and prod me now and again. The next 20 years I worked with project managers who treated me like I was a project that needed managing.
I think if you looked at the overall arc of the industry, you'd see we were better off because we we're "we want to do it people." Today that modus operandi is gone. We're "we have to do it people." Or "we can win an award people." Not "this is how we help clients and make money people."
If you have to make people do the job they're supposed to do, if you have to remind them, poke them, threaten them and stand over them, something is rotten in the state of your business.
Real efficiency comes from passion and ardor.
As they used to joke, "the beatings will continue until morale improves." That didn't work out.
