Mr. Rabinowitz, Chairman of Rabinowitz, Inc., worth hundreds of millions of dollars meets a young chippie all of 22-years old. He can think of nothing but this beautiful young thing. Finally, he asks her out to dinner and she says yes.
The chippie orders the most expensive of everything.
Shrimp cocktail.
A fabulous salad.
A 12-lb. lobster smothered in Chateau-Briand smothered in veal chops.
A champagne from the early '70s.
Crepes Suzette for dessert.
Finally, Rabinowitz can't stand it any more.
"Tell me, young lady," he says, "your mother cooks for you like this?"
She looks at him and says, "No. But my mother isn't trying to fuck me."
OK, but there's an advertising point here, as there usually is. As an industry we are Rabinowitz. And clients are the winsome little things we are too often trying to fuck.
So, we go into new business and deliver thinking for free (not only free, but more often than not our new business thinking is cursory at best, though of course we'd never say to a client, 'we've had six weeks to think about your business here are some preliminary thoughts.' nope, we gallop ahead and assert we have insights.) We shoot, we score, we edit. All for free. Why would we do any of that if we hadn't figured out that there's a nice juicy fuck at the end of the process.
The first agency I worked at held status meetings for our biggest client once a month in our board room. The client always wanted to visit us, since we had breakfast and coffee galore.
ReplyDeleteAt some point, the client coordinator, no less, would call up the evening before and put in his breakfast order. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.
I suppose there was a big orgy of a fuck when the cheques came in, but it still felt shallow, insulting and a little humiliating. Kinda like waking up the morning after and turning over to meet the person you spend $50 in drinks on.