The big battle within agencies today is not over who gets the big Super Bowl assignment, or who gets to go to Cannes, or who gets to run a big group. It's not even about who gets the pay raises we're told by management don't exist anymore. (Though the heads of the holding companies seem to enjoy annual double digit increases.)
No, the big fight in agencies is for time in conference rooms.
In fact, newly architectured agencies today boast about how many conference rooms they have, only to find when they actually move in that they don't have nearly enough.
Conference rooms today are like lots closest to Sutter's Mill during the California Gold Rush. They're all that matters.
I know how to solve the dearth.
Call conference rooms what they should be called.
Complication rooms.
It's there, after all, that eleven people come together to complicate something that you worked hard to make simple.
It's there the advertising technocrats come up with esoterica that sucks the soul out of simplicity.
It's there every minor discipline gets equal voice.
And overthink becomes overwhelming.
You want to do good work?
Stay out of conference rooms.
2 comments:
I second this. Motion carried.
Something a wise ad man once told me, "A meeting isn't where work gets done. It's where work gets undone."
So true. So face-stabbingly, soul-crushingly true.
Danny Baker (UK radio broadcasting legend) said, on leaving the BBC, "there are now more meeting rooms than studios. That says a lot."
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