Billionaires paying you = good.
I didn't go to the meeting. My ex-boss, Steve Simpson went. Ostensibly because the billionaire is quirky as didn't want too many people in the room. I didn't really care, but truth be told (which it seldom is) account people have as many reasons to knock creatives out of a meeting as they do to add account people to the same meeting. Generally speaking, they're uncomfortable with people who aren't scripted. Which, also generally speaking, is people with an actual pulse.
In doing the work for the meeting--the thing I really care about--I added a headline to the mix at pretty much the last minute. It was one of those "perfect" ones. Just teetering on the edge of legal and inscrutable. I can't share it here because the work is still being made.
Because I wrote the line probably 36 hours before the meeting, I never even presented it. I just sent it to the super-talented designer/art director and [voila] it appeared in the deck.
Immediately I started getting text messages.
"Can we say that?"
"Will so-and-so sue us?"
"I'm not sure about..."
It made people nervous. And we had enough work without this line and didn't really need it. But like I said, it was perfect. So rather than respond to the tsunami and edamame of worries, I just ignored everyone. Their frenzy eventually shifted to something else more important. Like should we center page numbers in the deck or put them in the right-hand corner.
Tuesday was the meeting. And late Tuesday afternoon, the eight people who went zoomed me in to tell me how the meeting went. They all had that "my horse just paid 17-1" gushy enthusiasm. That post meeting elation. Like getting the last bagel left behind in an agency.
The sternest of the group, who in about three weeks I could get to break her granite demeanor but once, was the gushiest. I'll call her "P."
"You know that ad you wrote? "C," the client couldn't stop laughing. He LOL'd."
I really did say nothing, in sharp contrast to my usual "I told you so" proclivities.
One thing I've noticed through the years is how nervous the world is. Maybe because I'm no longer in the belly of the Madison Avenue beast, I'm more aware of some of the warning signs of horrors of the modern workplace.
When zoom calls are meted out in 25 minute increments, when people arrive a little late and out of breath, when one-third of the words exchanged are "I'm gonna have to drop off after 20 minutes," you know the places you're working with and the people too have a troubled pathology.
They've bought into the notion that the work we do is grave and serious. They've bought into the notion of their own importance. That meetings and the endless lip-flapping around work actually works and makes work better.
They've bought into the notion that somehow laughter and human emotion and reactions run counter to productivity because they've stolen time from what most corporate entities do best, which is worry.
When I have a client and it's more complicated than a moon landing to get them all together to take a look at my work, I know there's a problem.
The problem is this: all people really want from an ad is an idea, something interesting, or a laugh. They'll love you forever if you give them a joke they can share.
We take meetings as if we're stuck inside a boiling cauldron. We look for laughter through a thick slab of seriousness and worry that it will find us.
Get over yourself.
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* Feedback I once heard from Steve Hayden, reviewing a cut.
Thankfully, not one of mine.
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