It’s “the run-up to Christmas”, which means that the stupid requests from Clients are coming thick (sometimes, so staggeringly thick that “dumb” might be a better descriptor) and fast. There is something about “getting it done before Christmas” that makes Clients feel reassured and in control – the fact that they won’t review the work until mid-January (“the post-Christmas pile-up”) is, of course irrelevant: they want it then, they pay the bills and so there it will be.
Needless to say, this is complemented by their own behaviour of treating any entreaty to review something “as a matter of urgency” as a light-hearted joke on the part of the Agency: a “take it or leave it” indication that their point of view MIGHT be needed at some point in the next couple of weeks, but not to worry unduly about ACTUALLY doing anything.
Oh well: I’m just bitter and angry because they’ve just asked us to prepare a fairly comprehensive review by lunchtime tomorrow (the scale of which makes it explicit that what they’re really saying is “Work all through the night to do this”), while our pleas for them to look at scripts, storyboards, edits, etc fall on entirely deaf ears. I’m flying off to Milan (to spend the night in the A.C. Milan Hotel – which promises much football-themed fun and delivers precisely nothing in the line of “fun”, football or otherwise) where I am going to present some thoughts on a target demographic. As part of the morning’s task, I have been asked to “describe her in such a way that we think we might know her” – which is OK in itself, but actually means “describe a woman with whom I feel familiar, would like and would probably want to marry” from this male team. Detailing the concerns, the insecurities and the injustices that these women experience (and sometimes inflict) may be the most useful job I could do – but they don’t want that, they want a pen-portrait of a woman they feel happy to be selling brands to: a very different thing.
