the parker challenge nine months later

I so totally got called out it’s like I was pwned in a virtual call-out-a-palooza or something.

And it hurt. Because that’s what being pwned does to a person.

It hurts them.

It particularly hurt because I got called out in a post over at Tribble Ad Agency and that post was from the end of January. That’s right. Some nine months ago.

And in said post, I was tagged to write seven facts about myself if, to quote the author, “he could ever get me to post again.” It’s the Parker Challenge. And I was totally a part of it. Ish.

It may be late, but if we call the pub for an extension and push print production hard enough, I have no doubt that they’ll be able to fit my revised copy into a keyline, get final client approval and ship it out before it all goes to press. Seriously. I do it all the time and it’s always worked.

Though I do admit that this is a record for tardiness.

1. I would rather be no other place in the entire world in June than in Minneapolis.

2. I think that social media shiny baubles like Twitter, Facebook, etc are tactics, not a strategy.

3. I have reprints of the first print ads that I ever did framed and hung up on a wall. They are only six years old but feel as outdated Kerri Martin.

4. Bob Garfield remains among the most self-important blowhards I have had the pleasure of disliking. If it is true that you can judge a man by his enemies, he just went up in my estimation.

5. I may have told one person about my secret identity…and I shouldn’t have. She, possibly in cahoots with her friends, continually comment negatively on my blog. It’s kind of sad. But then again, blogging about advertising is also kind of sad, making it difficult to determine who wins this round.

6. Betty Draper is totally on my list.

7. If you want to order me a drink at the bar, please make it a vodka on the rocks with three olives.

Since I am so late to the game, I’m not going to tag any other bloggers…at least not for the next nine months until I get around to it.

there are times when i hate my job

I love my job. At least theoretically, and by that I mean that when I logically think about what kind of job I could get that would allow me the creative freedom, ability to do fun work, opportunity to drink as much in a sanctioned work event, turn up to work dressed like a bum and play putt-putt in the office I can’t think of anything that is legal. So theoretically, because there is nothing comparable, I love my job.

But it can be fucking painful at times.

Currently, I am working on a project that is of interest to both our ECD and our CD (though, at a larger agency, he is more the equivalent of a GCD) Bozo the Clown…and the two of them passionately disagree with each other on a number of fundamental issues.

They know that they deeply disagree. They joke about their competing visions. They each spend time during creative reviews to separately tell me to do things that, when I have a creative review with the other, are immediately contradicted. I have been waffling between the two visions with no middle ground in sight that would please both and not be hacky for over two weeks.

I want to shoot myself in the face.

keep this from the clio judges

By purest coincidence, Bozo the Clown, the lead CD at the House of Biz, and I were walking into the office together this morning. Below is a transcript of the advertising related part of the conversation:

Bozo: I’m just like you, in the morning I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is, once they’re on, I shit gold Clios.

Me: You shit Clios when your pants are on?

Bozo: Don’t tell the judging committee.

the power150 doesn’t like me and i don’t care

AdAge, the trade magazine with a happy knack for getting under my skin, has a blog ranking system, the Power 150. Once your blog is considered for this list that is so totally awesome and reliable that it lists Copyblogger as the third best media and marketing blog out there, it is ranked on criteria like inbound links and alexa traffic rate and the list creator’s personal ranking.

I know that the majority of people who come to my blog are here because they were looking for a certain picture of the Official Daily Biz Wishful Thinking Girlfriend and star of NBC’s The Office Jenna Fischer…and I know that traffic like that shouldn’t help my ranking. But…

1. There are still people (more than one figure, less than five figures of daily unique visitors) who read this blog for its actual content. Why, I do not know.

2. I can’t even get on the consideration list.

Apparently, all one has to do to get their blog into consideration for the list is to ask…and I say apparently because despite multiple emails to the guys who run it, I still haven’t gotten so much as a note back.

Now, people tell me that the guys are good guys but, I ask, what’s with not returning all those emails?

Because in the Politeness 101 class I had to take after calling my CD “Bozo the Clown” and then getting outed and having to atone for it, I learned that not returning multiple emails in even a perfunctory way is really pretty dickish.

I know that I may have posted once or twice about how I think that Bob Garfield is past his best and may have had a couple of posts on a resurgent Adweek hauling in AdAge and, yes, I may have even said that at this point if I get asked to be on the list I will “get all Groucho Marx on them about not wanting to be in a club that will have me.”

I like to think that I am blackballed which, if it is the case, makes this the Pirate Radio of blogs: hated by a major trade mag, reviled by the most famous ad critic in the world and steadfast in its refusal to place ads on the site because, dammit, it’s all about raw and authentic notes from the advertising underground.

With that, I will steal a classicly tasteless tagline from Pirate Radio in LA to sign off: The Daily (Ad) Biz – not as much fun as sex, but safer.

And this blog doesn’t belong in the Power150?

office pep talks will pump you up

There is a big presentation today here at the House of Biz and nervous tension is high as we wait for the actual presentation to commence.

Luckily, we had a nice little pep talk from Bozo the Clown, the lead CD here at the agency, who informed us that we had all worked hard, had great work and that if we gave it 110% in the presentation we would bring it home. Boilerplate stuff. But since it is so boilerplate, what if the other agencies are also going to give 110%? We won’t have that 10% edge!

So I suggested that perhaps we give 111%…and it’s odds even that Bozo the Clown kills me in my sleep tonight.

To really get the adrenaline pumping I have been watching old Nike commercials:

But even these pose a bit of an issue because if we leave nothing but are expected to have leave-behinds and…oh wait, I get it.

Go team.

ad agencies just wanna have fun

Our office is in a building with other companies, but on our floor three other companies share a bathroom with us. It’s kind of weird to have to walk by the receptionist and out of the office every time…but you do what you gotta do.

The bathroom has no windows and, when the lights are off, is the darkest room I have ever been in.

You may be asking yourself, “self, why was he in the bathroom without the lights on?” That is a good question. I didn’t plan to. Instead, Bozo the Clown, the lead CD at my agency, thought that it would be funny to lay in wait for people and turn the lights off on them when they went in. It is pretty funny actually (in a, this-would-have-been-better-if-I-did-it-to-my-friends-in-college-why-didn’t-I-think-about-it-then kind of way).

As long as it’s not you in there when the lights go out.

The main issue is the collateral damage – the people from other companies who are caught in the crossfire. They are always upset when the lights go off and they are stuck in the dark. And now they are fighting back.

I give it until New Year’s before the building management has those lights on a motion sensor.

the website project drags on

We are still working on this new agency website thing, though hopefully not too much longer. We plan to launch for the first of the year. Which is not a moment too soon.

If it happens.

I am currently on the third iteration of writing this website and Bozo the Clown has now tasked me with making the copy more serious, more business-like (a week after telling me that we needed to show off our personality a little more…sigh). That is okay, I guess, though it’s not really the personality of this agency. Also, I worry that writing the site so it is too business-like will mean that it just becomes another website full of meaningless marketing generalities.

There are enough of those around. And, to paraphrase Adomatica, “one should hire agencies who refuse glittering generalities—who are skeptical of assumption, hyperbole and preconception.”

And have a little personality.

Like the website for Toy, which I have always liked for its simplicity, ease of use and engaging copy that conveys the company’s personality without being silly:

Too bad Toy’s website is so hard to find through a search engine…

already out for the holiday

I spent Saturday traveling, finally off on vacation. It has been a while since the last one, so it feels richly deserved and richly rewarding. I will continue to post during my time off, though perhaps not with the same undercurrent of frustration and pent up aggression.

I will be out of the office, so no word from Bozo the Clown (one hopes at least)…however, I will be with my brother and that is always good for a laugh or two because he just says it like it is. It’s not that he doesn’t realize that tact is sometimes called for, it’s that he doesn’t particularly care.

He reminds me a lot of Peter Kay in this classic ad for John Smith’s:

To all readers, I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday.

pumped for a weekend of work

It’s yet another weekend in the office for me, and to pump myself up I have been watching the classic Starbucks ad from Fallon:

Bozo the Clown has asked me to revisit our plan for our new company website, not to take account of things like search engine optimization or other web 2.0-type isses that I have been raising over the past few weeks, but because he and our ECD have decided that we need to change the copy. A lot.

Oh, and the design, too. And they would like to see it all next week even though they already approved it. Last Tuesday.

“One day I just might becooome…disgruntled enough to leave…”

bozo strikes again

I was in my client’s office this morning, working out of an empty cube between meetings when I get an email from Bozo the Clown.

It contains a link that I don’t read too closely, but it’s pretty innocuous and, anyway, he knows that I am in the client’s office and he’s the lead CD at the agency so I figure that I better take a look. I click the link.

Up pops a movie of three guys in a daisy chain. I am at a cubicle at a client’s office ready at any minute to head into a meeting, and there is hard core gay porn on my computer screen.

And it’s one of those links that, when you try and close it, just keeps giving you cascading pop-up windows. I force quit just about every operation and program known to man and barely avoided being caught by the impossibly nice, white-haired assistant to the CMO.

W…T…F…?