So I come into work and find an email from Sir Martin Sorell’s PA telling me he wants a video conference with me at 4pm.
Within seconds, I get sent another email telling me to forget the video conference, he wants to see me face to face – and that details will follow shortly.
Now given the last time I met ‘Corporate Ad God’, I became a social leper for asking him what he spends his millions on, so I was rather confused as to why he’d want to see me again, let alone talk to me.
OK, so I do alot of work for him via his companies … but I/we pride ourselves on being a totally independent force from his billions of companies… so the only logical reason he would want to talk is …
1. I am to be sued.
2. My deal is to be finished.
3. WPP want to hire me. [unlikely as I‘m deemed ‘Corporately Dangerous’, haha!]
4. One of my/our clients is on WPP’s Global ‘radar‘. [more unlikely, except maybe Virgin]
5. It was all some big mistake.
And while options 1, 2 and 5 were the most likely candidates, I couldn’t stand not knowing what was going on till I was officially ’summoned’ so I did what any intimidated person does – I wrote a whimpering email to his lovely PA, asking what the hell was going on.
It took a mindfucking 8 hours before I got a reply – because of time differences, not because she’s inefficient – and in that time, I had spoken to clients, ex-clients, potential clients, my partners, WPP CEO’s, MD’s and PA’s [can you see my paranoia?!] to see if anyone could shed some light on what was going on and after my chats, I deduced that the only options it could be were numbers 1 and 5 … and given I had done nothing wrong, the smart money was on it all being some sort of mistake.
Finally I got a reply and in the biggest anti-climax since the movie ‘Titanic’, it was confirmed that she had made a mistake and had actually meant to email a guy called ‘Campbell Robert’.
Now as much as this came as some sort of relief, I also felt a bit gutted. Deep, deep down inside, I was hoping Sir Martin actually wanted to talk to me – that I had somehow found myself in the superleague but alas, it was not meant to be. So I wrote to his PA to say thanks for the confirmation and that I didn’t know whether to be happy or sad.
Mere seconds later I got another email that simply said ….
“Given I know what the meeting is about, you should be very, very happy indeed”
So while all this confirms I am a second division player in the league of Advertising, it also means I am free from ever getting slaughtered by the smallest big-man in advertising [like poor Campbell Robert probably is being at this moment] so for that alone, I raise a glass to mediocrity – probably the first and only time I’ve been an advocate of it.