The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

My Name’s Robert: Come In My Cupboard And Meet My Skeletons.

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OK … OK … so I can’t delay it any longer, it’s time to lose all my credibility [what there was of it] and answer the questions I’ve been set.

For those who don’t know what I am talking about, may I suggest you click here …

Anyway, before I commit career suicide, I‘d like to give special mention to both Rob Mortimer and Northern Planner for encouraging people NOT to ask questions – well, not to ask me any more than 10 questions so that the evil ‘gems’ that had already been posted stood a greater chance of having to be answered. You clever, vicious bastards.

I have to say that my stupid ‘offer’ was rather popular as according to my blog data, it achieved one of the highest page impressions I’ve ever had … however unfortunately [or fortunately: depending on whose ‘side’ you’re on] it would seem Rob and Northern’s influence is very powerful, because despite me begging for questions, the actual number put forward remained low.

Finally, I’d also like to stop the mummers of me being a ‘cheat’! 

OK, so I was tagged by 4 people [late entry being Luca] which by ‘tagging rules’ means I should post 20 pieces of information about myself – however by ‘evolving’ [ahem] the whole concept [not to mention the fact the people I nominated have basically ignored my requests for more info] I am going to stick with only answering 10 questions and if you don’t like it, you can stick it up your arse and smoke it! [See, the stress of this has driven me bonkers!]

Alright, lets get on with it and look at how many questions actually ‘got through’ the Question Police.

1. How much do you earn? 

2. If you could say one thing to Andy then erase his memory so he won’t kill you, what would it be?

3. What is the most wrong you have ever been about a campaign/planning?

4. Back in 1996, did you sleep with Amber?

5. What is the worst mistake you have ever made in a pitch?

6. Have ever had sex in our office?

7. What I’d like to know is whether you have ever cheated on a girlfriend/wife?

8. Just in case, have you ever fancied a client?

9. Who is the worst boss/co worker you’ve ever had, why did you hate them and at what agency?

10. What single event from your working life are you most disgusted with yourself about?

11. Which client have you hated dealing with the most; both as an organisation and as an individual?

12. What do you love/hate/miss/enjoy the most about your life including what you are most proud and disgusted about achieving?

Now even though I once only got 2% in a maths test, I count TWELVE questions which means [Thank The Lord] I can ignore 2 of them. 

After some consideration, I am going to ‘pass’ on number 1 [Sorry Billy, but I do admire your style] … as well as give a wide berth to number 12 – mainly because there’s a nasty chance I might be ending up working with them again! Eek!

OK … here we go … lets enter the darkest, ugliest pits of my mind and give you voyeuristic gits your fix. [In some areas, I have purposely chosen to NOT highlight names, clients or agencies for reasons of taste /tact / potential legal ramifications]

1. If you could say one thing to Andy then erase his memory before he kills you, what would it be?

I slept with his sister. [He actually knows about this but quickly consigned it to the deepest, darkest part of his mind so that he wouldn’t murder me]

2. What is the most wrong you have ever been about a campaign/planning?

We pitched for SINGER Sewing Machines – a famous brand that was seeing huge sales decline over the last few years – and their newly appointed Marketing Director [a very funky and ambitious individual] mandated we had to come back with something fresh, interesting and differentiated from the category.

So after weeks of going through data and research [as well as quite a few ’tissue meetings’ with the client] we decided upon a rather pragmatic strategy of targeting the Transsexual / Gay & Lesbian Community. [The line was ‘Makes Clothes Fit For A Queen’]

Zoom forward a few weeks to the day of the pitch.

As we walk in, the first thing we are told is that the Marketing Director is ‘no more’.

Sacked!

Obviously that worried us but we were reassured the company backed the process and was very interested to hear/see what we had come up with.

Within seconds of starting the meeting, I knew we were doomed.

Their committee were all about 100 years old and still living in Victorian times [they thought my Frank Sidebottom T-shirt was a characature of the famous ukulele playing George Formby] so as we hurtled towards the unveiling of our grand strategy, I was crapping my pants in fear!

To cut a short story even shorter, the moment we told them who we felt could unlock their sales potential, they went into a blind fury and ordered us to leave …  shouting that we didn’t understand them, their consumer, their heritage or their values.  

To be fair, they were probably right … but it all made sense at the time.  [PS: Because we had been chucked out before we were able to show them any of the work … the creative who did the campaign went on for weeks that he could have saved the pitch if he’d been allowed to show some of the ads. Fool!]

3. Back in 1996, did you sleep with Amber?

Yes. Twice.

4. What is the worst mistake you have ever made in a pitch?

I was 22 … young, eager and about to meet my first seriously important potential client.

The Marketing Head of a major car manufacturer was doing a ‘morale tour’ of the UK and he said it would be better if I met him at one of the big dealerships he was visiting early in the morning.

Despite it being quite a distance, I got to the location with abit of time to spare … however, because it was early, I couldn’t get in via the main doors so walked around the back of the complex. 

As I turned the corner, I saw one of their guard dogs whining to be let in [no doubt to get warm as it was bloody freezing] so being a nice man, I opened the door for him and in he trotted.

Anyway, I met the client and he led me into a side office where we then talked about the campaign I/we wanted him to buy.

A few minutes later, we heard tremendous noises coming from an office down the hall and while I pressed on with the presentation, my potential client [not a man to mess with] shouted out for someone to give him an explanation as to what was going on.

In walks this weedy looking bloke who looked seriously ruffled.

“WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING OUT THERE?” asked the Marketing head [in a tone-of-voice that implied the wrong answer would result in dismissal]

“Errrrrm …” the young man replies, “… some ferocious dog has got in the office and is ripping up all our client files.”

It was at that exact moment that I looked around for a gun to shoot myself with.  I just knew it had to be the dog I had let in earlier … and so when the Marketing Director demanded to know how some dog had got into the premises, I had to come clean [if only for the fact I’d probably been caught on CCTV] and rather unsurprisingly, I was ‘advised’ to leave and never come back.

Thank God my boss thought it was all so ridiculous [till the invoice came for damages] he let me off with nothing more than a stern bollocking [which didn’t bother me as I’d had alot of those].

Oh, and then there was the time Andy replaced a laptop I was taking to a client meeting [this is back in the days when a laptop was a seriously rare piece of kit] with his sisters ‘My Petite Typewriter’ and a couple of books.

I can still see it now … opening the bag and instead of seeing a bulky laptop, there’s a bright blue and yellow typewriter in its place. I managed to bluff the meeting [obviously without the typewriter] but I went fucking mental when I got back to the agency.

5. Have ever had sex in our office?

Not in our office, but I have in other agencies. Let me clarify that. I have had the odd bit of ‘sex’ but only in offices of agencies I was working with at the time.

6. What I’d like to know is whether you have ever cheated on a girlfriend/wife?

No.

7. Just in case, have you ever fancied a client?

Abso-bloody-lutely.  Who?  Quite a few actually, haha!

8. Who is the worst boss/co worker you’ve ever had, why did you hate them and at what agency?

It’s not an agency situation …. but without doubt, it’s the worst boss I’ve ever had.

Years ago, I was a session guitarist and was asked to play on the next single of one-hit-wonder ‘Jennifer Rush [The Power Of Love] 

Within seconds of me starting to play, she screamed through the talkback, that I was overwhelming her vocals. 

I pointed out I was actually doing the guitar solo, but she’d already made her mind up she hated me because within a few seconds – the studio door burst open, a hot cup of tea was thrown over me and one of my guitars was kicked over.

I naturally went abit mental and asked what the fuck was going on – to which she stormed out, only to be replaced by her manager who insisted I leave [for humiliating the star] and not expect payment.

To this day – if I ever hear anything from that bitch [which, lets be honest, is not very often] I tense up and start grinding my teeth.

Interms of agencyland … worst place I ever worked was PRINCIPALS in Australia. 

It wasn’t that they were a bad agency [infact they were/are very highly regarded] it’s just they were filled with conservative [and a couple of no-right-to-be arrogant] people who wanted to do conservative work for conservative clients using conservative channels. 

Oh, and I did get rather ‘famous’ [read: infamous] for sending out an email questioning the moral compass of an ex-CEO of mine who had happily sat back and watched good, decent people be retrenched while he was [allegedly] ripping off the company for hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. 

The email came to his attention – but because what I had written was true [it had many accusations of bad practice] … and he’d just started a new job … he quite sensibly decided to let it all go away. [My Dad would have been proud but it was abit hairy for a while and I did go and see a libel lawyer – which one of my clients paid for because they knew I was in the right!]

9. What single event from your working life are you most disgusted with yourself about?

OK this is absolutely disgraceful … and I should point out that I was a passive participant as well as very young and very new to the industry.

Basically I went with an AD and a Creative [who will definitely remain nameless] to a meeting where we new the work we were about to present was going to be right-royally trashed.  What made it worse was that we knew it deserved to be trashed because we had buggered about for the week rather than get on with what we had to do.

As we were rather early, we sat outside the clients offices and planned our ‘argument’ for why the creative wasn’t going to be ‘quite right’ when someone mentioned how bollocked we were going to get. [He was right, this was like the 5th round of creative – and because they were horrible and kept changing their minds – our passion for them was growing weaker by the minute]

Anyway, just like those ‘Agony Aunt’ letters where someone say’s they went from talking to their partners brother/sister to screwing them [and they don’t know how it happened] … I found myself in a phonebox [this is before mobiles] listening to one of my colleagues put on an Irish accent [!?], claiming there was a bomb in the clients office. In seconds we heard an alarm go off and them saw hundreds of people streaming out of the building.

Of course the meeting got postponed [they were running out as we ‘pretended’ to be walking in] … and whilst it meant we got another week to make amends for the work we’d not done [which they still didn’t like] we all felt unbelievable guilt and disgust and vowed to never mention this terrible, dark, outrageous act again.

Despite this being almost 20 years ago, the thought of it still makes me feel sick and while I’ve not spoken to the other guys involved for at least a decade, I know they will feel the same. Infact, both of them left advertising soon after the ‘event’ and went to work in totally different industries. I’m not surprised … and I am just devastated that I didn’t put a stop to their daft idea when I had the chance. Sure, no one got hurt … but it was a bloody terrible thing to do.

10. What do you love/hate/miss/enjoy the most about your life including what you are most proud and disgusted about achieving?

Hmmmmn, maybe I should have counted this as 6 individual questions!

OK …

LOVE: A whole load of things … that my parents were bloody wonderful and believed and encouraged me in all I wanted to do. [Even when it was stupid!] That I have top friends. That I found Jill.  That I get paid to travel, meet people, use my head and work with talented souls. That I had the pleasure of working [albeit for a rather short time] with Michael Moore, Paul Britton and a couple of guys from VIZ. That I have met some amazing people – some for hours, some for years – who had a massive, positive influence in me ending up on the path I’m on. Helping others get ahead. [I know that sounds ‘Miss Worldish’, but it’s true because I know how lucky I am that some people believed in me when others didn’t/wouldn’t, so I try and do the same for others wherever and whenever  I can … people who want to get into the industry, people already within the industry or certain charitable organisations].Playing and listening to music. There’s lots of things really … I’m not always cynical.

HATE: That some people embrace mediocrity with a passion that should be made illegal and that others think themselves more highly than the masses based purely on their income level or quality of education.

MISS: My Dad [who died in ’99] and then my Mum [who is in England] and my nearest, dearest mates [who are in England, Australia and America].

ENJOY: Film [Especially Total Crap Movies, Doco’s & UK Television Series], Being With Mates, Odd Bit Of Gaming, Debating, Eating, Sleeping, Not Drinking Alcohol, Meeting The Weird And The Wonderful, Watching Forest. [Well, only when they are winning!] Actually, most of these things I LOVE doing, rather than enjoy doing, but I’m hoping no one is going to be too pedantic.

PROUD: That I live by what I believe in and that I’ve never smoked or taken drugs.

DISGUSTED: Of what I find funny – like the situation I detailed here – and the fact that I once looked like this [I’m the one on the far left!]

 

[There’s probably a lot of other things I could have talked about for question 12 … but my focus was so much on questions 1-9, that maybe my brain wasn’t working as effectively as it could/should. Sorry.]

There you go … that’s it … my cupboard is ‘bare’ so I hope you’re all happy now! 

Oh and to Mike who said this whole sorry episode could have a Cathartic effect on me. You were wrong, hahaha!

It’s not that bad really is it?  OK – there’s a few things that probably were best kept to myself [but I am only doing what I promised] but the fact of the matter is I’m just not interesting enough to cause huge dramas.

Anyway, if anyone who reads this blog still isn’t too disgusted to associate with me, then I may see you later – that is if I’ve not been ‘bumped off’ by certain individuals mentioned above, ha!

 Me. Looking deservedly ‘sheepish’.

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