Filed under: Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Confidence, Content, Context, Corporate Evil, Cunning, Home
We’ve all been there.
Being promised the world.
Amazing service.
The involvement of the most senior members of the team.
Promises matched by effort.
So you agree and then …
Damp squid.
A cavalcade of unimpressive under-delivery.
From feeling important to feeling an irritant.
Now sometimes that is met with a ‘corrective’ intervention. A chance to get everyone back on track. Though they’re rarely as explosive as the time the account director at Saatchi & Saatchi called in the executives of their newly won Black & Decker business and told them:
“Your account has been in this agency for only a few weeks and it’s already a joke account here. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because you’re acting like a bunch of cunts.”
For the record, that’s apparently a word-for-word articulation of the conversation as captured in the wonderful Chutzpah & Chutzpah. While one of the clients supposedly fell off the end of the armless sofa they were sitting on, apparently the showdown did the trick and Black & Decker went on to become a very successful, award-winning client for them.
Now ad folk and estate agents often run a tight race for who is the least trustworthy …
To be honest, I’ve not met many who were like that, however in terms of false promises and social manipulation, this has to be one of the very best/worst I’ve seen.
Here’s the estate agent pitch …
Sounds good, doesn’t it.
You’re interested. In fact, screw the interest … you’ll just buy it.
It sounds exactly what you want and you know you have to be quick these days.
And the estate agent is so kind and helpful.
Running around getting you all the information you need for the bank.
Brilliant.
Everything is going so well.
As ‘moving in’ day approaches, your excitement rises.
The removal people carefully pack up your house into their lorry and you all drive towards your well presented, detached bungalow near the local golf course.
Then you pull in and you see this.
What. The. Absolute. Fuck.
OK, at least they didn’t say ‘close to ammenities’ in their ad but still …
That motherfucker estate agent.
Also known as a pitch vs reality moment.
[For the record, that house did sell … and for hundreds of thousands of quid. Cancer included]