Too Many Cocks
Have you ever noticed how often things at work turn out differently to what was generally expected?
Not just differently, but pretty much the exact opposite to what many people thought was going to happen?
It never ceases to amaze me how many times the people involved in a job, with all their expertise and experience, get it 100% completely fucking wrong.
I recall a situation where I was in one of several creative teams involved in a pitch. We received the initial briefing, did some work based on it and waited for the feedback. Once the CD had thrashed it out with the MD and the account guy who had been on the account for over a decade, we went again with a slightly different twist to the brief. Then the ‘improved’ scripts went to the client for a tissue meeting. A few days later the feedback, filtered through the head of planning and her deputy, was given to us and a route was chosen.
A briefing route, that is. We were then told to write to one of the ideas (which to my mind made not one molecule of fucking sense), which we duly did, repeating the above paragraph to get another big chunk of client feedback.
We did weekends and late nights, working on nothing but this account for weeks, getting steers from all the agency personnel who believed they had the exact right answer and had enjoyed over twenty separate contacts with the client along the lines of ‘Is this right?’ ‘Not quite. Try it a bit more like this.’
So at the end of it all, my office happened to be next door to the one where the highly-paid agency top brass were having a conference call with the client. All I could hear was the telephone voice telling the people in the room that they were miles away from what was wanted and required. He sounded exasperated and amazed.
I saw that shitslide coming a mile off.
We might as well have sent the client a pint of piss for all the good it would have done us.
And yet, at so many stages, people argued for their way of thinking because they were certain they were right.
But they were wrong (the client was not, in this instance, being a dick. The fault was definitely with the agency).
It had happened before and has happened since.
For a communications industry, we can be really poor at listening.
Too many people are shouting to be heard, trying to give their POV some significance to the detriment of the project.
I’m not saying there’s anything that can be done about it, other than, perhaps, shooting all the dildoes in the industry.
But next time it looks like it’s going to turn out badly, don’t be surprised when it does.
The people who claim to know are often the stupidest tits in the room.