Firing squad

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you get fired in advertising, all it means is you showed up one day.

Jobs in the ad biz hinge on a number of factors, and often job performance is the least of them. How you get along with A) the creative director B) the client C) the clients' wife D) creative services or any number of other individuals can affect how long your shelf life is at an agency. Decisions that determine your fate at an agency are almost always entirely out of your hands, and can be made based on campaigns you've sold (or not sold), the shirt you're wearing (or not wearing) that day or the color of your eyes. The tag line for this blog says "We didn't invent random." Ad agencies did.

Like many people who make ads that make America buy, I've been laid off a few times in my career (pausing until giggling fit is over for using the word "career"). And I can tell you from experience, it takes a village. It's not as straightforward as it once was. No one says, "You're fired! Collect your things and get out!"

Well, they say the second part, but now they say it in accordance with state labor laws.

Here's an example. I'm not going to name the agency I was working for, Y&R, but I was let go after almost three years there. I'd originally been brought in as a freelancer, but the creative director and I hit it off and he decided he wanted me to stick around. So he offered me more work and less money, and I said, "Where do I sign?"

Fast forward a few years later. I'm in a meeting in Versailles, which was the agency's big conference room. For some reason, ad agencies love to name their conference rooms after cities. Or cars. Or explorers. Or movie characters. We take our creativity where we can find it. I worked at this one shop that just had numbers for their conference rooms. It was a nice change of pace.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

As I'm in this meeting, my creative director pokes his head in the door and says, "Hey Jeff, can I talk to you for a minute?" This is how it always begins.

I walk out of the room with him, and while we're walking he's making uncomfortable small talk about the meeting he pulled me out of. I notice we're going upstairs towards HR. When I ask what's up, he says to the office of the head of HR.

Alright, so I know what's coming, and I said, "Are you kidding me?" To which he said, "It's out of my hands. There was nothing I could do." To which I said, "Really? I thought you were the boss. How about you let me speak to the person in charge?"

I was pissed.

In the office, he sat uncomfortably to the side, not making eye contact - as they always do - while the head of HR told me I was being let go, gave me an end date, paperwork, blah blah blah. I learned shortly thereafter I was one of five people let go that day. I'm sure it was out of their boss' hands as well.

I came back the next day and spoke to both of them about getting more severance. My boss said nothing, and the head of HR said no. But this story does have a happy ending.

Some time later, that head of HR got let go - ironic ain't it? I was talking to a mutual friend, and come to find out the former head of HR had wanted her to ask me if I'd write some copy for a website she was setting up for her post-agency life.

I'm nothing if not a giver, so after a nanosecond of thought, I told my friend I'd like her to relay my two-word answer to the former HR head verbatim.

Since this is a family blog, I won't repeat them here. But they were exactly the two words you think they were.

Dangerous words

According to some estimates, there are over 1,025,029 words in the English language.

But to anyone who works in an agency creative department, you know there are four extremely dangerous ones that should be avoided at all costs.

"What do you think?"

Those four little wolves-in-sheeps'-clothing words have caused more unnecessary frustration, anger and heartache, not to mention destroyed more great advertising, than the other 1,025,025 words combined.

Well, maybe not. But go with me here.

Here’s the thing: the vampire at your doorway at midnight, hungry with fangs bared, can’t come in. He can’t simply cross the threshold and suck the life out of you, even though that’s what he wants to do more than anything. You're safe inside and he's stuck outside.

Unless you invite him in. “What do you think?” is that invitation.

It gives people without jurisdiction, judgment or experience the opening they’re waiting for to – as Albert Brooks said in Broadcast News – lower our standards bit by bit.

Now, not all opinions are unwanted. But you can be sure the people who need to chime in, who have a dog in the race, will do it without being asked. They’re the ones that'll see what you’re trying to do, offer ways to keep it on track and true to your vision and, more often than not, make it better in the process.

Next time you're in an internal review, in the big conference room, and the chairs are filled by people who don't have more than a glancing relationship with the work being presented, do yourself and your career a favor.

Instead of asking "What do you think?", ask something that'll do a lot less damage and might actually put you in everyones' good graces right from the get-go.

Something like, "Are those bagels for everyone?"

After dark

This will be very deja vu-ish (funny, you don't look vu-ish) to my fellow copywriters and art directors.

You've been working for eight weeks on an important presentation to the client. The day of the big meeting finally comes. It's a Wednesday at 4pm. There's no immediate deadline, but this was the day and time everyone was available, so this is when it was scheduled for.

As the meeting goes along, the client laughs at the right places, nods their head and you're thinking how great it's going. Then just as you're all getting ready for Miller time, as you're walking out the door, the CMO asks if they can have a word with the management supe and the creative director.

When they come out of the conference room, the smiles are gone. So are any thoughts of Miller time. The clients you thought loved everything had a little problem with it. They hated everything. And they want to see new work in the morning.

The call goes out - everyone at the agency stay at the agency. Place your dinner order and cancel your plans for the night. You're there until morning, coming up with new ideas for the clients to hopefully like as much as they led you to believe they liked the first ones.

There are so many things wrong with this picture it's hard to know where to start. But I'll start here: What does it say about a client who knows you took a couple months honing to perfection the ideas you just presented, and then asks you for entirely new ones fifteen hours later?

It says they're an asshole.

Anyone who had any idea what it takes to do what you just did would realize it doesn't happen in that short amount of time. They're poking a dog with a stick. Watching you jump through the hoop. They're laughing, and not with you.

The other thing that's wrong with the picture is the agency agreed to do it. Without an ounce of self-respect, dignity or value for their own work, they cut themselves off at the knees and affirm to the asshole client the work they do really has no worth, since you spent months working on it the first time when you could've just come up with it overnight. Like the account leaders just told them you would.

There comes a point, at work, in life, where you have to - and let me quote the bumpersticker here - just say no. When you have to make clear you respect yourself even if they don't. That great thinking takes time. And the fourteen hours from 5pm to 7am is not that time.

I'm not saying you can't come up with something, you can. But at that time of night and level of burnout and exhaustion, when creatives are cracking each other up with bad Christopher Walken impressions, scrounging around for cold pizza and sleeping face down on their keyboards, it won't be anything either of you will be proud of.

Which only lowers their opinion of the agency further. It's a vicious circle.

Still, the same people that agreed to this insane request will be the ones high-fiving each other like overgrown frat boys just for the fact they managed to churn out something that, if there were any justice, would be sitting at the bottom of a birdcage. We've all been there.

I think anyone who knows me would agree that while I'm a joy to work with and for the most part a little social butterfly, I also have a short fuse and don't suffer fools lightly. Another thing they'd tell you is I don't have a problem saying no for the right reasons when everyone above me is saying yes for the wrong ones.

No matter what time of day it is.