Being told you've done something wrong is never fun. In fact, more often than not, it's downright depreciating and embaressing.
Being told you've done something wrong when you're presenting someone elses work and the person you present it to thinks it's your own is not only depreciating and embaressing, it's incredibly infuriating, insulting, degrading and has the ability to piss you off in new found ways you never thought existed. Especially when you're in a position where you can't say otherwise.
So there I was. Yesterday, to be precise. Chilling at my desk with not too many tidbits of work on my plate when my traffic person (so called because he/she coordinates the 'traffic' of work going to and fro from the servicing department to the creatives) comes over saying that I'm needed on a job which is, apparently, a 'no-brainer'.
"All you have to do is present the stuff. All the work's being done from Singapore."
I'm already wary. Nobody's telling me what the product is, what it's about, what's the strategic brief, nothing. And this is a pitch.
I manage to get a call from Singapore where the person on the other end who's come up with this stuff, some multi-award winning creative director, 'briefs' me. Understand me when I say I'm using this term incredibly fucking loosely.
The storyboards are faxed over and as I look through them and listen to the explanations I can already spot a bazillion flaws in them. After the phone call I ask my traffic person whether these ideas have been bought internally. She says yes. Fine, then.
I go through the run-through with the rest of the 'team': all heads of their respective departments. I am but a lowly junior copywriter, but I'm the only one available, and if everyone else is fine with the work (which I, by this point, think is worth less than nothing and am of the firm belief the person who did these ads wouldn't even be able to sell tit-mags to pimply teenage boys) then maybe they know something I don't. I had just come off another pitch where I thought the overall ideas and concepts were passable at best but everyone was happy and the client was, apparently, in awe. Maybe this was the case with this pitch too.
Fat fucking chance. If there's anything this has taught me, it's to trust my instincts.
I brought up my concerns, but it didn't seem like a problem to them. Fine.
This morning I presented these boards to the Chief Operating Officer. This man has seen me in a couple of pitches before and so far my (creative) reputation with this man has been pretty clean. But the dude intimidates me. And when I've got something I didn't do and don't even believe will work, it's a bit tough to sell, to put it lightly.
He politely told me where to stick it.
One of the ads is usable. The other two are about as effective as horse semen on a cockroach.
And, as I expected, I got whacked for it.
Whilst the blame wasn't put solely on me, the fact that I'm the only guy representing the creatives meant there really wasn't anyone else to talk to about how crap it was.
And, to top it all off, in retrospect I should have voiced my opinion of the ads and talked about how I wasn't happy about them and that it was a serious concern. That's my bad.
But, leaving that meeting, the feeling of fucking anger I felt was incomparable. I was ready, right then and there, to tender my resignation because I have better and more productive things to do with my day.
Then came the kicker. I called up the hot shots in Singapore (who, I might add, have less clients than a 2 cent whore with no legs and a moustache) and told them, as politely as I could, about the situation and how another ad is needed to replace the two worthless scraps of fecal matter that hang from the ass crack hairs of there foetal excuse for a concept.
They, in turn, defended the ads with all their might, stating that they "don't see what the problem is", the concerns are "unwarranted" and they feel it "unfair to have to put in more work".
I put down the phone politely before yelling obscenities at the poor machine, much to the shock of the others in the office.
Thankfully, by then my superior was back and I told him of the problems. He's gonna be the one that has to end up presenting this worthless shit to the client (if he couldn't make it I was back-up, hence my involvement). He took one look at the work and was prepared to vomit blood. I then told him what happened and what the multi award winning creative directors from Singapore told me. I deduced that either
(a) they truly believed in their work (*ring!* hello? Ah, it's your village, they say their idiots are missing),
(b) they have no intention to work on this project anymore than they already have (which is weird considering it's their fucking JOB) or
(c) they believe that my requests and point of view is of no interest to them for I am but a lowly junior copywriter whereas they are decorated award winning creative directors (and they probably won the awards by stealing ideas from lowly juniors).
My superior reckons its (c).
So now we at Malaysia have to fix up their stinking turd of an ad, we have to make it all up and we have until tomorrow.
I find it particularly ironic that the product is for one of those baby milk powders that supposedly makes your child more intelligent and creative and yet the people in charge with making these ads have the intelligence of a fart and the creativity of a nose hair.
If it wasn't for the fact that I have a few friends in Singapore I'd bomb the place just to make sure those fucktards don't breed.
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