Budget Kryptonite
At my first agency I quickly realised that those fancy foreign commercials that we wish to emulate, remain just that, a wish (unless the agency is blessed with one of the few really big local brands). The client’s budgets are a reflection of the size of our market and that’s that. So they have to spend accordingly. Radio is cost effective and a preferred option in most cases. During my three years at that first agency, the ratio of radio and television ads I wrote was thus: Radio – Countless, Television – 1.
Daft Kryptonite
There is an in-house joke that goes, “Advertising would be a great job, had it not been for clients.” It is no secret that clients can be demanding, and rightly so, however, there are times roles are not understood. The basic math is that the client hires an agency because the agency is supposed to be the specialist in advertising. The agency’s job is the do creative work and also to ensure that the language is accurate. When this is forgotten, problems arise. Again at the first agency that I worked at, there was a job where the client had to publish a daily schedule for the public to be aware of the days and times that they would be shutting off their service. On the schedule that they sent us, they had “12:00 a.m.” and “12:00 p.m.” My boss informed the client that “12:00 a.m.” and “12:00 p.m.” do not exist. These are median points and the correct expression is “12:00 noon” and “12:00 midnight.” There were days of exchanges between the client and the agency on this point until the client gave the final order, “We paying we money so leave it so!”
Schizophrenic Kryptonite
When the muse comes down, we creative people put down some real magical stuff. We beat our collective chests and roar, “This is a winner!” The client sees it and flushes it down the toilet.
“We don’t get it.”
“The public not going to understand it.”
“This sucks!”
And it’s back to the drawing board with egos in slings. A few months would pass and the client will see a new ad on cable television, they come back and say, “I want an ad that looks like X,Y,Z” not realising that X,Y,Z is very similar to the ad we did earlier on, which they thought was crap.
Tinkering Kryptonite
I am unable to forget the mantra of a client who said, “Never be satisfied.” That is an extreme case, however, in the art room in particular, change is constant. It is common to go through the spectrum doing colour changes, learn typography hands-on through the vast number of font changes, making the logo bigger, too much white space…sigh!
So where is Super Barry after a decade of creative fighting and no pacifying Louis Lane at the side? Bruised.
