THE FIRST WEEK BACK AT WORK

OMG! Sooooo hate being back at the agency – or the Aspergers Society as Siobhan calls it. CEO is still on hols so the rest of the management team think this is the ideal moment to pretend that they’re in charge of the agency. As if! Every day MD, ECD, Head of Social Interaction, and Head of Strategy sit for hours on end at this gay round table in the corner of the agency in order to “navigate our road map to success.” I call it the Circle of Douche. Basically, not only do they not invite me to sit in on any of their useless discussions (let’s face it, without my account the agency would be like our receptionist at the Christmas party - on its knees!) but more importantly I’m the only suit in this agency who actually “gets” creative and understands what the whole “Gen Y social media vortex of confusion” is all about. The sickest joke is the fact that three of them are blow-ins who’ve only been in Oz for a few months, so… hello?? One’s Welsh or whateva and you can’t understand what he says coz it sounds like he’s trying to regurgitate his tongue, one’s Brazilian who thinks thongs are to stick up your bum and the other’s some pommy from one of those rainy communist towns full of striking northerners whoooo…. speeeeaak… reeeeaaaalllyyy… slooooowwlyyy… like they’ve spent way too long down the coal mines and got oxygen deprivation. No wonder the Iron Lady fired them all. Such a cool film. I saw it twice over Chrissy! My feral half brother Josh thinks Meryl Thatcher is “really hot” and now he’s stuck a poster of her up directly above his bed. (“In the line of fire”, as Mum says.) Mel Tankard Rice got the flick and now she’s in the bin. Anyway, the Circle of Douche came up with this slogan for the new year and have decided that this is our “year of decision and delivery” and we’re gonna make major creative decisions and deliver them in time for the awards shows. When I said that wasn’t original coz that’s the ALP slogan from last year ECD just looked at me blankly and later I heard him asking Siobhan if ALP was the name of an ad agency. Plus when I pointed out that last year we spent over thirty thousand ‘house’ hours on some random idea that was supposed to be this amazing PR/social media event but was totes a waste of the client’s budget and stuffed up all our proper jobs and did nothing whatsoever for sales and of course won nothing at ADMA or any other local award shows ECD went ballistic and started ranting how it won big at the Glasgow Originality and Novelty Art Direction awards (the GONADS). So then I pointed out that winning some random statue that looked like a pair of sheep’s testicles that he got all his mates back home in Scotland to vote for wasn’t exactly an encouraging start to the year. ECD stormed out of the meeting and next thing I get hauled up by HR and get an official bollocking and have to go for an Attitude Re-alignment Session with ECD. Or ARS, as it’s known. All in the first week back!

WINNING!!

OMG! Sooooo embarrassing! We announced the winner of our online competition yesterday for the Tropicalilly Range Promotion and it was ME!! I couldn’t believe it, because I haven’t really paid much attention to the competition and I didn’t really do many of the clues myself coz it means wasting hours on fb and twitter and basically I couldn’t be bothered and anyway I can never understand the kryptonic questions or work out the stupid answers. Fortunately, there’s this nerdy feral whose our Head of Contextual Content and Ideas Creation (we just call him Head of Con) and he keeps asking me to do him all these favours like getting my Mum to get everyone at Yagoona Texan Poker Night to “like” our clients fb home pages, coz it helps him get our unique user numbers up, which is what the Client wants. In return Nerdy helps me out with solving the clues, which, after all, he’s pretty good at seeing as he wrote most of them in the first place. I thought he was joking the other day when he said “Hey Inga, wouldn’t it be awesome if you and me were joint winners and got to spend a week together on a tropical island? We’d have to share a bed!” Everybody in the creative department burst out laughing (except the random digital ones who all work with their headphones on) but I thought it was a really creepy comment seeing as how he’s just returned from his honeymoon in some fierce James Bond castle on a lake in Italy and also coz his new wife used to be one of my BFF’s (until she got hammered one night and told me she thought I had chubby fingers – as if!!) Anyway, talk about psychic! That’s exactly what happened! Nerdy and I are joint winners and are heading off to spend a week together in a private hideaway beach resort somewhere on a secret island in the Whitsundays! His new wifey’s gone absolutely mental and apparently she threw this massive tantrum and chucked his entire Collector's Edition of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in the recycling bin, which he’s furious about coz it was personally signed by Todd Howard’s Animation Assistant but now its going to be melted down and turned into something else altogether. Everyone in the agency started whining about how the whole competition had been rigged, which is soooo stupid coz if any of them had had any brains whatsoever they’d have done exactly what I did. After all, that’s what these competitions are all about – proving your intelligence. But then all these bogans on twitter started going blah blah blah that they’d been totes ripped off and how unfair it was that two people from the ad agency had won the competition and next thing you know that hectic dude at mumbrella who’s always trying to chat me up at award shows is suddenly on the phone telling me he’s running a piece that says “Suit Wins Own Online Shampoo Promo” and I got really angry and pointed out that I am not just any old “suit” but I'm the Senior Account Director on the entire Haircare and Body Lotions category and if he's going to write an article about me then he should at least get my title right!

SLEEPING YOUR WAY TO THE TOP

OMG! Another year over and a new one just about to begin! And what have we chicks got to show for all our hard work? After all, take a good look around. There are thousands of female Suits, but how many ever make it to CEO? In fact, how many chicks are running any departments? Don’t even bother asking where all the female creative talent disappeared to. Advertising at the upper echelons in Oz is still very much a man’s world. So, as Mum always says, if you can’t make it to the top through political cunning, ruthless ambition, brains and superior talent, then why not try it the old-fashioned way? The only trouble is, who do you sleep with (first)? To help you plan your new year, senior account director Inga van Kyck explores the ups and downs of the agency fling. 1. The Junior Copywriter. Woo hoo! These dudes are soooo hot and I recommend them for the sheer random fun of the encounter. The junior copywriter comes with a massive ego, a wild imagination, and no strings attached. Boringly, he also comes with no money attached, but once you have him firmly in your grip, he’ll always be desperate to please you when it comes to doing last minute copy changes, client suggestions, weekend work, late nights on pitches and going behind the ECD’s back. And if you choose carefully you might end up with a future Group head or even CD forever in the palm of your hand! 2. The Account Manager. Yawn. Just as useless in the bedroom as the boardroom, the average male Account Manager is basically the nerd everyone bullied at school, and about as desirable as herpes. Invariably sporting a bad suit, bad breath, a bad haircut and a massive chip on his shoulder because you are his boss, the only possible reason for sleeping with your AM is to avoid having to give him a payrise so you can keep the dosh for yourself. 3. The Strategic Planner. Gay. And good luck finding one who isn’t. But if you do manage to, be warned, coz the average planner has only one strategy in mind; and that’s getting himself into the top job in the agency, no matter what it takes. Every move planners make is carefully calculated to avoid committing to any predictions or strategies that will come back and nail them. Slipperier than an eel on heat, planners make dangerous bedfellows in more ways than one. Especially those who pride themselves on their digital prowess and can only get passionate when they’re on Twitter. 4. The Senior Art Director. Why not? The best art directors are invariably female, highly strung, neurotic, paranoid and impossible to please, so if you’re going to be creative and sleep with some hectic member of the same sex, my advice is make sure she stays on top, coz that’s where SAD’s like to be. Along with their visual talent and skills they are totes OCD about the look of the ads and invariably have a fierce sense of style and taste. Although sleeping with a chick art director won’t do anything whatsoever for your career prospects, at least you know your briefs will always get done ahead of anyone elses. 5. The Production manager. Gross. Don’t go there. Ever. 6. The trade journalist. Highly recommended. Nothing beats a bit of positive PR when it comes to sliding your way up the greasy pole, particularly if you regularly get cited in the trade press as ”Up and Coming.” (Like me!) Trade journos are extremely easy to pick up (all you have to do is smile at them and they're all over you) and the good news is they’ve all got these hectic expense accounts to splurge on you. Even better, they’re so drunk they pass out before anything icky happens and then believe whatever you tell them next morning. 7. The ECD. Feral. ECD’s all think they are God and they’ve got a droit de senor where every chick in the agency has to bend over backwards for them, like those random medieval kings. Trouble is, ECD’s take way too much drugs and wake up sweating in the middle of the night coz they’ve suddenly realized it’s the deadline for Cannes and yet again they’ve got nothing to enter. Then they start shrieking at you that it’s all the Account Director’s fault! As if! 8. The Global CEO. Awesome! If he bothers to fly all the way out to Oz at this time of year then it’s dead cert he’s going to fire one of the senior dudes coz he’s just seen the end-of-year P&L figures. Here’s your big chance. Don’t miss it! Remember, the wife and kids are back in New York, he’s staying in some cool apartment in Balmoral and he’s gagging for female company. Dress totes hot coz you’ll be competing with the receptionist, the studio and IT chicks and half the account management department. Your secret weapon? Get him alone in the lift and tell him how lousy the current CEO is. In bed. Inga Van Kyck works under the covers in a multi-national agency and is a regular B&T columnist. Follow her on twitter @ingavankyck

THE HOTTEST WEBSITE IN ADVERTISING.

THIS WEEK… INGA VAN KYCK DISCOVERS THE HOTTEST WEBSITE IN ADVERTISING. OMG! So excited about Collective Shout. They’re this hot new advertising website that shows you all the hottest ads and its way better than Campaign Brief. My feral half-brother Josh told me about it, coz its all the rage at his school, and he said all the guys were signing up to it pretending to be chicks and he wanted to use my email address, so I signed up for him. Sooooo exciting! You get to see the best ads and there’s none of that random stuff you get on CB about retarded creatives having a birthday or whatever stupid ECD no-one has ever heard of getting fired this week. From now on I’ve switched permanently from CB to CS. On Collective Shout there’s this ultra-cool ad for one of our major competitors so I shouldn’t say their name but anyway its for Lynx and it shows these five hot chicks playing rugby and its awesome. It’s all in slo-mow and they’re all mauling each other doing these hectic tackles. Sooo cool. I’d only heard about it once before when one of the povos in the studio said I reminded him of “the chick in black in the rugby ad” and would I like to join him in a ruck but I had no idea what he was talking about before I saw the ad so I just said that I’d happily kick his ball anyday, assuming he still had one left after the last time he tried to touch me, and everybody laughed. But thanks to Collective Shout I found out who made the ad so I could watch it again and again on youtube. Best ad ever! Plus CS has all these other hot ads, like for Diva, and Nandos and Bras n Things. How hot is that Nandos chick! There’s a Nandos in Yagoona and Josh doesn’t eat anywhere else now. Josh spends hours on the CS website and Mum reckons that it’s just more porno rubbish but I had to explain to her that it’s totes hectic to see Josh finally taking an interest in advertising after all these years of telling me he thought it was the gayest job ever. Not any more! Now he wants to be an art director on Lynx or a window display designer or dummy dresser for American Apparel. Props. Plus he’s started insisting that Mum buys him all his tee shirts from Roger David. He’s even got a poster up on his wall of his new idol whose the hot chicky babe who set up CS called Melinda Tankard Reist. She’s way better looking than the guy who runs Campaign Brief – even though I quite like dudes with shiny white teeth and sun tans – so its not surprising her websites way more popular than his, although I had to let Josh down gently and tell him that no way was Melinda Tankard Reist her real name coz its obviously made up. And I should know! It takes one to know one. But Josh googled her and found out she’s been on Tony Jones’s Qanda show. Mum was astonished coz we’ve never watched the ABC before except for the Groin transfer but now Josh disappears into his bedroom every Monday night and locks the door. Just in case “Mel TR” comes back on again.

AT THE GLOBAL CREATIVE CONFERENCE

OMG! How fierce is it being the Creative Director! I’m in London at this hectic shampoo creative conference coz I convinced CEO that I’m the only person with enough local knowledge about the brand so I should be the Australian creative representative. Everyone agreed, except Sydney ECD who was totes furious coz it meant he missed out on flying First Class and getting the All-Expenses paid two week trip but as I explained to the Global ECD (who’s this ultra hot black Jamaican dude with pink and gold dreads from New York) Sydney ECD is not only useless at coming up with ideas of his own but he doesn’t understand anything about the brand in the way that I do coz let’s face it I’m a hot chick who’s highly successful and doesn’t mind spending heaps of money pampering herself (which is the key target demographic) whereas Sydney ECD is a bald, retarded, overweight middle aged random from the 80’s who shops at Billabong (which definitely isn’t the target demographic). Global ECD agreed and we hit it off like a bushfire right from the word go and I guess he’s kind of taken me under his wings coz the other CD’s from around the world are jealous that he introduced me at the start of the conference as the “Wonder from Down Under” and it says in the glossy conference booklet that I’m one of the companies “Marketing Superstars of the Future.” As if! I was furious and made them re-print a special sticky insert saying I’m one of the Marketing Superstars of Today. The conference itself is ultra gay and we have to sit in these lame workshops about the future of our brands and everyone has to present a “Strategic Regional SWOT Analysis” which I sat up in my hotel room trying to write the night before but I couldn’t think of any strategies or opportunities for the brand whatsoever so I rang Global ECD in his room and he offered to come down and help me with it and we got stuck into the minibar and room service and what with one thing leading to another I never finished it. Next day I was sweating buckets but I put up this random pie chart and went “blah blah blah blah” – I mean, I actually used those words “blah blah blah blah” and I’d typed “blah blah blah” into each corner of the chart – and everyone was just staring at me like I was some kind of freak or on drugs and then suddenly I stopped mid-blah and froze like Global ECD and I had practiced the night before. Nothing happened for about five seconds then suddenly Global ECD jumps up onto the stage and goes “See? That’s what I’m talkin’ about! We may as well all just stand here going blah blah blah forever coz what we say here doesn’t count for shit out in the suburbs, the shopping malls and the salons unless we crack a really brilliant creative idea! That’s what we’re all here for!” The whole auditorium went nuts and everyone was cheering and clapping and Global ECD puts his arms around me and Global CEO jumped up on stage and said my speech was awesome and it was the sort of inspirational breakthrough we needed! Sooo cool.

TRAVELLING FIRST CLASS

OMG! How cool is first class? From the moment we got on board they kept topping up my glass with real Champagne not gross Jacobs Creek like Mum brought to my birthday bash last weekend the cheapskate! And after everything I do for her! The best bit is that the seat in First Class is like a whole bedroom and it turns into this hectic double bed so you can pass out while you’re still drinking, and watching telly just like at our flat only instead of Joolz waking you up and screaming at you coz you’ve spilled shiraz all over the sofa there’s this ultra hot chick (or sometimes a gay dude) who gently leans over and wakes you up, wipes you down and cleans up all the mess and then immediately refills your glass! Sooo cool. I watched Bridesmaids at least six times over coz I couldn’t work out how to use the retarded remote but I didn’t mind coz it was sooooo funny I was pissing myself the whole way. There were only two other people in First Class, and of course the ferals were all crammed in like live cattle exports in the back of the plane and I couldn’t help myself so whenever I went for a piss I’d deliberately pull back the curtain so all the povos got a flash of me waving a bottle of bubbly at them. Talk about daggers! Soooo funny. I think I must have dozed off in Bangkok coz they had to keep the plane waiting til they found me having a nap in the First Class lounge. Then at the security thingy I had to stand in this fierce machine like a transporter pod on Star Trek and they take an all over all-body Xray of you. The guy behind the monitor was some skinny little Asian dude and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. Then the other randoms all rush over and insist on copping a feel which was kind of unnecessary coz as I told them its not like I carry a Kalashnikov in my knickers, which got them all yabbering at each other for another twenty minutes. Sooo funny seeing everybody giving me the evil eye when I finally got back on board. Like Mum always says, bogans have no sense of humour. I crashed out again on the plane coz of all the excitement and next thing I know we’ve landed in some random country I’ve never been to before. They made us get off the plane and stand in this feral long queue and they were all wearing turbans and the women all had these hectic headscarves and were all dressed like Darth Vader and the dudes stamping our passports all looked like those religious fanatics in Auburn and they wanted to know what I was doing there and I tried to explain that I was on my way to England for a shampoo creative conference – as the honorary Creative Director! - and they gave me this weird look. Then we got into the baggage hall and I was panicking coz I had no idea where we were and nobody spoke English so I deliberately started to cry and this really nice guy came over and explained to me we were at Heathrow. Oops.

I'M ON FIRE

OMG! Somebody call an ambulance! I think I’m on fire! Haha. That’s my latest joke and I’ve been using it all the time and everybody laughs. When it’s only men in the meeting I change it to “somebody get a fire extinguisher and squirt foam all over me!” which gets them spluttering into their coffees. But it’s true. I am on fire. Mum always said that you shouldn’t hide your light under a bush so I’m not afraid to admit it. Coz it’s true. Mum always said that nobody on the planet is cleverer or more talented than me, it’s just that they all grew up in Vaucluse and I grew up in Yagoona. But now it’s all turned full circle coz ever since I won back my shampoo account from my old agency everyone says I’m a legend and its given me a huge confidence boost and all these amazing ideas just keep bursting out of me. Even the Creatives keep saying how I’m on fire. I had to hire Siobhan as part of the terms of moving the account over to our agency so she’s now my assistant which is kind of cool and kind of funny too and I keep making all these clever jokes about how it’s “my turn to be on top, Shawnee” which everybody thinks is hilarious even though Siobhan is obviously incredibly resentful to the fact that my career is rocketing ahead while hers has ground to a halt. Shawnee (I call her that now coz it keeps her in her place and reminds her whose boss) keeps complaining about how she’s struggling with her mortgage but I just hold up my hand and go “talk to the hand that cares, Shawnee” which shuts her up. I’m developing amazing people skills as well which is an important part of being in senior management and I have to go to all these lame meetings about “encouraging staff morale” where of course I’ve had lots of great suggestions like I suggested we should send the entire Creative department to Luna Park for the morning so they could release their inner child which is an important part of being creative. Everyone thought it was an awesome idea and then when I suggested we should change it to the Dinosaur park at Gosford to show them how the Executive Creative Director of the past is nothing but a dinosaur (I read about it in B&T) everyone agreed that I was on fire. The best bit is there’s this hectic Global Creative Workshop to discuss the future positioning strategies for all our haircare brands and every CD from around the world is flying to London for two weeks. We were discussing it in the management team meeting the other day and I pointed out that ECD knows absolutely nothing about haircare (which got a huge laugh coz he’s bald and worse he tries to hide it by wearing these stupid knitted beanies) and that nobody in the agency had any experience on the product other than me so I should go as CD. ECD gave me daggers and released his inner child by stomping out of the meeting. Shawnee’s booking the tickets now! Soooo exciting! Off to London flying First Class! Woo hoo. I love being on fire!