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!

SHAMPOOING THE GROIN

OMG! Soooooo peed off right now I can hardly think straight! The Groin Transfer went and did an episode on shampoo and - get this! - they didn't even ask me onto the panel! Me! At my old agency they used to call me the Babe of the Bottle! The Queen of the Quiff! The Hectic Harlot of the Hairdo! I can't tell you how many times I've written to Tony Jones who runs the ABC telling him to do a Groin episode on shampoo and how I'd be happy to help out and he's never even bothered to reply and now this!! They nicked my idea! Soooo rude. I could barely bring myself to watch it! What's the point in asking Russel to talk about hair? Or Todd to talk about skincare products? To add insult to injury they even showed one of my ads from my last agency and everything they said about it was a pack of lies. Dee proved she knows nothing about haircare (which is kind of obvious) by saying that the only way to have lively hair is to have nits, which is simply not true! On top of that, they all reckoned that all shampoos are the same. As if!! Why didn’t they have Bridget on the show? She’s the only chick on the ABC who’s got hot hair. At first I thought my old ECD Matt Eastwood must be having a mid-life crisis coz he’d put on a stack of weight since the last time he was on and worse than that he’s grown his hair really long and dyed it black. Dude - just coz you've found a few grey ones!! We've got shampoos for that! But then I realized it was some other random called Adam. Apparently before he got into advertising he “had a job” in a prison. As if! I can’t tell you the number of guys who try to crack onto me at Bankstown RSL and tell me they used to “work” at Longbay. The name of Adam’s agency is Naked, which hopefully wasn’t his nickname back in his prison days. Then Wil announced that they’re going to privatize the ABC which is probably about time too coz clearly they need some new shows. My idea is to do my own panel show and I’ll get it sponsored by my old shampoo client. I’m going to be the star of the show but I’m going to get Mum and Josh and a couple of my bf’s from Yagoona to be on the panel and we’re going to discuss shows like The Groin Transfer and Talking About My Generation and tell everybody what we think of them. It’s going to be a panel show about panel shows. I’ve written to Tony Jones about it but of course he hasn’t bothered to reply. So the other night I stayed up to watch Q&A so I could tweet Tony Jones using the hash tag at the bottom of the screen but it was so boring I crashed out and woke up in the morning on the sofa covered in red wine and had to rush into work without even having time to have a shower and get changed. But it didn’t matter coz I use a really hectic shampoo and my hair still looked hot!

THE PAST CATCHES UP

OMG! Looks like I stuffed up big time in my old job. Lucky I got out just in the nick of time before the formaldehyde hit the hairdryer. Siobhan phoned me in a real panic coz last year we ran these one-off promotional ads to offload this professional hair straightening sku (called Columbian Curl-out) and nobody checked the copy properly and the stupid copywriter wrote that the product was free of any dangerous chemicals when of course the complete opposite is true. It’s free of SOME dangerous chemicals but its got heaps of one of the others. And it’s like this totes cancer causing feral stuff. Oops! Now everybody at my old agency is running for cover and looking for a convenient scapegoat so of course they're all blaming me for writing down the brief incorrectly. As if! Anyway, the worst bit is that head office in Baltimore have gone completely spazzo and reckon that "heads must roll" in Australia. Siobhan is already running around like a headless chook trying to recall all the promotional packs that were sold. So far she's found about half of them, but she was really peed off at me and said that my data processing and inventory-keeping were "atrocious beyond comprehension" whatever that means. Now all sorts of hectic government bodies and hairdressers unions are getting involved and everyone’s suing everyone else. Gay. The whole thing was in the weekend papers and on radio and I was crapping myself that my new CEO would hear about it and sure enough straight after the Monday morning staff meeting he calls me into his office. He makes me sit down and then I realized CFO was already sitting there too looking ultra serious and so was this other fierce dude who said he was some kind of lawyer. Anyway, it was obvious they were going to fire me and I was desperately wondering how I could lie to Mum and pretend that I'd been offered a better job somewhere else when CEO goes "Inga, this in incredible news! And such good timing for us." Then he gives me this creepy wink and touches the side of his nose and goes "a cynic might say you'd done it on purpose! Nothing beats leaving a few landmines lying around behind you, eh?" The others all burst out laughing so I laughed along too even though I had no idea what the joke was about. Then CEO goes "I've already been in touch with their head office and they're really keen on talking to us. Apparently the account has been a total mess ever since you left! As soon as I mentioned that you were our most senior account director... Well! Let's just say things are looking pretty good! I'm off to Baltimore tomorrow and according to my contacts over there it’s already a done deal. Champagne all round when I come back with the contract! Awesome job, Inga!" Then they all started shaking hands with me and CFO goes "of course you're entitled to a pro rata percentage of the billings" and the lawyer dude goes "If anyone asks, remember, they approached us, and not the other way round!" then he chuckles and they all patted me on the back. How good is that?

BLONDE STREAKS AND RED HAIR

OMG! Blonde streaks in red hair. Sooooooooo wrong. And it's all my fault! One of the last things I did before I left my old agency was to send some samples of our Carbon Neutral Shampoo range to Mr Tim Gillard c/- The Lodge, Canberra coz when I met Julia's Main Squeeze during the carbon tax pitch I promised him that if he'd agree to be a "brand ambassador" and leave "product placements" lying around everywhere like at the United Nations and in the dunnies at the White House then I'd send him a bunch of freebies if we won the account. He got all excited and said that he was looking for a proper ambassadorial role coz Canberra is like the lamest place in the world coz its freezing cold and there's nothing to do except ride your bike around that stupid lake and stare at the ejaculating fountain. Then he said he couldn't wait for the next election to be over and done with coz he was desperate to move back to Melbourne. Anyway, we didn't win the pitch even though our ads were heaps better than the lame ones they chose with all those people building windmills and stuff and I forgot all about it but then when I was packing up to move to my new job I found all these samples under my desk and I remembered Mum always told me you've got to be politically astute if you want to get on in this world (like she did when she agreed to "go for a few drinkies" with the Yagoona Head of Urban Planning just so she could get DA approval for Josh to move into the garage even though it's made of asbestos) so I sent the samples off to Canberra with a note telling Timmy it was time he gave his missus a new look. Anyway, I forgot that the Carbon Neutral formula contained yoghurt and avocado (it was basically exactly the same as our ‘forest delights’ range except with less soap in it) and had this hectic use-by-date which is why Woolies and Coles wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole and the packs had been sitting under my desk for at least two years and I guess they must have gone rotten coz next thing Julia pops up on the news to tell everybody how awesome her government is and how she’s totes in control and she’s going to lead them to the next election and all her cabinet ministers are sitting around this big table with these miserable long faces coz no-one dares tell her that her hair has gone this hectic surfy/ranga look. Oops. Even Penny Wong looked embarrassed and that's saying something, and Greg Combet just sat there shaking his head in disbelief. Anyway, Julia didn't seem to notice and of course Timmy was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he was off having lunch with these fierce Miss World contestants to raise money for charity. I'm surprised Julia let him, but I guess she must know he's totes not the type to be interested in a bunch of hot babes cavorting around the Lodge in their bikinis. Hope they don't ask him to do their hair.

BACKSTAGE PASS TO THE GROIN TRANSFER

OMG! Now everybody in my new agency hates me even more coz ECD invited me to be his “special guest” in the audience of the filming of the new series of The Groin Transfer! We went to the Lansdowne on Broadway first and got totally smashed on cocktails so when we got into the ABC studios we were pissing ourselves every time the American warm-up comedian said anything whatsoever. No idea if he was funny or not, coz I couldn’t even see straight let alone think straight. Then Wil Anderson comes out and he looks soooooo hot I nearly wet myself (but that might have been the margaritas) and I gave him a little wave and I think he recognized me from the Rap party last year coz he gives me this weird stare and looks like he’s trying to remember where he knows me from. I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying but then he shouts “We all have the Clap!” which made me kinda crap myself. I turned to ECD and said what did he just say and ECD explains he was telling the audience that whenever Todd or Russel say anything that sounds intelligent “we all have to clap.” Whew! Anyway, the warm-up stuff went on and on and it reminded me of my Uncle Dirk’s stand-up act at the Yagoona RSL where everybody laughs everytime he says “Master Bates.” Finally the panel came out and Russel and Todd started banging on about Coles and Woolies and I fell asleep, or rather, passed out. Then ECD wakes me up and they’re in the middle of this hectic argument about climate change and the carbon tax ads. Dee and Rowan are arguing like crazy with each other (get a room, you two!) and trying to get more noticed than each other so they get longer in the final edit. Then Russel goes “Advertising is the most important thing in democracy” or some random stuff that I can’t remember coz by now I had fallen asleep again on ECD’s shoulder. When I woke up he was licking my ear which was sooooo feral but kind of hectic too. Then Barry O’Farrell turns up on the stage and starts telling us that Canberra is a crap place to live and how it’s responsible for causing climate change with all the roundabouts which I thought was a really interesting point. Then ECD goes it would be really cool if I threw my knickers up on the stage like they do with Tommy Lee Jones but it was kind of embarrassing coz after I’d been trying for about three minutes to get them off I suddenly remembered I wasn’t wearing any. Oops. Then they said that we all had to wait around for like forever coz Wil had messed up some of his lines and they had to redo them again. Then ECD said that he wouldn’t mind messing up a few lines and went off to the loo. When he came back we both crawled under the seats into the backstage area, and then I tried to get us into the Groin room so I could introduce ECD to Wil and everyone but this fierce security guard wouldn’t let us in and said that my behaviour was “a disgrace.” As if!

FIRST DAY

OMG! Think I stuffed up big time. Arrived hungover on Monday morning for my first ever day at my new agency and it sooooo reminded me of when I was the new kid at Yagoona Primary School and all the boys were screaming out "Inga van Dick" and grabbing their crotches. The creatives are all staring at me and I don't even have time to be shown to my new office when we're suddenly told that all the staff have to assemble immediately in Reception for a totes uber-important announcement and then my new CEO stands up on the staircase (coz he's pretty short) and when all the ferals and randoms finally shut up he launches into this hectic speech about the future prospects of the agency and how after a long and arduous search he has found one of the most ruthless advertising brains in Sydney, who really "gets creative" and is going to be "a major player in re-focusing our agency's aggressive new business plans and goals for major FMCG growth" and everybody should be "very very afraid" and I'm thinking "Yikes who is this person I think I might have made a mistake here" when suddenly he turns and points at me! And everyone starts clapping and CEO walks over and puts his arm around me and squeezes my shoulders which was kind of creepy coz he's sweaty and Italian or Bosnian or whatever and goes "and I think you'll all agree she's pretty easy on the eye, too" and all the retards started laughing and whistling and all the chicks stare daggers at me. Then I get shown to my seat which is like in the "heavy" corner of the agency right next to CEO and opposite ECD and I'm thinking this could be really good or really bad or maybe even both. Spent the morning organizing my desk and all the time I'm like: "Yikes what the hell am I doing here?" and then CEO goes "Surprise! We're all going out to Inga's welcome lunch" and we go to this pub opposite the agency and everyone's there and we're onto the fourth round of drinks when CEO goes "so enlighten us, Inga - what do you think of the new Carbon Tax ads?" and I'm halfway through skulling a schooner of Becks and I try not to burp and i go "the Carbon Tax ads? They've got to be the lamest, gayest, blandest, dopiest ads I've ever seen, I mean what sort of moronic agency thought that a bunch of retarded bogans from Alice Spring bragging about their stupid solar panel rip-off business would make anyone care about some stupid old Carbon Tax anyway?" and I'm just about to explain how Mum had solar panels fitted to her place in Yagoona but they melted the roof when I notice the whole pub has gone quiet. Then CEO goes "um, you know that we did those ads, don't you?" Oops!

NEW JOB

OMG! I got the gig! Woooohoooo! I start next week. I can't believe it. After three years I've finally nailed it. My original plan had been to join a multinational agency so I could get friendly with their clients and then steal one of them to set up my own boutique agency with, but now I've been sucked in deeper and deeper and I've become a totes multinational whore. Soooo gay, but let's face it; the money is awesome! They're gonna be paying me way way above what I'm worth because they are so desperate to find a Suit who gets Creativity like I do. Mum went all weird on me when I told her how much I'm going to be earning (even though I lied to her and told her way less than what the salary actually is coz I don't want her trying to get her greedy paws on any of it) and she said that that amount of money was "obscene." As if! Then Siobhan goes completely spazzo at me when I handed in my reso notice this morning and starts screaming about how "that job should have been mine you two-faced little bitch" and all of that stuff but I just couldn't stop laughing coz it's so funny that now I'm going to be earning nearly three times what she does. How hectic is that? And she's been in the business for nearly twenty years. Too funny. I even said to her that if she plays her cards right I might think about letting her join me as my junior AD. At that point she picks up my iPad and chucks it across the room at me but it's still plugged in and bounces back and whacks her in the face. The best bit is that my new agency have put me in charge of the entire account all by myself. I can't tell you the name but it's the biggest account in the agency and it's worth squillions internationally, so apart from making heaps of tv ads I'll be traveling to all these fierce global strategy workshops in Bali and Florida. My flatmate Joolz couldn't understand why they chose me but I think it's coz I did exactly what Headhunter said and kept my trap firmly shut during the interview and the whole time their CEO was going "blah blah blah, which is a real strategic challenge in today's market Inga, as someone of your calibre and experience obviously knows" I just kept nodding my head and crossing my legs. Even though I didn't have a clue what he was on about. I told Headhunter that I was a bit worried that I might stuff up, but he goes "don't worry about it hun, this agency is in a class all of it's own - it boasts an unparalleled level of mediocrity and specialises in producing what without a shadow of a doubt can only be categorised as the lamest advertising in Sydney." Then he gives me this weird look and starts chuckling to himself before he goes "you know, I wouldn't be at all surprised if you're running the place within two years." Wow! How cool would that be? It's sooooo inspiring when people in the know express confidence in your abilities.

PLAYING DIRTY

OMG! I got asked back for a second interview! Headhunter warned me that they think I’m way more experienced than I actually am, so his advice was to keep my trap firmly shut and let them do all the talking. He said the agency is soooo desperate for good suits that if I play my cards right I could actually land the Senior Account Director posi! Woo hoo! Money money money! There was one tiny hiccup when Siobhan came rushing into my office the day before the interview and she goes “Hey Ing, Ive just heard on the grapevine there’s a job going over the Bridge and they’re looking for a Senior Account Director. Whaddaya reckon, should I phone them up and go for it? Think about it, if I got the job it would mean you could probably get a promotion here! Maybe to Account manager!” I went all cold and clammy all over coz I realized it was exactly the same job I was going for, and if she rocked up for an interview straight after me they’d realize she was my boss and that I’m only a junior on the account. (I have to admit I did kind of leave the impression in the first interview that I run the entire shampoo portfolio all by myself.) I had to think fast so I go “Siobhan, you’ve got to be joking. I don’t want you to leave. No way am I ready to take on your job, and I’d miss you heaps. Besides which, everyone knows that agency is the gayest agency ever! Plus you’d have to go across the Bridge twice every day which is like a totes nightmare. And they’re all randoms and ferals over there and it’s a wasteland in terms of bars and coffee shops.” And Siobhan thinks about it for a few minutes and she goes “yeah, you’re right, Inga. Thanks for being honest and putting my interests ahead of yours. That’s what makes you special, hun. You’re a true friend.” I must admit I felt a bit guilty but this is advertising and Mum always says if you want a friend in advertising get a guppy. On top of which, Mum always told me (coz she knows about this stuff coz she worked in Neville Wran’s office for two weeks when she dropped out of school) that playing politics is all about saying one thing and doing the opposite. Anyway, when I turned up for the second interview I looked soooo hot coz Headhunter told me that the CEO was “of a Mediterranean persuasion” and likes his suits (all of whom are these fierce chicks) to look “suitably stylish.” Also in the interview was Head of Strategic Thinking and Executive Ideas Officer, who were these two random dudes who barely said a word and were obviously terrified of me. The power of the push up bra! But I really liked CEO and thought he was awesome. And kinda cute. He explained that as far as he was concerned I could do whatever I wanted with the account so long as I turned a decent profit every month, kept the Client sweet with whatever means I deemed necessary, and made sure the feral creatives did exactly as they were told. How hectic is that? I soooooo want this job!!

DREAM JOB

OMG! Just had this hectic interview at the best agency ever! Totes! When you go in the door it’s like nothing you ever expected. Instead of a TV and sofas and gay ads stuck up on the wall you walk into A World of Creativity! It’s soooo fierce. Props. Anyway, this bubbly blonde receptionist dressed in a frilly black tutu comes bouncing over to me and goes “did you leave your lotions behind?” which I thought was random coz I looked really hot but then I realised she must have been briefed that I’m one of the best shampoo suits in Sydney so she was trying to scab a freebie off of me. I explained I don't normally carry lotion samples with me, but she goes “No, no, no… I said ‘notions.' We want you to strip away any notions and expose yourself to who we really are." I didn’t know what she was on about, so I started to kick off my shoes, unzip my dress and loosen my bra, thinking it must be some free-love hippy type interview like the one I had to do at Yagoona Smash Repairs when I was at school. Then she goes “this is our Marketing Mantra" and reads out this ultra cool thing about the importance of creative collaboration which gave me goose bumps all over my body – although that might just have been coz I was still half undressed. The receptionist was so friendly and chatty that I confided to her that when the headhunter rang me he told me he can't get any good suits to go for interviews there but because I’m way more creative than most Suits then they’d be desperate to have me coz their creatives are really lame (hello? what's new?) and I could ask for double the salary they were offering and I’d probably get it! She laughed, and then she takes me into this fierce office and I realise she’s not the receptionist at all but she’s the Suit I’ve come to have the interview with. Oops! Anyway, she’s by far the nicest, kindest, smartest chick I’ve ever met in any agency. We cracked open a bottle of awesome wine and I explained how gay my current agency is coz New ECD keeps ignoring my suggestions about enhancing the creative process by involving the Suits more and she goes “way ahead of you on that one, hun" and explains that in her agency the creatives (who are all these feral dudes) have to show their work to her and the other Suits (who are all these awesome chicks) first - and she gets to approve everything, and she can change the work and tell the dudes how to make it better. And if she doesn’t like any of the work - which is most of the time! - she just tells them to start all over again. Only when she's happy does the CD get to see it. Soooo cool. The best bit is that her CD doesn’t really do anything apart from going “blah blah blah blah” in meetings after the Client has already signed off on it and it’s too late to change it anyway. The Suits run the show! Awesome! I’m sooo going to work there!

LITTLE MISS PERFECT GETS FIRED

OMG! Two of our best creatives have just been nigelmarshed! What is wrong with this place? Why do they keep firing everyone who is any good? It’s like some hectic reality TV show the way they keep eliminating people here. OK, Little Miss Perfect was a totes pain in the arse at times but that’s only coz she cared passionately about her work and wanted us to do really cool #winning ads. Props! Isn't that why we're all here? Siobhan reckons new ECD is such a fierce control freak that he fires any creative who he knows is more talented than he is coz he wants to look good and do every ad all by himself. No wonder everything we do is soooooo lame! Besides which, CEO admitted at the Christmas party when he was off his face on coke that the secret to his success within the network is that he fires someone high profile every three months coz that stops all the retards and ferals from asking him for a payrise coz they're too shit scared all the time that they'll lose their jobs and it saves thousands of dollars every year in payrises that were already budgeted for so it seems like he's turning a profit and the network think he's a hero! And so they give him a massive payrise! Soooo #unfair. On top of that, CFO confided to me the other day (alright – it was at three o’clock in the morning after six bottles of Shiraz and we were up in his investment penthouse in the Toaster – aptly named the way he kept popping up all night long) that the reason CEO keeps firing people is to cover up the fact he hasn’t won any business in the last eighteen months! That way he can blame the people who he got rid of and sell a new “Agency Narrative” presso to the network and all the gay pitch consultants. So far he’s fired Head of Planning, Head of Account Management, Head of Recruitment, Head of IT, Head of PR and of course Head of Client Services who was random but kinda cute. Not to mention how he got rid of old ECD who was like the best ever and replaced him with New ECD who is about as exciting and talented as my semi-autistic brain-damaged half-brother Josh. Every time CEO fires someone he stands up in front of the whole agency and goes "this is a new beginning blah blah blah" but of course it never is! We haven't done a decent ad in forever (since old ECD left, actually). Mum keeps saying to me when are you losers going to stick an ad on the Telly that I can actually tell the girls at the Yagoona RSL about without cringing into my vodka in embarrassment? Last night during Masterchef she saw my new Cranberry Shampoo ad which New ECD wrote all by himself and she reckoned it was the worst pile of rubbish she's ever seen. She reckoned if they did a taste test on the creative work at our agency New ECD would already be facing elimination and be packing his bags to head back to wherever it was he came from. Which is probably exactly what CEO's got in mind!

NBN

OMG! Soooooo exciting. Julia was so impressed by our work on the Carbon Tax pitch - even though we didn't win it, soooooo gay! - that she's asked us to work on selling the NBN. The cool thing is that we don't have to pitch on this one because they've decided to do the whole thing in secret, rather than having an actual advertising campaign as such. The brief is that we've got to find ways of persuading people that the NBN is a really good thing, but we're not allowed to do it with normal ads but instead we have to be "subversive" about it. At our first meeting I suggested we do the sort of guerilla advertising we do with my shampoo client, where we pay these hot chicks with hectic hair-do's to wander around chemists and supermarkets talking to each other at the top of their voices about how awesome our latest hair product is. We sell heaps that way. Julia gave me props coz her boyfriend is a hairdresser and he always uses our stuff coz he says he always hears good things about it and then she wondered if I could get him a job flogging our new conditioning range coz he doesn't have a real job and she's fed up with him hanging around the Lodge like "a spare prick at a wedding" so Julia and I started to work out what he could say and where he could go but then this bald government spin dude who looks like Nosferatu the Vampire interrupts and goes "I thought the purpose of this meeting was to try and flog the poxy NBN not find something useful for your pretend shag to do." Soooooo rude. Julie went bright red so you couldn't tell where her face finished and her hair began. Then CEO tries to smoothe things over by suggesting we draw up a list of "NBN ambassadors" who would be famous people who talk about how awesome an NBN would be. Julia suggests Michael Kirby coz he's a good mate of her boyfriend, and then CEO suggests Tim Flannery and everyone reckons that's an awesome idea, coz then we could show how the NBN is going to help solve climate change as well which everyone agrees would be totes brill. Then ECD asks if someone can explain to him what the NBN actually does, and there's like this horrible silence around the room. Then this pommy guy who apparently is the minister in charge starts droning on about how everybody in the bush can become an online trader and make squillions of dollars by selling stuff anywhere around the world and how it's going to revolutionize everything. Then he shows us all these graphs and things on his laptop about how awesome it'll be and everyone is nodding and then ECD goes "can I download that from your laptop" and they all stuff around trying to stretch the cable across the table and plug it into ECDs computer but it won't reach and in the end CEO goes "don't worry, I'm on wifi which is way better anyway."

CARBON TAX PITCH PT 2

OMG! Soooo excited about the Carbon Tax Pitch. The tissue session went really well and they loved all the ideas except that they’ve asked us to make a few changes before the final pitch next week. In the original layouts we had this happy, smiling Mum holding a fistful of cash and behind her was this horrible smoking chimney-stack (with a graphic that says CO2) and the smoke belching out of the chimney-stack morphs into a brand new Bravia television. And the woman had a speech bubble that says “Thanks to the new CO2 Cashback scheme, my family are now $953.00 a year better off, so we can finally afford a new TV.” Everyone thought the ad was awesome and the government dude said at the end of the meeting that he’d run the campaign tomorrow if it was down to him, which gave me goosebumps in all the wrong places, although maybe that was just the air conditioning. We were so excited that we got completely trashed at the QANTAS bar at Canberra Airport, and when CEO saw the retards from the other agency – better not say their name – he took a chipolata off the food area and poked it out of his fly and said “Maaaate we just pissed all over you guys!” which we all thought was hilarious but the gay QANTAS staff got all worked up about it and almost wouldn’t let us on the plane. They sooo don’t have a sense of humour at airports these days. Last month I stuffed my feral half-brother Josh’s boogie board bag full of lawn clippings when he went to Bali with his dole-bludging bogan mates and the retards at Customs didn’t even think it was funny! Anyway, none of us could be arsed going back to the agency after we got back from Canberra so we went to the Absinthe Salon on the way home. It wasn’t until the next day that we got the official email with some “suggested amendments and alterations” to our concepts. As usual the brief had changed. The really big problem now is that coz Kevin Rudd is suddenly trying to be PM again they want us to get Julia into all the ads so that it’s like she’s personally giving everybody all the money herself so that she goes up in the Newspoll and then she’ll win the next election. At first ECD thought we could just change the copy so it reads “Thanks to Julia Gillard and her CO2 Cashback scheme my family can now afford a new TV” but CEO said that wasn’t nearly visual enough. But then I had this hectic brainwave and said why don’t we just put the whole thing in the future and show Julia Gillard as a Mum with two cute little ranga kids sitting on the floor watching their new Bravia in a Carbon-Free world! Everyone thought that was a really fierce idea but when we sent it through to the government dude he goes “um, this is kind of embarrassing, but Julia Gillard doesn’t actually have a family coz she lives with this um ‘hairdresser’ guy and without putting too fine a point on it, um, the polar caps will look like Bondi beach sooner than those two have any kiddies.” Soooo gay.

CARBON TAX PITCH

OMG! It’s panic stations on the Carbon Tax pitch. The work has got to be ready next week for the first tissue session. All the Clients are going to be there, including Julia, Greg, Bob, Rob, Tony and some other random. ECD has had a nervous breakdown and had to be rushed to hospital so at the last minute we’ve brought in this gay freelance creative team who are sooooo up themselves coz they worked on Kevin 07 (although that wasn’t one of their lines - they reckon they had a much better one which was Manna from Kevin). CEO reviewed the work this morning and threw a mega spaz attack saying we were all idiots and had entirely missed the point of the brief. Head of Strategy disagreed, saying we were focusing on the balance of nature and CEO yells “any fool knows it’s all about tax cuts!” HOS starts getting hysterical about the “semiotic beauty of holding the balance of nature in the palm of our hands” but CEO cuts her off and yells that the only balance of nature he can see in the room is coming out the top of Inga’s bra and he’d happily hold them both in the palm of his hands but it won’t win us the pitch. At that point HOS storms out of the room and so we get ECD on speakerphone from the hospital where he’s high as a kite on some cocktail of free drugs (soooo not unusual!) and he goes it’s all about future generations and the only way to win the pitch is with shots of people’s grandkids playing happily in a carbon-free world but CEO goes “No! No! No!” coz that would only remind everyone what some dude said about it taking over a thousand years to fix global warming and we’d been clearly briefed to avoid at all costs any suggestion that the Carbon Tax would actually do anything to help stop Climate Change. One of the freelancers suggests maybe the brief is really about people power and nothing to do with CO2 and at that point CEO loses it completely and starts tearing down all the layouts from the wall and ripping them in half with his teeth and getting bits of paper stuck in his mouth and yelling “well if that’s the goddam brief, what’s all this shit?” which I thought was kind of unfair coz their ideas were lame but at least they were pretty much bang on what we’d asked for and I was just about to say that when HOS comes back into the room looking sick as a dog and goes “Email from the Client – with some minor revisions to the brief.” Everyone stares at her, apart from ECD who we can hear on the speakerphone demanding the nurse give him some more pethidine. “So? What is it?” says CEO, sounding ultra pissed off. “They want us to, um, emphasise how families are going to be at least $953.00 a year better off.” Everybody waits while CEO finishes pulling bits of paper out of his mouth. “Is that it?” he says finally. HOS sighs. “They’ve also changed the name. Now it’s called the Carbon Cashback Family Bonus Scheme.”

TEACHING US A LESSON

OMG! Totes freaked out by the nuclear earthquake and the rising tsunamis! Sooooo obvious that the planet is teaching us a lesson. Bigtime. I suggested to ECD yesterday that we should do a proactive award-winning campaign warning people that if they don’t start switching to windmill-power or Solo energy then it will be their turn next. Goodbye Harbour! Goodbye CBD! Goodbye basically everywhere between Bondi and the Blue Mountains! (Not that anyone other than Mum will give a toss if Bankstown or Yagoona get wiped off the map.) I even came up with the line “Whateva U Cherish is Soon gonna Perish”, which ECD thought was brilliant. The worst bit is that he’s given it to Little Miss Perfect to art direct and to “work up into a full blown 360 campaign” coz her copywriter is on hols at the moment and she’s been complaining non-stop that all my shampoo adapts she’s working on are “beneath her”. As if! It takes real art directional skills to change a 15 second Brazilian body lotion spot into a 45 second major Australian new shampoo sku launch. Not only do you have to keep using the same head and body shots over and over again – we blow them up and spin them round and recolour them so they look different each time - but you also have to sink the dialogue, which is a real artform in itself. In the Brazilian ad she is saying “blah blah blah blah blah blah” or whatever (I don’t speak Brazilian) but in the aussie one she now goes “Thanks to our amazing new formula, your hair will re-energise itself during the course of the day, attracting the natural ions from the ionosphere in your workplace, leaving you ready to party party party all night long straight on the way home from work and still feel soft and full in the morning!” It’s really cool and LMP art directed these little arrows and graphics to emphasis the ions (which are these sparkly bits on her head) and the ad looks awesome; although the retards in the studio who saw it on air last night were taking the piss out of it today coz they reckon she looks like she’s got radioactive dandruff. So gay. Why don’t they just stick to doing neck tags on their stupid macs instead of pretending they know anything about advertising? But I digress. Normally I can’t stand being in the same room as LMP coz she always treats me like I’m some kind of bimbocile. But of course now she recognizes how winning my proactive idea is and she realizes she can grab a whole heap of awards with it so she’s trying really hard to like me. Soooo transparent. Needless to say all her ideas were crap until she repeated one of my ideas that she’s now claiming as her own. It’s a visual of the planet earth with a sad face on it, and it’s crying coz Climate Change has stuffed everything up. Then all around it are these thought bubbles saying things like “Earthquakes!” “Bushfires!” “Floods!” “Nuclear Explosions!” ECD reckons its way better than the Earth Hour campaign coz its really hard-hitting as opposed to just telling you to switch off your lights which everyone knows anyway. Cannes here I come!

COKE BURN

OMG! Woke up Sunday morning and Mum was screaming her head off loud enough to wake the dead – or half of Yagoona which is pretty much the same thing. I rushed downstairs to see what all the fuss was about and (of course!) it was my feral half-brother Josh. He was trying to do some random skateboarding tricks on this ramp he’d built in the driveway out of old milk crates and our patio table – but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was he had also doused himself in lawnmower petrol and set himself on fire. His mates were screeching with laughter and one of them was filming him with his iPhone. Mum was doing her nut and trying to get the hose out of the garage but she hasn’t watered the lawn since the water restrictions began in 2004 and the hose was all rotten and crawling with redbacks. Josh went flying through the air screaming at the top of his voice with flames all over his body and then did this hectic jump over the fence and fortunately landed in the neighbour’s pool. Naturally, it was all my fault, and Mum went spaz at me. I felt really bad coz the night before I’d shown Josh all the award winners from Award to try and educate him about how sophisticated advertising is these days, coz Mum wants him to go to TAFE to do digital graphics and make shitloads of money doing websites and banners. Personally I think he’s way too stupid and smokes way too much dope but when I spoke to Head of Digital he said that neither of those things was a problem. I was really inspired by Craigy’s amazing speech about how we can use advertising for the betterment of humankind but then Josh asked me to show him a “cool ad not some gay speech” so I showed him Craigy’s award-winning Coke Burn ad which advertises how awesome it is to skateboard when you’ve set yourself on fire. Unfortunately Josh is kind of naïve and a bit susceptible to advertising and on top of which he has at least five cokes a day starting with brekky so he gets a bit excitable, and when he woke up he decided to emulate Craigy and immolate himself. I’ve never seen Mum so angry, well at any rate not since they barred her from the pokies at the Bankstown RSL. Anyway, on the way to Westmead Casualty and Emergency I tried to explain that setting yourself on fire wasn’t necessarily a bad thing coz that’s how they’d got democracy in Tunisia but she wouldn’t have any of it and said that if she ever got her hands on whoever was responsible for that Coke ad she’d set THEM on fire. (Hope Craigy doesn’t show his gorgeous face out in Yagoona any time soon!) Anyway, the hospital was fully booked so they gave Josh a tube of Stingos and told him to rub it into the burns, but he couldn’t be bothered and so we went to Maccas instead. On the way home he insisted I drive him and his mates up to Chatswood coz there’s this hectic high rise car park opposite an adjoining office block. Josh reckons he can build a ramp so they can skateboard from one skyscraper to the other. Just like in Craigy’s ad!

Valentine's Day

OMG! Soooo embarrassing. We did this hectic stunt for Valentine’s Day and it all went horribly wrong. It was part of our new Proactive Creative Partnership campaign (PCP), where everybody has to come up with ideas for topical promotional ideas. Like they do on Australia Day, when they advertise Sam’s Ketchup to go with lamb. (I prefer BBQ sauce.) I suggested that on VD what most chicks want is to have really beautiful hair if they’re going out, but none of us can be arsed going home first to change so why not set up a booth in Martin Place where you could have a free shower using our new LovePotion shampoo - and we’d throw in a glass of free bubbly? ECD loved it and said it was the best proactive idea he’s seen all year! Martin Place were totally gay and wanted like a squillion dollars to give us one tiny little space and the Client said “no way” coz the cost was coming straight off the media spend for autumn when we’ll be encouraging people to “Switch from Summer”. (Oops, shouldn’t be giving away our new strategy – slap on wrist Inga!) We ended up in some druggy laneway off George St outside some feral building site. The budget wasn’t that great but we managed to get six booths set up. Originally, my idea was that they were these amazing glitzy changing rooms with individual shays longs and mirrors so it would feel ultra classy but in the end we had to make do with portable buckets and hoses with showerheads and no curtains or mirrors. (It was too expensive to insure mirrors in case anyone drank too much and tripped and cut themselves –and the Client had only agreed to the whole thing so long as there was no possible chance whatsoever of any “negative publicity”.) There was no media budget either so we sent the invites out on fb and twitter and it was amazing coz literally hundreds of really hot Citybabes showed up straight from work. Everyone was rushing around and it was fully hectic and ECD was going this is awesome and he was videoing it for the Cannes entry film, and getting the chicks to hold up the product and say how incredible it all was. He reckoned the Cannes jury would want to “see a bit of flesh” so he got me to join in and secretly film them getting undressed and washing themselves and all that, which was a bit porno but kinda cool. We had the best night ever, and got totally trashed but ECD said that’s normal when you’re doing award-winning work. Sooo cool. ECD suddenly had a brainstorm and said we could win heaps of social media and CRM awards if we rushed back to my place and set up an fb page before midnight (coz it would look fake if it was after the event.) Everything was going really well until I accidentally uploaded all my behind-the-scenes footage. The next day the shit hit the fan and Talkback Radio went ballistic and now about two hundred Citybitches have joined this hectic Class Action against us and the Clients gone absolutely psycho coz she’s probably going to lose her job and the World Category Manager in Utah has banned the Sydney branch from ever EVER doing anything creative again. Oops!

Carpet DM!

OMG! Soooooo excited about my innovations for the Creative department. ECD asked me out for a brainstorm so we went to the Sticky Bar and sat on the ottomans away from all the randoms coz he wanted to explore ways Account Management can interact better with the creatives. He goes "Inga you work on the Coal Face (huh?) so you see the problems first hand." And to emphasize his point he touches my hand. I took a long slow sip of my cocktail. "Well", I said, licking the salt off my fingers and choosing my words ultra carefully coz Mum always taught us if you’ve got something to say it just say it and don’t blabber on, "the thing is that too much time is being spent going backwards and forwards between the creative department and the Suits and then backwards and forwards between the Suits and the Client coz the creatives get the brief and then do the work and then show the idea to a creative director who then turns it all down and says "forgetthatshit, do something cool" so the creatives then go and do something completely random and the creative director goes “awesome” then they show it to us Suits again and we all go "but that's not on brief" so we refuse to present it and by now the Client's leaping up and down going "where's that friggin' job I briefed in three weeks ago?" and so the creatives then go back to one of the CDs who goes "ok whatthehell just do whatever the Client wants" so they pull out the first gay thing they did and then I have to change it totally so I can present it to the Client who re-writes it and puts the logo exactly where I told the art director it should be in the first place and changes the headline to exactly what I said it should be!" ECD just stared at me and it was only then that I noticed his hand on my knee. "Thank you for being so honest. How do we short-circuit this insanity?" If there's one thing Mum taught me, it's that you've got to know when to seize today. She calls it Carpet DM (I guess coz she used to fold brochures for Rugs Galore on Parramatta Road) and it means you don't give a toss about what's right or wrong, you just go for it. Like the time our neighbour accidentally left his back door wide open when he was rushed to hospital, Mum yelled "Carpet DM!" at the top of her voice and clambers over the fence and borrows his new plasma before anyone else in Yagoona could get their paws on it. So anyway, I didn't brush ECDs hand off my leg straight away, but I said "how about we do it the other way round? Get the creatives to show their work to the Suits? And the Suits choose what to show the Client? That'd save all the stuffing around." ECD just stares at me. And then he goes “Would that work?” I just smiled and as I shrugged my shoulder strap accidentally slipped. Awesome timing. ECD pretends not to notice but then he calls the waiter over. "Another round of Loveguns. I think we’ve cracked it!” Woo hoo! I smiled to myself. Carpet DM!