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!