C is for various c words

It is not my intention to be louche. Some words just propel me that way. Copywriter is one, naturally. But in the interests of all that is just and fair (that’s what’s known as a tautology, copywriters) (that’s what’s known as patronising, copywriters) I thought I’d place them in their proper position, which is as a footnote to Art Directors.

Consultant is another one, and you can approach my comments on it elsewhere around the blog provided you’re wearing an asbestos suit.

The main seaward is, of course, client. Begins with c, ends with nt and invariably there’s a lie in there somewhere. Or do you think I make this stuff up?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some good clients. And possibly you have had too. But I’ve also had some tremendously epiphanic bowel movements, seismic shifts that would bring tears to a glass eye, where choirs of angels could clearly be heard above the rustle of Friday’s Irish Times Ticket supplement (and what a jazzy title that Ticket is. So youth.) But let us not talk of unresearchably small sample numbers.

Clients exist to make the lives of the account executive, account manager (euphemism for a lost person) and account director a series of circles of hell. Usually the lowliest (that’s you, account exec) catches the hottest ring of fire. Their other function is to plot world domination (aka score a house with a D6 address) via the medium of FMCG marketing. FMCG, for any newbies who might not know, simply stands for Flimsily Made Corporate Guano. Shit that people buy, okay?

The Client (big C for emphasis) cannot bear the fact that they themselves are somewhere between the bottom rung and the second-from-bottom rung of the corporate ladder (marketing section), driving some shitbox French car and spending most of the time when they’re not driving it just sitting in it, wishing it was German and steadily going insane with the thought of the spam count building up back in the office.

Hence they make themselves feel better by flinging the crap at the junior in the agency, cos the agency has nice offices near proper shops rather than just Centra. (Still, what an amazing retail success, right? Oh yah. Ohmigod completely.)

But back to making life shit for the AE. Naturally the colour A5 leaflet for the door drop for the car sale for the third quarter has to be revised seventeen times because that’s how to keep them on their toes. And just because that little snot Tara got a job as a suit with Universal Suffrage straight from Aungier Street she better not think that having skinny ankles alone will get her to the top. Etc.

And while Client is flinging general agency shit at the hapless, so too is the Account Director and, if the agency is moribund enough to have one grazing somewhere in an office up a short flight of dead-end steps where no-one else goes, so is the Account Manager.

A quick aside (with expensive graphing) on Account Managers. I really don’t know what they do, I might as well confess right now. Years ago it seemed to be a good way to not promote capable female AEs. Seeing as most client service is now run by women, the ruse has apparently failed. The result is quite simply a graveyard of pulse-free suits who haven’t realised that their Big Jobs In Advertising corpsed along with their Frawleys loyalty cards some years back.

Never mind. The Client will find a way to fuck everybody over eventually. He won’t care that the South African location stand-in for a beach in North Dublin is shot on toilet paper instead of supersaturated 35mm just like Francis Ford Coppola used in Apocalypse Now. He won’t care that he’s raved about the poster, said it’s the best he’s ever been involved with, then rewritten your headline and finally tweaked (ie utterly changed) the picture. He still loves it guys! Terrific job!!

Ever wonder why the bins are so big in Creative? Still, as a nameless studio engineer* put it twenty years ago, it’s better than working. But for how long, my beautiful ones, for how long?

* Fr Noel Storey