Account sucks

In my heart and liver I feel that I am ‘a Creative’. One can differ whether I am a good one or not; but most creatives are insecure, so whatever. But: I have worked as ‘that girl from Account’ for one and a half years. I wasn’t very good at it, but it did give me a different and useful perspective on my beloved Advertising World. Here it is: Being an Account person sucks. Big time. Because you can NEVER do well. You ALWAYS do something wrong. 

It’s like being a chameleon on a CMYK-rainbow. 

Of course, there are some exceptions to my eloquently formulated rule, but for an inexperienced AE, life can be tough. Unless you work at an amazing agency, for that matter -which I obviously did, because I still miss all of them.

First of all, you have to deal with the Clients. These are the ones that send you =URGENT!!!!!!!!!?!!!!!:-)!!!= emails at 8 am. They throw you the balls in the morning, when you are most unlikely to catch ‘m. They are not always nice people, too. A bit rigid. And they are usually too busy to say “Hello Marleen” at the start of that email. They just start with blaming their own career fears and flaws on you – first thing after your windy 30-minute bike ride in a skirt. Luckily for them, nowadays you have signature-options at the end of every email, so I must admit; they did always wish me a nice day. Which is awesome.

Another thing that drives you crazy as an Account; Clients work with strict ‘budgets’ and ‘targets’. Most of the time these budgets and targets are incongruent. And targets can lead to tunnel vision. And tunnel vision means crying in the bathroom during lunchtime. But, sometimes they do see the bigger picture. And that is like going to Disneyland with enough money to buy all the snacks on the carts. But that’s a rarity.

Enough about them. Have a nice day, dear Client.

Then you have the Creatives. I almost always agreed with them on projects and views and strategies, but they do not generate my income or job. The Clients do. So. There you go.

I said almost always. See, some Creatives are borderline lazy egocentric asses. They sometimes do not want to be bothered by something they cannot win lamps, spiders or other weird-shaped prices with. And thus they will just say: “Can’t you do it yourself?” Well. I wish, dear hunky-funky Creative Person. I wish… But I have an 8-hour meeting I have to attend to make notes on what was said during those 8 hours.

Next in line, you have the Traffic Department. I am not going to say anything about the Traffic Department. I want to keep them on my side for the rest of my dear life. Producers and Designers rule almost always. They have candy-jars.

And then – to end this shitty piece of unsolicited complaining about the quandary of Account – you have the Financial Department. To them I just want to say: keeping track of the agency’s work-hours in a software-program that takes a freakin’ work-hour to load all the projects SUCKS MONKEY BALLS. I just want to go home at the end of the day and watch Mad-Men.

So what I’ve learned from being ‘that girl from Account’ is the following: Advertising certainly has its players. I am all for the exciting game playing between them, but please take the struggling hard working Account into account while you’re at it.

ADCN 2012. “Wow”.

I love the ADCN Award-night. I really do. I think it’s awesome. It’s just pretty sweet to watch really nicely dressed-up people with little spots of red wine on their white shirts and smeared out lipstick on chins and bald heads. It’s fun to see. And participate in, obviously. Because I didn’t wear red lipstick for nothing. It’s important to have a strategic plan once you’re in. First, I always befriend the photographer. So he will re-do my picture at least 3 times, until I am satisfied with the result. Cause –damn it- there is a lot of serious competition out there. Secondly you should aim for the bar right after.

After I tackled this, I settled myself comfortably in the theater. The friendly ADCN people had placed a bottle of water on my seat. Which was very nice. I’ve saved it for crisis-time. Of course, apart from getting your picture taken in fancy clothes, even if it’s a rental, the ADCN is the acknowledgement and celebration of the creativity in the Dutch Advertising industry. And that is important.

I’ve noticed that the award show is getting more International. The Dutch awards were presented in English, by a Spanish guy, famous for doing the same thing for that other big award show in France. The spoken languages of the evening were an exotic mix of Dutch, English and some very inventive ‘Denglish’. Or ‘stone coal English’ as we Dutch people would say in Denglish.

I saw some really, really nice work this year. I could go on and on about the work, but I won’t, just because it has been covered extensively.

After the show it was time to get lost. Seriously lost. Which was an easy thing to do in the cellars and hallways of the ‘Concertgebouw’. It resulted in some intensive ‘where the flipping fuck r u’ texting. But eventually everybody found everybody else at the party in the basement. That dancehall dungeon was where I became rather unattractive for the photographer. Going by the temperature, the party apparently had a sauna theme. Which didn’t go to well with the black tie dress code. It was hot. People were sweating-up their rented tuxedo’s to the point of no deposit return. Being in a strapless dress I mainly had a sweaty upper lip and beer on my tits.

We danced, we sweated profoundly, we congratulated and patted each other on the shoulder, we cuddled with Golden Lamps, we sweated some more, we drank steamy beers, we peed in the bathrooms that became unisex: We had fun. We were young. It was a Thursday!

At the end of the night, I realized I hadn’t seen the photographer in over an hour. I found him sitting on a bench near the exit. He looked really tired. When I asked for yet another picture, he said his ‘battery was dead’. Honestly, I think it was for the best.

Smokers Suck

About half a year ago I gave up being a smoker. Apart from the fact that for a while a lot of things seemed to trigger a great sense of aggression – like crammed trams, hard-to-open cans and small dogs – it feels great not to be smoker anymore. Especially at the moment, for as I am writing this in California. In California they treat smokers as the enemy. They treat them as criminals. Cold-blooded killers, even. I won’t get into detail on the extreme bans of the butts in social life, but I do want to talk a little about the anti-smoking campaigns that you are forced to watch forty-seven times during a Judge Judy rerun.

Of course, the US has always been the number one nation in the world for advertising to its people what horrible diseases and disfunctions one can get. But with smoking California has gone mad. Don’t get me wrong; I am all for the fact that in California they create policies to protect the public from the deadly effects of tobacco use and second-hand smoke, and encourage other states and countries to do the same. But just don’t give off a message that it is ok to think of smokers as criminals that can be yelled at.

First off, there is this – rather beautifully shot – ad on TV that tells us that smokers kill not only themselves, but that they also kill animals. This because when you throw your butts on the streets, it will leave toxic material on the ground that will KILL ALL LIVING ANIMALS. How dare you smoke, smoker?!

Also, this toxic waste will eventually end up in the water we drink and our children will DIE. So, if you smoke, you kill yourself, a bunch of animals and some sweet innocent children that will be born 35 years from now.

Then there is this TV ad that shows children telling when and how much they smoke. Because, when you, you sorry excuse of a parent, smoke, your children will smoke just as much. Even if you step outside. Even if the kid is at school. “I am up to two packs a day”, says the little toddler. Come on – you ain’t smoking shit, little man.

Ads like this have led up to a huge aggression towards smokers. People feel it is not only ok to frown upon the smoker, but also yelling and swearing at them is totally fine, with an occasional punch in the face. The ads make it ok to bully smokers. It is never ok to bully anyone. Even the ‘hedonistic squirrel and baby killers’.

I could only imagine what will happen when the cigarette battle has been fought and won, and these hardcore campaign sponsors move on to the next serial killer: a fat ass. It’s a public health risk. So is the sun. It’s been giving good, honorable people skin cancer for years! Let us bully the shiny smiley face right out of that sucker.

Onward, troops!