Recession Boxed Set

Like most of the world, I’ve been thinking about the prospect of a recession. I suppose having experiencing three recessions so far in my life (the early 80s, the Lawson boom-and-bust, and the dotcom crash) I’m pretty philosophical about the present economic meltdown.

That’s not to say I’m not feeling the pinch or oblivious to the possibility of joblessness. The rewards in advertising are reasonably high, but you’re always insecure during a downturn. Marketing budgets are always the first thing that businesses hack back. And copywriting is the first thing that’s lopped off project budgets as marketers think they can do it themselves.

What has struck me each time a recession has arrived is the speed with which things go sour. It’s always a matter of weeks between everything being cool, with a few clouds on the horizon, to full-blown economic typhoon.

I remember being made redundant during the dotcom crash – just before 9/11. It was scary – two kids, mortgage, no job. I had a surreal day watching the twin towers come down on live television from my sofa. My friend Louis (who had also been laid off) was watching it too and I remember us talking to each other on the phone as we took it all in on Sky News, stunned by what was going on. It felt like I was living in a Godzilla movie.

Of course, the dotcom crash was a localised storm in a sense. Sure, investors got their fingers burnt, but it wasn’t the huge global crisis that we’re experiencing now. 9/11 proved to have a more lasting impact. Possibly contributing to the economic problems we have now.

So, having lived through a few, recessions do not surprise me. They do however always seem to surprise governments and big business. Now as much as I’m unsurprised that another recession has arrived, I wouldn’t have predicted it. You would, however, expect a better performance from the super-intelligent policy wonks and economic analysts who control our lives. The majority of these masters of the universe seem to get caught up in their own hubris until it’s too late. Every single time an economic crisis hits. Now that really is fucking scary…

Demons and Pitches

Apologies for the lack of posts over the last week or so – I’ve been involved in a pitch and between that, family and Devil May Cry 4, time has been at a premium. Mind you, most visitors to this blog are arriving via Google having searched for Conan the King and then going away disappointed when they discover that I’m talking about my old gym trainer. I therefore suspect my lack of posting isn’t causing much wailing or, indeed, gnashing of teeth.

On the subject of pitching, I think it’s my favourite type of work. You build a great camaraderie with your fellow pitchers as you all sweat to bang it out on time. The ridiculous deadline is attractive - the job is nicely, neatly finite. Another benefit is that you’re not constrained by crushing brand guidelines or, er, reality. In a way, the work is as good as it can ever be – before limited budgets and endless rounds of amends bite. Of course, you never know when your idea is going to sink like a battleship recycled from colanders, but that’s part of the fun.

Oh dear, I realise I’ve written a thoroughly positive post! I’ll be back to my curmudgeonly ways in the next one.

Panting Towards The Christmas Finishing Line

It's wrong to wish your life away, but I really am staggering on at work, desperate for Christmas to come. Oh, for a week of festive over-indulgence with not a single campaign brief in sight.

It's like being at the end of a marathon (not that I've ever run one, but bear with me while I let this analogy spin out): your legs are about to give way, you've had to shit yourself after 20 miles (do they sell incontinence pants for long-distance runners - 'Nike Skids' perhaps?) and you can feel your heart go all Douglas Adams. Yet you keep going, clinging to the thought of the finishing line.

In fact, I've been so keen for the festive season to come I've even been playing my 'Lovely Xmas' playlist at work. This has provoked mixed reactions, sadly. One habitually hungover account manager asked me to turn it down. I asked whether it was because she had a headache and she replied 'No, it's just shit music'. Bah, humbug indeed!

Best Bitching I've Heard for a While

One woman to another in the coffee bar this morning:

“She says she’s having a nightmare because she’s looking for a place in LA, yeah, been around 15-20 places; none of them were good enough. This is where you lose sympathy because they were fabulous houses and she’s turned her nose up at them all. And there was this one, which admittedly needed some work, yeah, because it’s kind of falling down a cliff, but she comes out and says ‘Oh no, I couldn’t – not with the kids.’ And I was thinking: ‘Right, like you’re such a good mother – where ARE the kids? They’re hardly ever with you…’”

World class, jetset bitching ahoy!

Creatives! Cartoon Part 3: Dress Sense

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Creatives! Cartoon Episode 2: Transport

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Creatives! New Cartoon Series from the Realm of Above the Line

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Advertising Agency Manners

Something occurred to me this morning as I got to the entrance of Saatchis shortly after a co-worker and found the glass door swung shut in my face. What does it say about the advertising world when I’m always mildly surprised when someone actually holds a door open for me after they’ve gone through it? Is it lack of manners, an endemic selfishness or is everyone immersed in their own world?

Charlie Brooker - Allied to C***s

I have been, along with everyone in the ex-AKQA diaspora, dabbling in the world of Facebook for a few weeks now. I usually check in once or twice a day and feel stupidly happy when someone puts a message on my ‘wall’. Coincidentally Charlie Brooker wrote about his social ineptness on Facebook in the Guardian last week. This is a good enough excuse for me to haul out my very own Charlie Brooker anecdote.

Many years ago, when the Internet was young and I was somewhat thinner, I worked at a (now defunct) new media agency named Zinc. Every week the creative dept. would look forward to the latest online TV listings spoof ‘TV Go Home’ written by Brooker. A series in the imaginary listings was ‘Cunt’, which was, ironically enough, about a feckless new media wanker just like us named Nathan Barley. Thankfully he was public school and had a trust fund, so the parallels weren’t too painfully direct.

Then one week the TV Go Home e-newsletter featured a link to the site of a man declaring himself to be the ‘Real Cunt’. He used this ego toss-space to boast about his agency work, film script efforts, gorgeous aristo girlfriend, not to mention the Notting Hill flat funded by Daddy. You get the picture. The idiot foolishly put an email link on his site. This tempted half a dozen of us to write abusive emails to the dolt.

My email was pretty reasonable – just asking him why he was proud of his similarity to a self-obsessed, ignorant, lazy, pretentious, venal Thatcher’s child arsewipe. I got an irate reply and a frank email ‘exchange of views’ ensued. Meanwhile we’d sent his URL to people elsewhere and sending him abuse went viral. He blamed me and it all got a bit silly, with him threatening lawsuits (I still remember the threat of ‘my dad’s a lawyer’).

It all culminated in an anonymous email arriving in his inbox (which eventually turned out to be from my friend John) describing all sorts of sadistic scenarios climaxing with the ‘Real Cunt’ ending up in a full-body cast and being anally raped by hospital porters. He pinned the email on me – again threatening legal action (I could have killed John when I found out he was responsible). He also took down his website, which was sensible really.

This was when Charlie Brooker stepped in and ‘flamed’ me in the TV Go Home newsletter. Here was the supposed enemy of cunts defending one! He even accused me of hypocrisy as the name Tristan sounded suspiciously public school! Oh, the betrayal. Needless to say Brooker lost a bit of cred with me after that. Not that he’d give a shit, the successful bastard.

Bowels Attack!

All too frequently in my life I find that important events are affected adversely by my bowels. In fact, I’m beginning to think that they’re conspiring against me. I don’t know what I’ve done to them to deserve this kind of treatment, but their malevolence knows no bounds. It’s like they’re out for some form of revenge.

Take today. Important client meeting. Wake up with chronic stomach cramps and make two unscheduled prostrate-pitstops before I’ve even made it out of the house. Make the hideous mistake of having a small coffee and spend the entire journey to work fearing that some kind of terrible pebble-dashing accident will occur.

Get to work, go twice more. Stagger into meeting. It lasts for two hours. I spend most of that time agonised by stomach cramps, worrying that the bomb-bay doors are about to open. The entire meeting is literally buttock-clenching.

I rush away after saying goodbye to the clients, desperate to ‘go’. Of course, because the gods like toying with me, the toilets on my floor are out of order. I dash downstairs and have to use the disabled toilet to let nature take its course. Jesus, I’ve never known relief like it.

The Tribe is Over

I emerged from the Saatchi & Saatchi ‘tribe’ yesterday, exhausted but still on a bit of a high. The very word ‘tribe’ makes you think of pretentious adland wankery, but the session was genuinely the best time I’ve had at work for ages. And this isn’t simply down to the free bacon sarnies laid on every day for breakfast.

Considering the number of creative team participating from across Europe, there was a surprising lack of ego about using each other’s ideas and seeing where we could take them. I say surprising because I’ve worked at some agencies where having ideas was a competitive process and the biggest, loudest ego in the room usually won out, even if their idea was shit.

Another interesting thing was how different countries have different styles of idea. For instance, the Italian team’s ideas were always poetic and surreal, while the Spanish ideas were based on very simple, direct insights. The Brit ideas were more about humour and a classic ATL lateral way of thinking that I really want to learn.

So, over all, no cynicism or bile from me. I was happy to be part of the tribe.

Tribe

Not a lot of blog, as I’m in a ‘tribe’ all day. If like me (until I had it explained to me last week), you’d never heard of such a thing, here’s a quick explanation. It’s a kind of Saatchi & Saatchi super-brainstorm in which creatives from all over the world get together to have ideas in one big session lasting three whole days. The thought of being in one of these inspires both fear and excitement. After all, if we Saatchi Interactive people have shit ideas or no ideas, I’ll be gutted. However, it’ll be a fascinating process in which to participate.

I’ll check back in to give my impressions…

No, not the BBC series Tribe with Bruce Parry...

Office Music Stereotypes

As a creative, I take it for granted that I’m going to work in an environment where people have speakers and are going to play music. Nobody did this at my last agency and I found the atmosphere to be duller and less relaxed as a result. It was, to be frank, like working in a fucking monastery. Even if you absolutely HATE what someone’s playing, at least shouting abuse at them provokes a bit of banter. And if almost everyone digs the music, the room gets a lift. So, in general, I see music in the office as a GOOD THING.

As with anything where a group dynamic is involved, you can observe certain common personality types emerge. Here are a few I’ve noticed…

The one playlist queen

I’m not being sexist here – it usually is a woman, simply because men are far more anal and likely to put new playlists together. She plays a single playlist repeatedly all day, generally featuring pop-bilge like Simply Red and Jamiroquai. The first time you hear the playlist, it puts your teeth on edge. By the time you’ve heard it continuously for 8 hours, your teeth are ground down to the roots and bleeding. In the end you wait until she’s away from her desk and cut the speaker wires.

The headphonist

Generally a programmer or an introvert creative. Silent and possibly psychopathic, they buy a new set of outlandishly huge ‘bins’ once a week, ‘cos they “DJ at the weekends, yeah?” They never play anything on their speakers because they want you to think that they’re listening to the latest Hoxton Twot-tronica, when in actual fact they’re getting down to the Cheeky Girls.

The 80s zombie

There’s always someone in the office whose musical evolution got stuck in 1987, like the Coelacanth of pop. OK, maybe Duran Duran sound better now than they did in the ‘good old days’ but when Stock, Aitken and Waterman’s oeuvre starts getting an airing, it’s time for a violent uprising. Rick Astley was never, ever cool, isn’t cool and will never be cool ever, no matter what kind of post-modern ironic outlook you take.

Desperate to impress Jimmy

This extrovert would-be Jimmy Saville puts together crowd-pleaser playlists for his fellow creative drones. Typically, they’ll combine post-modern retro favourites like ZZ Top with cutting edge New Rave buffoonery. Jimmy imagines everyone dancing around the office in ecstasy, but no one’s as impressed with his party tunes as they should be and he goes home alone to a warm bath and some razor blades.

Anyone got some more office music stereotypes?

My Desk at Saatchi & Saatchi Interactive

The random debris, the crap PC, the lovely view of Charlotte Street! Yes, it's my 'workstation' (as I believe desks are called these days) at Saatchi & Saatchi Interactive. I started out being all minimalist with a bare white desk, but, as you can see, that didn't last long. 80 Charlotte Street is considered a key symbol of Saatchi's heritage. I feel like an ASBO candidate moving in and lowering the tone.

New Boner Archive

I've put all the Boner and Spout cartoons in one place for the first time. Go and get some creative advice and inspiration now!

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IT Dept. Hell: I'm a Living Typo

My IT department appears to have a problem with my name. They started out by setting up my email address under the surname ‘Fitzpatrick’ (I suppose they thought if it was vaguely like ‘Fitzgerald’ it’d do – after all, they’re both Irish surnames. I’m surprised I didn’t end up with O’Flannigan). Now, with our migration to Lotus Notes, they’ve got my Christian name wrong. Apparently my name is ‘Tristian’. I pointed out the error to the IT guy when he came round to install Notes, but I have massive doubts over whether they’ll correct the mistake by the time we go over to the new email client on Friday. So I’ll either have to put up with having no email (it took a week to correct the last cock-up) or change my name by deedpoll.

You could say that it’s my fault for having a poncey name, but I can’t help what my mother chose to call me. I’ve been entertained by a dizzying array of misspellings or mispronunciations over the years. Christian, Tristrum, Tristran, Christan, Trixton. My water company thinks my name is Tristran Fitzgerlad. East Londoners have difficulties saying Tristan. My friend Louis from Romford, after 7 years, STILL calls me ‘Tristjian’.

Given this history of name typos, it’s hardly surprising that my IT dept. have got a bit confused. Thank god I’m not Sri Lankan – I’d love to see how they coped if my name were Sripathi Sooriyaarachchi.

Pitches, Carbon Footprints and the End of Civilisation

Today is being spent anxiously waiting for the results of a pitch we did yesterday. It was the worst kind of pitch, as it was via a pan-European conference call. Not only could we not see any reaction from our audience, but we couldn’t sure they were even following what the hell we were telling them. On the plus side, I suppose it’s going to have a smaller carbon footprint than flying everyone to the same place.

Mind you, I’m already getting sick of hearing about carbon footprints. I think it’ll be the expression that defines our woeful decade, as everyone goes on their carbon footprint getting smaller, as they carry on consuming as much pointless shit as ever and capitalism fucks over the planet. But at least they can feel good about themselves because they’re driving a fucking Prius.

Ah well, at least we won’t be hearing about it after the total collapse of civilisation. The only footprints we’ll be worrying about then will be those of cannibal barbarians as they pursue us through the ruins.

Captain Strategy - the Planning Avenger

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