As I’ve said before, I’m working on a brand launch right now. We’re being tasked with coming up with the messaging, accompanying visuals and branding and some tactics for executing these. We had a creative review of sorts that involved the client last week. Afterwards, it was rather obvious that we weren’t very close to what the client was looking for and that we would have to go back to the drawing board, and it seemed obvious to everyone that the creatives had to come up with this big idea in order to make a splash.

However, I disagree with this. If you want to create a big splash, you need people who are marketers to put their heads together, and smart marketers can be creatives, they can be strategists, account managers, technology people or anyone else that works on these campaigns. It seems that traditionally, strategy and account will lay the framework and do some of the critiquing later, but won’t offer much in terms of their creative ideas. I’m trying to effect some change by being proactive about offering up my creative marketing ideas, so we’ll see if anything happens there.

I have a friend who is a media planner at a big-ass ad agency just like the one that I am at. However, unlike me, she is utterly devoted to her company and for some reason thinks that it is the Harvard of ad agencies. “I’m very focused on my career,” is what she tells me. She believes that if she stays there and does her job, she’ll slowly climb the ladder until she has an office and some long title.

I want to tell her that mega-ad agencies are lifeless creatures that hardly care about your well-being and that they’d kick you to the curb if the account that you’re on (which, she doesn’t even have any client contact on mind you) goes south. However, dashing a poor girl’s dreams like that might be a tad evil.

The company I work for has apparently purchased interactive shop ZAAZ in order to beef up their interactive and analytics capabilities. This is exciting. I regularly read Jason Burby and Shane Atchison’s analytics columns in ClickZ.

My title is so low on the totem pole that I’ve decided that it should be omitted from my e-mail signature line. I’ve recently been given some responsibilities acting as liasons to other agencies and my contacts at these other agencies have long titles. How can I command any authority with a rinky dinky title in this current environment. So now, I just have it as “account services”

If you’ve worked at an ad agency, you most likely have seen people running from one place to another because of some urgency. Well, I never run to catch a train, and I certainly am not willing to break out a sweat just because someone wants something done quickly.

I’m working on an acquisition e-mail project, which let me say is extremely small on my client’s radar. He really barely gives a damn about this thing. Anyway, just before I send it to my client, this internal strategy department guy decides that he needs to take a look at it. He requests 2 minor but valid changes and asks to see it before it goes out. This gets on my nerves, but I’m like whatever. The changes are minor (just a matter of changing wording slightly), so it doesn’t worry me that the creatives can’t get to it before I send it out. I don’t really expect to hear back from this client for a while because of some personal reasons on his end, and also because this project is so low profile for him. That was yesterday.

You would think that a strategy director would have bigger issues to worry about than a small bit of wording on e-mail creative. Oh no. So today, I get this one line e-mail from him (CCing the world)…

What is the status on the revisions?

I’m just ignoring that one. If he has a problem with the way I work, he can go to my boss.

You can more or less guess what everyone’s level in the hierarchy is at this place by their age. The AEs are all the same age, the Account sups are all the same age, there isn’t a VP under 40 and the SVPs are 45+. That infers that one’s level of responsibility is tied to the number of years of experience they have. Now, do I want to work here for 20 years before I have a long title? Fuck no.

We’re planning a pretty big campaign for my client. The only people on the agency side who have client contact on this project so far are several layers above me. They want to create “a big splash” around a particular announcement. It will be centered in New York City.

We get into a brainstorming to talk about ideas for how we can create the buzz. Ideas that get traction are those like, covering storefronts with branding, branding buses and taxis, sending gimmicky packages to our target audience. You get the picture - branding, display type media. All stuff that’s very dismissible.

I voice my opinion that we should do something that people can get really engaged in rather than just dismiss. I propose a game, perhaps a scavenger hunt, with offline as well as online components with nice fat prizes and they can play with their colleagues. The client has millions to spend on this - why not give away prizes. Games are engaging aren’t they? Once you start playing it, you’re not dismissive of the messaging. And if it’s a cool enough game, you tell your buddies about it, and they get involved as well. Now, does it get considered? Nope. Not a single comment. My interpretation is that these people have display media so ingrained in their heads that the thought of engaging people, is well, very dismissable.

So what am I gonna do now? I’m certainly not going to let my idea die that easily. I plan on engaging the SVP who works on this project and basically tell her my story of why not to do display and why we should focus on engagement. If I get dismissed again? Well, then I’ll stop.

I’ve found this to be true at other large agencies as well, but because of the hierarchical structure, you end up with a lot of people with inflated egos who want a say in everything. However, it’s impossible to get projects moving if you have to wait to get feedback from every single person.

I’ve been getting some flack internally on a project I was assigned to 2 days ago because I’ve been making decisions without higher-up, egomaniacs. Is my job now to make sure that everyone with a long title is allowed their 2 cents? That’s not a job I’m willing to do. I set creative development time to 2 weeks knowing that the creatives could hit it, but then the CD e-mails my boss saying that it’s not enough time for him to review it. God. Get over yourself.

Then I propose a small task force to cut down the number of items on a brainstorming list (it’s currently at 40), and then I get a strategy egomaniac who hasn’t been involved in the project telling me that everyone should be involved. Guess what. This project has to move, and if we want everyone’s opinion just to cut down a list, it’s going to add 3 days.

Usually, what drives people to get disgruntled at work leading to job searching are one of the following things - too much work, a boss who you don’t see eye-to-eye with or a client who drives you crazy.

However, at this point for me, there’s only one thing that makes me not want to come to work in the morning - a pesky co-worker who is the same level as me, but is like a thorn in my side. Kind of weird huh?