WEEK 7: The Boss is Back

• Humour me
• July 14, 2018

We began this week by welcoming back our CEO from his two week long vacation. His return was commemorated with a three hour long meeting to discuss everything that had taken place during his absence.

The most immediate task this week was to create a presentation for a brand that had approached us to create a film for them. They’re brief was extremely basic – they wanted us to make a 3D animation film featuring their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) project. The film was supposed to take viewers through the features of this CSR project and include statements from the Chairman and other major stakeholders in the company. They wanted us to elaborate on how this film would look (which is what the presentation was for).

You might be thinking that this project sounds like a dreadful bore. You are absolutely right. If we stuck to the brief, I’m pretty sure the final film would spark very little interest in consumers. So instead, we chose to add a ‘Humour Me’ touch to it and bring storytelling into the mix.  I can’t go into too much detail because the project isn’t finalised yet, but we turned a standard corporate film into a fairytale involving a hidden gem in an uninhabitable land.

I’m pleased to report that the brand enjoyed this new treatment of the film. To be honest, we were a tad worried about how this treatment would be received. We were concerned that the brand would think that we played to the ‘small agency’ stereotype (the stereotype is that creative teams at smaller agencies only ideate while under the influence and therefore can be counted upon to consistently come up with ridiculously absurd and preposterous ideas).

In other news, we received a torrent of phone called from our Brand Servicing Head’s bank this week. He had listed the office’s landline as a backup phone number should they be unable to reach him. This bank proceeded to treat our office landline as if it was the Brand Servicing Head’s personal phone number. All week long we were constantly bothered by bank representatives demanding to speak to the Brand Servicing Head. Since the Brand Servicing Head is often in meetings, the bank would call our landline whenever they couldn’t reach him. And with each call they became more and more unprofessional. I answered the phone once and the representative on the other end ordered me to inform the Brand Services Head that he was supposed to call the bank. I assured the representative that I would, and since the Brand Services Head was in a meeting, I promptly sent him a message.

Ten minutes later the representative called again and when I picked up the phone she said (without any of the usual polite preliminary greetings), “Have you told him yet?”

I was not the only one whose patience was worn thin by this bank. Representatives were repeatedly calling and yelling at various team members. It got so bad that our CEO had to step in and only then did the calls finally stop.

I’m sorely tempted to reveal the name of this bank, but I will remain professional and courteous, and simply provide you with an extremely subtle hint – the bank’s name rhymes with ‘bye di bye di bye’

On Monday, the person in charge of Arctic Fox’s digital content promotion will be back from their vacation. If you recall, I have been doing their job while they were away. I’m very glad that this particular job will soon be off my plate. I was handling the publishing of micro content on Arctic Fox’s social media pages (Facebook and Instagram). The publishing part was not difficult, but creating a content strategy proved to be a real challenge. Those of you who know me will be aware that I like to create a plan and stick to it. Any last minute changes in plans causes extreme distress.

The content strategy that I had created for Arctic Fox was completely uprooted this week. Twice.

Those of you who know me can imagine my angst.

Needless to say, the person who is in charge of Arctic Fox’s digital promotion cannot come back soon enough.

See you next week!