There’s a hooting good collection of design-related overheards at AdVerbatims, and you’re encouraged to submit your own. I’ve never worked in advertising, but a lot of these sound awfully familiar.
[Via Graphic Design Bar, who got it from Veer.]
There’s a hooting good collection of design-related overheards at AdVerbatims, and you’re encouraged to submit your own. I’ve never worked in advertising, but a lot of these sound awfully familiar.
[Via Graphic Design Bar, who got it from Veer.]
A few favorites:
176- “I probably should have told you this in the beginning… I have a personal vendetta against standard serif typefaces. Can we redo the whole thing in Gill Sans?”
(Client, Administrative Director to Designer, hours before print run) Emphasis added. I know this is wrong, very wrong, but I find that a little bit awesome and hilarious if “personal vendetta” were the words actually used. Because I wasn’t on the receiving end.
184- “He still kisses his wife after he saws a guy’s head off.”
(Agency, Design Director to Client, explaining target consumer)
165- “10am meeting! I don’t even get up before 10am.”
(Agency, Creative to Account Executive) and #177 made me laugh, because I am 12. Fair warning.
These killed my soul a little:
157- “Thank you very much for the brilliant presentation. I am very happy with the work I saw and I am sure it will become a great campaign. But I want other creatives to work on it, because anyone who can do such good presentations cannot be a good creative.”
162- “What we give you is what you get.”
(Agency, Manager of graphic department, to a client) (Client, Marketing Manager in a mail to agency’s director)
143- “Quit asking smart questions and just do what the client says.”
(Agency, Account Executive to Copywriter, discussing idiotic changes to an ad)
Stinger:
140-“I am well aware that I continually screw you over.”
(Agency, President to Copywriter)
I’m probably a little more forgiving of people who don’t know technical stuff at all, but it is funny to chuckle about in the dept. I’m pretty sure a car mechanic would be in hysterics over anything I said. Or a copy editor, for that matter. My contribution:
“Excellent car. Runs great. Needs engine. $2000 OBO.” —customer dictating his classified ad. OBO=or best offer.
For example, a copy editor would probably look at my note for the first quote and direct me to the word “verbatim” in the website title.
Nice DrawMo badge in the blogroll, by the way. Consistent color scheme ftw.
I think the best possible thing would be if people in advertising started saying just the ID numbers of the idiotic comments they have to convey. For example, an art director could just say, “I’m sorry, Margaret; we’ve got a sixty-two on the Smith job. Could you take care of that, please?”
Indeed. Some managers :cough: could simply be replaced with an intermittent intercom announcement of: 140 . . . 140 . . . 140 (ad infititum)
010- “It’s very good! Very understandable. I showed it to the call center girls and they liked it, so it’s OK!”
(Agency, Account Executive)
Call center girls (wymyn) are arbiters of the cultural zeitgeist. Crawl out of your holes people.
Communicating at Cross-Purposes
While taken from real life conversation in an ad agency, I suspect these “overheard” snippets of conversation at advertising agencies will ring true to anyone working with clients on design [via India, Ink]. Sure, much like “stupid user” humor, the…