To Market, To Market

Part One: Oh, it Hurts!
Wednesday, October 12, 2005

So, I’m meeting with these two advertising guys who are in our office for a while (occupying the empty office in our little agency) over lunch. I’m trying to act reasonably professional — as professional as people in creative professions get — to give myself some kind of credibility.

It’s taco salad today in our café downstairs, so that’s what I’m eating. So, I’m representing to these two ad people and a shard of nacho drives itself between two teeth and into my gum like a railroad spike. God, the pain! I kept my composure and I don’t think anyone noticed, but I’ve been trying to dislodge this thing for 10 or 15 minutes. What I wouldn’t give for some floss right now!

And then I changed the magenta cartridge in the color printer. What a busy day!


Part Two: I Can’t Take Much More of This
Thursday, October 20, 2005

… I’ve been listening in on a creative session for the past four hours. How you take Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, throw in Nazis and a spider, call it an African parable and make it come alive dramatically, I can’t fathom. I think they’re going to blindfold the audience, too.

And these guys are taking it all far too seriously. What gets me is that if I were part of the project team, especially in a creative capacity, it would have my buy-in, too. I’d be all about it. Blindfold the audience? Sure! Illustrate the African parable with a poem read in French and Chinese? You bet! Back it all up with an hour-and-a-half PowerPoint presentation to tell the audience why what they just saw was so important? Of course! (Now, explain the Nazis again ...?)

Ahhhh ...! Experiential Marketing at its finest. My head hurts.


Part Three: How to reframe the current paradigm into a new model ...
Friday, October 21, 2005

Those guys from yesterday are back again with their jargon and buzz words. I can’t type fast enough or I’d tell you what they are saying. I have learned that, “[Atlanta] is a radically different world in terms of ethos …” Which appears to be a way of saying we have more black people here than Minnesota.

I hate this project and all it stands for. I want a drink.