Offline Blog #2

Weird week.

Everything has slipped back by about a week, meaning things are more or less back to normal, just... off.

On the whole, it went well. Press Day was just stupid. There were spaces still to sell - nothing new there - but the Sales team were employing the most scattershot tactics I've seen in quite a while. Even that wasn't too bad, though, as it filled spaces.

Things started to to pear-shaped when the new guy - stop me if you've heard this one - made a late sale to a new client who had no complete artwork. What they had was an ad designed by an agency which they had declined... so we couldn't even use it as a style guide.

So the saleman directed them to an online 'style guide' thing our parent company has for advertising. So far, so good. They picked a style they liked, and I gave the job of setting it to myself, to guarantee that my staff wouldn't have to hang around when it all went wrong.

Because it did go wrong.

So very wrong.

In every way I knew it would, hours before it happened.

Let's break it down:

• New client, booked in for full-page ad, on the day after press.
• Materials supplied are text, images and a layout that we must not use as a guide because Client has rejected it.
• Client chooses library tempate.
• Client insists on seeing a proof.
• Production must not proof on Press Day
• Saleman insists that he's following Commercial Manager's instructions.
• Commercial Manager listens to Production concerns and ignores them, blinded by the pound signs, deafened by the 'cha-ching' of a sale he's been assured is good.
  
• Production agrees to send a proof based on layout selected by Client
• Client requests changes, which are made, and a new proof sent (my mistake, at that stage, it should have been approved or cancelled)
• Client request further changes, which are made, but the ad is then sent to press (at just after 5.30pm on the day after press) before the client sees a proof, in accordance with our procedures.
• I leave the office, while the Salesman is still on the phone to the Client, who is "not sure."

It's the classic situation. Sales assume that, if they've booked the ad, Production are obliged to deal with it, regardless of how far wrong it goes.

What they hadn't reckoned on was:

• It was booked the day after press
• They were supposed to be filling space and hitting their target, not wasting time doggedly chasing one particular sale
• Since it wasn't a press day, neither I nor my team were obliged to stay after 5.30pm

Shortly after I left the office, my boss called and instructed me to switch off my phone. This I duly did, making it impossible for the Commercial Manager to attempt to coerce me back into the office (he'd already tried bribing me with a Cadbury's Creme Egg, of all things, and had tried to get me and my Copy Controller to stay "for a few minutes" after 5.30). Sometime after I got to my flat, I called my boss on my landline to find out what had been going on while I was out of the loop.

Sure enough, the Commercial Manager had been going ballistic.

Equally sure, my boss had been pointing out the flaws in his flimsy argument.

By the time I switched my phone back on, I'd had a text message from him - supposedly meant to be an apology, but actually a grudging 'thank you' followed by an instruction.

The rest of Saturday was not exactly a blur of activity. I hadn't slept particularly well (though I did have a bizarre dream in which one of our Senior Designers, made redundant around this time last year and recently demoted to 'Artworker' in his new job, thought he was returning to the fold, and I took great delight in telling him he was not. He started crying uncontrollably, and the Editor he was sweet-talking did likewise, running off to a dark corner of the office and refusing to talk to me), so a good chunk of the afternoon was lost to a nap.

Sunday, by comparison, was much more fun - a day trip to the Birmingham NEC for the Spring Memorabilia show. The show, in and of itself, was a disappointment (as the spring shows often are) with a lacklustre collection of guests, many of whom I'd never heard of. The stalls were rather bare of anything new in the TransFormers line - most everything there is commonly available in the shops... though Memorabilia seemed slightly cheaper on average.

I did pick up a new T-shirt (because I have so very few already) from Retro GT - a scene from the end of level one in Salamander, where Giant Tentacled Cyclops Brain Monster is being attacked by the two good-guy spacecraft.

My companion gave me one of her Totoro phone charms - the number 6 (Totoro peering out from under a torn umbrella) since my birthday is in the sixth month. I gave her a late 'filler' birthday present, because the new TransFormers movie Bumblebee isn't available yet - a Viking Kitten from the Rathergood.com shop.

There were no diversions on the way home, as her stomach started playing up, but it was a pretty decent day out, with lovely weather. The NEC's little ecosystem managed to be warmer than London, where it's normally colder and frequently wetter, whatever the weather back home. This trip was also probably the first time we've actually had a good view over the plain of Oxford on the way out.