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12 Pages of Hell & a Map to the Center

Version: 22  |  Month: 4  |  Days Past Original Deadline:  110

I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve received an actual brief for a project in the last 2 years. 95% of my work starts out as speculative concepts, many of which go through 30 or so versions before being cancelled, or get put on hold for so long, the people wanting it in the first place, have forgotten, and won’t remember it until minutes before they actually need it. This is one of those. 

In January I was on one of many regular business trips and was in a meeting about one of these speculative projects. Though it had very specific requirements and filled a necessary gap, my intuition told me it would drag out until the end of time.

I began with my usual set of concepts and options. And as has become expected of me, I presented them within hours when any normal person with my skill set would take two days. Each of the four concepts quickly began to snowball and by the end of the week, I had a file with over 30 options inside even though it had a 10 day deadline. Silence for the next week. 

Someone must have mentioned it in a meeting, because at the usual time on Thursday afternoon at 3:00, I received a frantic email asking that it be finalised for Friday’s meeting. 

“Sure. No problem.  Just give me the content for each of the 12 pages, the missing images, and the approved translation and I’ll send it over to you.”

Silence for the next 4 days. 

“Just checking on the status of the brochure. Could you give me a timeframe on when we can receive it? We need to get this done urgently!”

Of course I now know how this is going to end but I decide to play along anyway.  “Which version of the concepts is approved? When can I get the following [insert list of items here] so I can rush this over to you?”  

Silence again. 

Now, either no one wants to own this project, no one knows what this project is, or no one cares beyond asking for its whereabouts to simply feel good about themselves and act like they’re doing something. I’ve played this game before and I’m quite good at it, so I choose my favourite of the 30 and expand on it, refine it a bit, add in text that says “insert approved translation here” on every page, in bold, red, underline, italics, and put watermarks over all of the “placeholder” images (yes, I have to do this because there have been too many times I’ve received a sudden approval and and urgent print deadline and it’s full of placeholders), and resend it to the group along with the copy and paste list of things I need in order to complete. Silence again. 

The next day, I get a call regarding another urgent project; a map to be exact. I’ve done maps before, and they’re an absolute road to hell...we even used to have a term for it...”Map Hell!” where we would put on headphones and you wouldn’t talk to us for a few days. You start with what is basically an engineers or an architects blueprint, you delete about 10,000 extraneous lines, icons, text blocks, electrics, plumbing, structural components, materials....etc etc etc.  In short it takes about 3 full days to get this document to a point where you can start making it look like a map with solid coloured blocks, consumer text, and laymen-friendly icons. And because I’ve not heard anything about the urgent brochure from days past, I focus on this for about 11 rounds of content changes. Lo and behold, someone informs me that this map is actually meant to accompany the brochure, inserted in a nice pocket in the back, and needs to have a legend on it that lists walking times from key points of interest. 

“How are you going on the brochure? When can we see it for review?”

At this point, I’m fairly fed up and so I simply resend the previous email. But, the two people that are asking me this, not the same person, are sitting in the same office. Sharing a cubicle wall to be exact. And yet they are both asking me for status on the same project, which is not managed by either one of them. Over the games at this point, I start a completely new email, attach both the brochure and the map, and send it to the original working group, and these two nitwits and all their bosses, and repeat my request for missing information. 

“Can you take out all the red text and the watermarks? It’s making it too difficult for us to review it. We get it that you don’t have it yet.” 

I wanted to say “you’re actually reviewing it? Because I’ve sent this 16 times already and heard so much as a mouse fart in return!” But, I comply, and resend to the whole group. A month goes by, give or take a working week or so, more items are added to the project list, speculative items with no content to support their existence, changes to the map and the brochure being made independent of each other, adding content, deleting content, rearranging content, waiting for photos, still waiting on translated copy, photos coming in one at a time over the course of a week or so, text being changed email by email, page by page, line by line, word by word and we are now on version 17. At this point I have all the images and all of the copy, and even the translation. So we’re back to changing the map, section by section, colour by colour, word by word, name by name, adding and removing physical structures that either are, or aren’t there but may be some day and should be labeled - and oh by the way can you come up with a name for this because we’re going to build it and it needs a name and it needs to be added to the map...a real big top circus and now, having caught up with each other, both items are on version 17. 

This cycle of stupidity continues until about 10 days ago when I received yet another round of text changes on both pieces. I revise both map and brochure, and send versions 17 and 22 respectively, now narrowed down to ONLY the project manager and her boss. Silence. Until today. 

“What is the status of the brochure and the map? Did we ever do the other items in the list? We need this for today’s meeting. This is now top priority!”

Top priority again? For the 15th time? Cry ‘wolf’ much? This time, someone else responds simply to tell me that “the attached is already finished and in production.” Really? My low resolution PDF went to production?  So I say “I’m assuming that means the map is done as well? (stupid question).” “I don’t know about the map. You’ll need to follow up with so-and-so when they’re back on Tuesday.”  The person who originally asked about these two items, jumps back in and asks how it was handed over to the team and was the text correct when it was handed over...etc etc...etc.  I at this point have lost my filter and couldn’t possibly care less what comes out of my mouth or through my fingers into an email and I respond very succinctly, “I have no idea. I sent low res PDFs last week after making the 21st round of changes and heard nothing back.” 

Attached latest version for your reference. 

“Take the walking time legend off the map. It’s doing nothing but slowing the project down.”

Really? The walking legend that never changed since it was inserted on round 1 is slowing the project down?  The walking legend that was specifically asked to be added and no one has commented on, or bothered to walk the space to gauge the time is what’s keeping this project at bay? Not the umpteen rounds of change coming in granular bits and bobs or the days of silence between urgent rounds of revision with no response to my asking what the actual f*ck is happening? The legend is holding us up!  I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! Why didn’t I just delete it in the first place and speed the whole circus of shittery up! 

“Done. Revised attached.” 

Silence. 

The following Monday, like a bad case of herpes simplex, I get an email regarding the brochure saying, “please create the final artwork for this so we can begin production.”  So it wasn’t finished after all?  You mean you didn’t go to production with my low resolution PDFs as previously stated? Mystery solved I guess. 

Summary: 

If anything, this job has given me a keen ability to predict the future, even if it’s only the near future.  Next week on Thursday, at 3:00 or 3:30pm (as per usual), someone is going to tell me that there are changes on the brochure that has supposedly gone to production twice. This will of course, be urgent. In addition to that, the map will need to be changed significantly, and there will be a second version of it added but only after the first is revised and supposedly sent to production, also needed by Friday but no one will respond until Monday afternoon...as my favourite comedian Billy Connolly says, “the demands will all be changed by then, so f*ckin stay awake!”

...and in my perfect world of worlds, my response will be....silence. 

[brand-f-ckery-blog]

I Have to Start Somewhere...

I’ve put this off for far too long.  I’ve wanted to document the daily circus that I call a job for 11(ish) years...in hopes someday someone might actually read it, find it funny, and tell me “hey, you should turn this into a book” or by some miracle of the universe, “hi, I’m a television producer and we’d like you to turn this into a series!” at which point I could just put my company phone and ID into a FedEx envelope along with a nice letter and post it from wherever I end up. 

I can’t exactly say why I didn’t start sooner.  I suppose I kept hoping that one day, things would change and I wouldn’t have to vent my job frustrations to the entire universe and that by some will of the gods, I would be focusing on writing the endless number of hilarious short stories I have in my head. I could say that my excuse was that I wanted to improve my writing more by reading more, but the more I read, the more I realise, who cares how great or how shitty my writing is. That’s what editors are for, and if it’s truly terrible, I can just continue to trudge along like this; or if it’s actually any good, someone will take my money and make it better—good enough to make said money back and even some surplus. 

I could also say, truthfully, that the sheer volume of utterly stupid things that pass in and out of my working life every day has made it impossible to pick a starting point.  Do I start at the beginning of it all and hope I can remember back that far? Somewhere in the middle where memories are still clear? Or just pick a day when the circus is on a particularly high note and start from there? I’ll go with the latter, and if my dreams of being an actual writer ever do come true, I can always plug in a flashback where applicable, or on the off chance I feel inspired to write and nothing has happened that particular moment. 

Just so you know what you’re getting into by reading this, I’m a Creative Director in the hospitality and entertainment industry. I work in-house and am the one and only global branding person in a company of over 50,000. You might note that the current title; “Works in Progress...Sorry For Inconvenienced Cause” is in broken English.  Purposefully so, as I’m based in Asia and regularly criticised by peers that my “English is not correct.” It’s far from perfect, but at least I can get my tenses and possessives right. At the risk of being discovered, fired, and deported, I’ll just leave that topic for now. 

My job used to be fun (about 8, maybe 9 years ago). I worked with a great team of talented writers and designers and we produced brilliant, award-winning work. Now, I churn out cookie-cutter creative like an airport vending machine—none of which I’m proud of, none of which I would dare show to a potential employer in my industry, and frankly, none of which I care how the end product looks like because when you’ve reached version 26 on revisions to an approved concept, it looks nothing like the ‘approved concept’ and nothing like the artist who created it.  You pay peanuts you get monkeys. You give me two hours to do a project that normally takes 12, it’s going to look like 2. You revise something enough times that even you can’t recall what was the goal of the project, and you’ve got the dogs breakfast. 

Having said all of this, I’m making the official statement—I’m a disgruntled, overworked, underpaid artist who’s given up on visions of grandeur and only takes pleasure in laughing at other people’s bad advertising, bad grammar and typos, watching people scramble who’ve sat on an urgent project until deadline, and yet manages to love every moment of his life outside of the office.