OMG! This guy called Lance, one of our regional ECDs, has admitted that he’s a drug cheat and all hell has broken loose!
It was at the global conference in Phuket last week, where all the top creatives from around the network show their best work and everybody presses “like” or “dislike” on their buzzer and at the end of the weekend one of them wins a Golden Thumb which is our new Network Award, plus the creative department get a thousand dollars.
ECD asked me to go along and show all our work because, as he says, “Inga’s got more creativity in her little finger than the rest of the agency put together plus she looks way better in a bikini and that always helps sway the judges” which was sooo cool (and true!).
Anyway, at the conference everybody had to show their five best pieces of creative work from last year, including at least one TV commercial and one social media campaign, coz our network’s new slogan is “We Get Dig It al” At first I didn’t get it but ECD explained to me on the plane that “we get digital” has a double meaning, meaning like we understand digital stuff (which isn’t really true coz most of the ferals in the Sydney office refuse to even work on any of my digital briefs because they are “lame”) but it’s also a pun on “we get it” meaning we’re cool and ultra-hip. We repainted reception with “We Get Dig It al” in giant red letters and put it on top of our letterheads, folder covers, business cards and briefing and strategy forms and all our other stationary.
Anyway, at the conference I got up and showed one of our scam campaigns for the Blind Afghani Lesbian’s Refugee Society that we entered into Cannes and all the award shows last year (ECD lied and said “It picked up a couple of things along the way” – even though it didn’t) and then I showed the mock-ups for my new shampoo How Itchy Is Your Scalp App (you shake your iPhone over your head and all this dandruff falls out – so cool!).
Anyway, everyone in the bar said they “gave me the thumbs up” but it wasn’t true because for the seventh time in a row this dude Lance, who’s the ECD of Bahrain, won again.
We were all chilling out around the pool later that evening and all the creative directors were going on and on about how unfair it was coz Lance always wins and nobody could figure out why. And then finally Lance admitted that the reason his agency was so good was because of drug testing. “We can’t get hold of anything,” he goes, “and if they catch you with something they chop off your hands or stone you to death. So nobody ever touches anything.”
The rest of the ECDs were completely stunned. Regional CCO choked mid-snort (it went everywhere, soooo embarrassing) and goes “You mean all your creative work is done drug-free?” and everyone was stunned when Lance owned up and confessed that it was. “Every single ad for the past seven years!” We were all speechless.
Afterwards, everyone agreed that that was cheating and Lance should give back all his gongs.
Inga Van Kyck is the pseudonym of a well-known female senior account executive, working undercover and incognito in one of Sydney's top ad agencies, writing an "insider" marketing column for B&T.
