The Stench of Defeat

Yuck!!! What an awful smell! It’s the kind of smell I have right now in my office. It’s so strong and suffocating.
No surprise though…
My latest creative team was formed barely 2 months ago. The formation is me as the copywriter, Gede (a recent addition) as the AD, Rahman as 2nd AD and part copywriter, Arief as Graphic Designer, and Daniel (another recent addition) as AE. All of them have had previous working experience in advertising so you can’t say they are all green. But all of them except me and Arief are new to Metro Dept. Store (the brand we are working on), and Arief hardly have anything to say about creative concept.
Well the first job we set out to do was creating a Christmas campaign for the client. Supposed to be a fun job right? WRONG!
As it turned out, they didn’t like any of the idea we presented and they’ve got themselves a bunch Santa decoration for the store, so what ever creative idea we have for the print ad must have a Santa in it. The problem was we did the Santa thing for last year! And last year, me and my old team had come with dozens of Santa layout so for me basically it was a spent idea.
But hey, what’s life without its little tortures right? So we tried a bunch of new layouts, which they all promptly rejected, before finally deciding to try one. But that’s not it, there a still a bunch of other materiel to developed including radio commercials. To top it off, we also have to present materiel for later promotion such as year end clearance, big sale and Chinese New Year. And from that moment on, we had to fight up hill against the usual problems and some, like uncertainty of the promotion details, deadlines, schedules, the bureaucrats in the office (both my own and the client’s), the general economics (oil prices rocketing sky high), the client’s declining sale and their busted sale schedule and many more, only to be defeated in every step.
First our other materiel (there were supposed to be 3 different layouts) was turned down, so were my radio script, and the ideas for future promotions. I for one haven’t slept soundly for a month.
The knockout blow was delivered today. After a problematic photo session, the final layout was rejected and the clients ordered us to used last year layout! F$%*!!!!
All of our hard work and the client’s money wasted down the drain. I don’t wanna do it, but I’m sure some finger-pointing will soon follow...
No wonder it stinks around here!