Related Posts
More Posts
Bowl Leader
Had to wear it. 😂🤷🏾♀️
Conversation Starter
Additional Posts in Advertising
How do we measure OOH these days? Anybody?
Rising Star
Any fishies in new york have official snow days?
Thoughts on having PMs manage media teams?
Best (non-agency) company to work at in Boston??
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
OP your follow up is also wild to me. Personally, I’ve always looked at clients as the ones with the short term goals. “Gotta move that needle .0007% so I can get my bonus and bounce!”
Everything you’re saying is Bizarro World to me right now 😂
Uhhh, you’re the client, right? Sounds like CEO and Director need to remind them who has the pipes and who’s doing the effing plumbing. Creative elitists that refuse to collaborate because they place their positions up on a pedestal will be the first to die out.
We’ve had many high-level difficulties with this agency (I’ll spare you the novel), but what is driving me up a wall at the current moment is that they are incredibly difficult to work with, if not downright impossible.
At current, they are actively refusing to work with / communicate with anyone from our team EXCEPT for our Director and our CEO (seriously, in what world?!) who they know are both halfway around the world right now.
There was no catalyst for this communication model, they just believe this was aligned on sometime last week. It was not; nor would our CEO ever agree to that. Our Director has even told them as much.
Yet, every time the people on our team they are *supposed* to be working with have reached out to them, we receive a passive aggressive email back saying the team is heads down and everything needs to funnel through the Director and CEO. We’re basically losing an entire week of work here.
How is this real life?!
Trust me, I’ll be the first one to call out when my company is the problem (and they certainly have their moments), but it’s definitely not the case here.
@Havas1, thank you! I’ve been feeling like a total crazy person over this. Especially the Bizarro World part (that’s literally what I’ve been calling it too)!
Agency-side, I worked with many “creative elitists” and while often annoying (and sometimes funny), I can respect when someone has the experience/expertise to back up their work. And a strong point of view on WHY they’ve done something — whew, be still my heart! ❤️
But “creative elitists” is definitely not this agency by a long shot. They can never give us a reason for any choice they make when important questions are asked. Their UX isn’t holistic-designed and their UI looks like someone just did a paint-by number of actual wireframes, but only had two neon paints and some random stickers they found around the house.
Spill the the goss
Impatiently waiting for OP's story to publish, better be good 😍
On the flip side (and before this current debacle), our Director has said many times in the past that every agency he’s ever worked with has only looked at the short term, not considered the long term strategy of the company/brand/product. And our CEO has said that every agency he’s ever worked with has given him shit designs/work early on.
Those seem like the exception to me, not the rule. Am I crazy here or have I just somehow managed to only work at agencies that gave a crap / made an effort / put forward their best work from the start? Is my entire life a lie?! 🤣
Ughhhhh, that’s even worse!!! “Dude, come on, we already know it looks like shit just show it to us. The CEO is outta the office but you must be OUT YO GODDAMN MIND IF YOU THINK THIS TRASH LOOKS GOOD!” 😂 😝
@AD2 thank you! ❤️ That’s exactly what I said! (re: shit agencies)
Totally agree on longevity. Sadly, I had to move 100 miles for my partner’s career for the few years and there are no agencies here. Not much of anything here or I’d have left already.
You’re welcome. Thanks for making me feel like I’m actually not the crazy person in the room. I really want to share another story about the agency’s standpoint on colors, but I’m trying to hold back. 🤣
If this is not a professional advertising agency and they're involved in developing designs/marketing work, your CEO and Director are getting exactly what they deserve.
No, your life has not been a lie so far. You're just working with people/agency who are unqualified/incompetent for this business area (and/or also potentially some provincial little place somewhere out there on a power trip).
@AD2, sorry for the confusion.. what I meant by that is the type of agency I am working with is not an ad agency. It’s more like an IDEO. And the part of my company that they are working with (that I’m a part of) is not Marketing.
But LOL totally fair point. If we hired a non-ad agency and had them working with a non-marketing team and expected advertising/marketing output from that agency, we would totally deserve this! 🤣
Oh... You said you'd give a recent escapade in terms of marketing/advertising... So I thought a non ad agency is asked to do some ad agency stuff. They still sound incompetent/like morons who took some online courses. Honestly, just reading the stories is raising my blood pressure, LOL. Good luck with that!
I gently brought up concern about the design last week when the CEO asked me (I’ve been previously vocal about it to the Director). To which he then publicly questioned my experience working on design projects and said that all creative looks this bad early on.
🤯
OP, your CEO said that cause the dude has sadly never worked with actually good shops so he's basing it on his experience. I sometimes wish I worked with clients who thought that way, hahaha.
I don't know why you moved there but don't stay more than a year of you're the smartest person in the room this early. You're not learning from these people, sounds like. Anyway, thanks for sharing and for the laughs! XO
^ Your Director (and CEO) are at fault here! They're the only ones who can rectify this now...
Details?
This is not an advertising agency (nor is this a project related to my company’s Marketing department)... but for relative purposes, I’ll give you an example of a recent escapade with them in terms of advertising/marketing....
Gosh, impatient. I originally typed up a lot of background info, but it was too much. 😝
@AD2 haha thank you!
I was going to give background relating it to adv/mktg but it ended up being even more super long and confusing (and I decided it didn’t give my current grievance any more context), so I decided not to, but was too late to delete that other comment.
Not to cause trouble but an alternative rationale might be that your company has many voices that are prone to giving conflicting points of view.
I’ve been on many pieces of business where we knew the cmo or ceo had a vision and the people under her didn’t understand it. The result is that you do work to please the gatekeepers so you can get to the decision maker but, by the time you get there, the work isn’t what that person is looking for. Then, not only do you have to do it again-quickly, you’ve also made the ceo think you don’t understand her.
Or maybe they’re just a bunch of spoiled aholes