Genuine customer email to Arla about our Cravendale campaign:

What the hell are these Cravendale adverts all about? Were you all high when
you dreamt up this stuff?  You have some guy that likes to ride a bike living with a pirate and a cow. What kind of a household is this? Are the cyclist and the pirate a couple? Is the cow their pet? What is going on here? Are these people employed? Your protagonists appear to live on a farm, but I fail to see how cycling or piracy might adequately equip a person with the skills required to successfully run a farm. To find out more, I contacted five farmers and asked them. Three of out five owned bicycles, but none could think of a way in which this aided their farming. Not one of them had ever dabbled in piracy.
And since when did cows drink milk? This simply doesn’t make any sense.
What’s next for your advertising team? Maybe they could promote pork products by showing us a pig tucking into a bacon sandwich.
A more troubling aspect of your ‘last glass’ advert is that the moment the pirate wakes up he screams ‘Milk! Milk!’ This is patently a sign of addiction. This view is supported by the events that take place in your new ‘out of stock’ advert where the unavailability of milk at the local supermarket drives your characters to hijack a delivery van in order to obtain their lactose fix. Is it reasonable that the pursuit of milk should turn people to criminality? I for one do not think so. All you need to advertise milk is a celebrity of some sort with a big smile, a white ‘milk moustache’ and an empty glass in front of them. What could be more wholesome than that?
                  
Yours sincerely,

xxxxx

Well, we do say that we ‘re here to create ‘strong and provocative relationships between good companies and their customers’. Job done for one Cravendale customer.

This morning’s Metro front page story was about a study linking stress at work to heart disease. (The juxtaposition with the picture of Heath Ledger, found dead after an apparent drug overdose, is an unfortunate coincidence.)

Work-related stress is the biggest cause of working days lost through injury or ill health, according to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). (What, even more than hangovers?) It apparently loses UK industry more than 13 million days a year at a cost of £3.7 billion annually. Between 30% and 60% of absence is thought to be stress-related.

Cynics might say that this is because it’s easy to fake stress to your doctor to get a sick note. Tired? Fed up of your job? Hate your boss? Feel you need a break? That must be ‘work-related stress’. Of course, I would never suggest such a thing.

The article got me thinking about stress in the advertising industry. You hear much more talk about stress these days than you used to. There’s no question that we are sometimes under pressure to deliver for our clients, and that the industry in general has become much leaner and harder-working, which puts pressure on people. But are our working lives in this business really “stressful”? It’s not like working in a hospital or on a trawler or an oil rig where lives are at risk if someone makes a mistake.

Here’s a test I found – ask yourself these questions to see if you might be experiencing work-related stress:

I take work home most nights of the week and / or at weekends
I think about work problems at home
I voluntarily work long hours
Work affects my sleep
Family and friends complain that I spend too little time with them
I frequently talk about work at home and with friends
I find it difficult to relax after work
I find it difficult to say ‘no’ to requests to undertake additional work
I find it difficult to delegate
My self esteem is largely based on my achievement at work
I report directly to Tony Davidson
I work on the Woolite account

Yes to one or two = you may just be dedicated to your job. Yes to more than four = you may appear obsessive about work to others. If you answered ‘yes’ to either of the last  two, consult a doctor at once.

What do readers think? Are you stressed at work? Does it make you ill? Do you blame your agency or the state of the business in general?