Great extract from a book called 'Adland' by James P. Othmer (a former creative director at Y&R) in Ad Age. It made me smile so I'm taking the liberty of reproducing a wee bit of it here for the benefit of those who don't read Ad Age.
"Being put up for review (of an account as the incumbent) is akin to having your spouse announce in front
of everyone you know that he or she no longer loves you and for the
next several months he or she will be seeing other people — dozens of
smarter, younger, cooler people, many of whom, by the way, you know
quite well — and then having all sorts of kinky, experimental sex with
the most interesting and promising of them, probably no more than six,
often doing many of the things that you may have once suggested but
were never allowed to.
Sometimes during this process your spouse will describe his or her
ongoing antics in excruciating detail for you. Sometimes you'll simply
read a steamy, anonymous, insider's account of it in the press. And
then, after up to six months of this, six months of holding your tongue
and continuing to do all of the dishes and dirty laundry and seeing to
the upkeep of the home you once shared, the children that mean so much
to you, you will finally get your chance to say — after I've given you
every ounce of my energy and passion for the last xx years, after
trying to rekindle better times with romantic weekends and couple's
counseling, after he or she has slept or flirted with just about every
one of your friends and neighbors, not to mention several total
strangers — "Here's how I've changed, sweetheart, here's why and the
extent to which I'm willing to publicly humiliate myself to win you
back."
At that point, if you were the client (or spouse) would you want to take you back?"
