We pitched for Arla Foods (Lurpak and Anchor butters) at the end of last week. It’s a big piece of business and we put in a lot of work over the last few weeks. Pitches like this mean working weekends and nights. The last night before the pitch tends to be an all-nighter. With lack of sleep and nourishment provided chiefly by dodgy takeaways, hysteria can set in when trying to assess creative work at around 2.00am. This is Stu and Chris taking us through creative ideas, at some point in the wee small hours of Thursday morning:

Jonathan and Sophie seem to like it:

KIm’s not convinced:

Most (but not all) of the team were home by 3.00-4.00am. A few hours kip, then off up to Leeds for the pitch presentation at the client’s offices. Boffey and Ben debate strategy on the train up to Leeds:

KIm chips in:

Waiting in reception to be called in to pitch. (Start was delayed, so this was a long period of nail-biting.)

We did the pitch. We were last on, following two other agencies, so I guess it had been a long day for the clients. With this in mind, we tried to keep the presentation brief. Though we were all tired, the adrenaline kicked in and it all seemed to go OK. We should hear feedback by the end of this week. Fingers crossed.

The train back down to London that evening. Relaxing with a few cans of Carlsberg and some crisps. Aah, the glamour of advertising. Now for a Big Sleep.

Do you work in one of those companies with an ‘all-staff’ option on the email? Funny how everywhere develops its own unwritten code about what is and isn’t OK to send to everyone (official announcements? Daft virals? Local news?) and for whom it is and isn’t acceptable to send them. One such instance arose within W+K recently, where a number of all-staff transmissions from one person, known henceforth as Mr X, elicited the following response:

Apparently it is time, once again, to teacheth the lesson.

Dear Mr X, there is a certain protocol for sending out the agency-wide e-mails. First, you must have worked here long enough. However long you have worked here, it is not long enough. Certainly, not long enough for you to send, what, five agency e-mails in the last week or so? Second, your e-mail must be very, very well received/entertaining. A subjective matter, no doubt, but this point is moot now since you severely fail to meet the first criterion.

You may be at this point thinking that you are reading a cruel and undeserved spanking. How far this is from the truth. (Mr X) boy, there was a time when by now you would have been beaten to a bloody pulp by dozens of e-mail enforcers, hung by an anti-"trying too hard" posse, shotgunned by acid-coated emoticons of birdshot. 😮

Yes, you are getting off much too easily, Mr. "Look at me! I can send an e-mail and now you’re all my friends! Hugs at my desk at 5:00!"

Will others join me in my condemnation of your undeserved freedom on the all-agency highway? Perhaps. Perhaps not. (Most often, it arrives in the form of "Who the fuck is Mr X?")

Time will tell. And rest your fingers, good man.

What do you reckon? Harsh? Fair? Funny?

For the record, Mr X came back with a pretty good one-liner:

I hope you’re an art director because your writing is shit.