11th Hour

There’s a lot of things I’ll never understand. The below scenario is just one of them.

Background: Strategic Planning is done EVERY year at the SAME time. For the most part, the timelines and order of events are the SAME. The fact that you have to put together a major presentation for #3 in the entire corporation is no surprise. We’ll call this person God as he can make the President of the company start jumping with a single word.

Setting: Friday at Noon. All members of your team receive an urgent email and phone call (gasp, a phone call! That email must be uber important). Contents of Email (signficantly paraphrased to protect the innocent): We’re presenting to God on Monday morning. That presentation we told you wasn’t due until the end of next month? Yea, we need that by Sunday. It needs to be the final, perfect product complete with 2008 creative examples and semi-complete examples for 2009.

My immediate thoughts: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??!!! FUCK YOU. There is no way that God sent you a meeting request on Friday for a Monday morning meeting of this caliber. You’ve had that meeting on your calendar for weeks. You’ve basically done jack shit for the meeting and are now screwed. So, who do you turn to? Oh yes, the Marketing Department. You know, that department you blame for EVERYTHING that goes wrong and turn to EVERY TIME you need something.

Boss’s response: Uh, my kid just got sick. I’m going home to take care of her. Just send me everything to review when you guys are done.

Team’s response: Hey, since you’re the copywriter and completely anal about editing and formatting, we’re going to give you all our stuff to put together. You know, on top of the portion you have to do. Oh and by the way, since you’re so good at bullshitting, we’re going to send you along with Person in Need to present to God.

Setting #2: Friday at 6:15PM. Phone Call from Person in Need (again, paraphrased for protection): So, we’ve decided that we need your final, complete presentation by tonight aka we’re moving your deadline up 36+ hours. Yea, we realized that maybe we should practice and look over this thing before Monday. You’ll need to come in all weekend to practice, make additional changes, etc.

Conclusion:

1. We put some CRAZY COOL shit together for this presentation.
2. The Interactive stuff is at least 75% of all the marketing stuff (gotta love how marketing has shifted).
3. It’s perfectly formatted. So perfect, that Person in Need reformatted the other portions to match ours.
4. I’m very concerned about what to wear; will definitely have to get a new suit for presentation to God.