They all knew the idea was absurd.They also knew to keep their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves.
They managed to discuss the project with straight faces. There were serious billable hours at stake.
Nobody at the Fortune 500 Company or at the ad agency to which it assigned the project knew who had come up with the idea. Too much Adderall in the executive dining room, maybe. All anybody knew was that group managers with track records were allowing it to go forward.
R and D presented to brand managers, research analysts, media planners and creative directors who in turn put teams in motion. Logos were developed, TV scripts that were brought to life by ‘down-and-dirty’ animated storyboards sweetened with original music.
When competing approaches was exposed to focus groups, the cat owners of America sniggered. Despite hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, there was no hiding the fact that marketing a breakfast food for cats was a fools’ mission.
A senior executive from the agency, desperate to exercise authority without weighing in on the merit of the project, singled out a copywriter for spelling “edible” on a presentation board. That’s wrong, she asserted to an overflowing conference room.
What makes this small event worth mentioning is that the White House put this same executive in charge of a messaging campaign to make nice with the widows, orphans and refugees whose lives we destroyed when we invaded their country.
She didn’t know any more about the Iraqi people than she knew about cats — none of us did. When she was met with signs in the Green Zone that she couldn’t begin to understand, she was confident that the words were spelled wrong.
