My Worst Meeting - No TV this year

We once had a big blue chip client with a tiny little budget. They had fired us a couple of years before because they wanted to keep the business in the family. The marketing director prefered to give her media budget to her husband at a rival agency.

They reluctantly returned to us due to pressure from their HQ to honour the international contract. They didn't particularly want to work with us & we didn't fancy working with them. The meeting was never going to be much fun.

The GM was in the meeting and told us that as his budget was small we needed to be clever. However his media strategy was stupid. He wanted to support every brand in his portfolio with different media. Internet for one product, magazines for another....a little radio here, some posters there. TV was on the table, literally, as we were going to look at some commercials they had.

I wasn't in a great mood anyway as I was on my way to airport to see my father who was dying of cancer. I was therefore dressed very casually which didn't impress the little GM. We took an instant dislike to each other to save time. He even had a small moustache which is never the sign of a marketing genius.

My job title suggests that I should have an opinion of media. I therefore suggested that perhaps he was wasting his tiny budget by dividing it between all his brands. I humbly proposed that perhaps he might want to identify the product which responded best to advertising and put all of his money supporting that brand on TV. He disagreed.

I pointed out that TV was the cheapest media in Russia. He said that this was normal. I offered the opinion that "normally" TV was the most expensive media. He said that the reason TV was expensive in the USA was because America has a lot of TV stations.

I then had a better idea of how to invest his cash. As he was a small man, with a small moustache, a small budget & a tiny brain perhaps he should put the money in the bank & collect the interest payments. As a public company this would give the best return on investment for the shareholders. I then announced my need to leave.

As I walked past my foot caught on the TV cable & the television crashed to the floor. I couldn't resist saying; "I guess we won't be using TV this year."