Traffic is one of the least known & yet most important departments in an ad agency
It doesn’t even get a character in Mad Men. Actually it does; it’s Joan
At its simplest traffic is the logistical function of getting the physical elements of our work to the publishers & broadcasters. Be it glossy spreads for Cosmopolitan, jingles for radio, short colour video for TV or black & white epics for cinema ... they handle it all ... we even did flyposters for the launch of Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys
All are the responsibility of Traffic. To get it delivered on time & technically correct. In one sense they have the lowliest job
But the head of traffic is Joan in Mad Men. They have to know what is going on in every department... from the gossip in the secretarial pool to pillow talk with the managing partners. They balance the the politics, the philosophy the economics
Traffic dictates the workflow in the office. They decide which teams are available, what production schedules can be met ... & what can ... & more importantly can’t be achieved. It’s why Traffic heads get paid six figures in major markets
But in smaller markets the traffic function can be confusingly lost. With less staff & more multitasking the role can linger with client service, migrate to the production department or worst of all end up with media. As we dealt with same broadcasters & publishers it seems appropriate for our people to also handle the physical materials ... the media & the message. This can lead to disaster
On possibly my first day at Zenith/Saatchis & certainly my first week I was strictly informed that under no circumstances do we handle any traffic. It’s not our job, we don’t have the expertise, we are not compensated for it & crucially it can’t be our responsibility when things goes wrong
If Charlotte Street called the Zenith bears in Paddington on Friday at five to five asking to help deliver hot metal to Murdoch in docklands... it ain’t Crackerjack time ... it’s POETS hour “Piss off early ... tomorrow’s Saturday”
So having spent three years in Warsaw policing the media corridors to expel any suspicious tapes or dodgy print material I was horrified to land in Moscow to find fucking films on the desks
Initiative Russia was was rushing around Moscow delivering shit ... we’d gone Postal & I was tempted to shoot a few people myself. So my first task was to get us to stop working
If we had to handle traffic I wanted compensation for the media department. Instead of the 2/3% we usually received as part of the historic 15% I demanded 5%. If we’re going to take the risk we want the reward. But I wanted rid of it. So I said to the owner Dmitry ‘Did you hire me to run a traffic department or do you want me to win Unilever..?” We lost traffic, we won Unilever
There is a sad coda to this story. The Nord Ost theatre siege happened in Moscow in 2002 & 170 hostages were killed. One of the earliest captives released was a retired ‘advertising executive from London’ I read later that it was Peter, the traffic manager I worked with in Camden on the Jose Cuervo Tequila business. He’d apparently been in Moscow visiting his son for the week. God knows what possessed him to go to a performance in Russian, theatre is dull enough in your native language. I’d spent years in Moscow without a scratch & this poor bastard is in town for a matter of hours & was trapped in a nightmare
