Well, it was a far cry from Pete and Don’s jolly gallivant around LA for the aeronautics convention. No, there’s not much glamour in a turnaround flight from DXB to Doha and back again exactly 12 hours later. But in pursuit of the big idea? Sure, I’ll do that drudge any day.
Of course our agency receives the requisite portfolio of ad mags – Campaign, Communicate, Gulf Marketing Review and their extended global family are all jostling for face space on any and every barren surface in the office. Naturally, it just happens to be this mental month where a particular publication gets downright lazy, falls into some A4 abyss and somehow misses the always-aware eyes of our office.
There it was on page 2, every agency’s dream. The new-kid-on-the-block low-cost air carrier of the Middle East was calling a very unconventional pitch (which of course, needed to be submitted 24 hours from the time it finally caught an eye of our totally on-the-pulse agency). Eff.
Emergency brainstorm. Five minutes and a procurement of Haribo frogs later, everyone shuffles to ‘the dancefloor’ – our office’s answer to Draper’s in-office bar (a bar I’m obsessed with for the mere fact that ideas pour forth with exact algebraic proportion to the fluid ounces of J&B that simultaneously flow from it).
A handful of half-ideas and shoe-horned strategies later, our finance manager was sprinting out the door to a make-your-own t-shirt kiosk, our designer was photoshopping the team’s heads onto popsicle sticks and our agency’s planner and I commenced the flydubai customer journey, booking flights that left an hour and a half later.
There we were hurdling through the good ol’ airline rigmarole, Consumer A and B labeled in black and white, ironically probably exactly as the contracted market researchers and analysts see everyone on that plane. We were simply the only ones Seussian* enough to actually don the label (literally).
Without all the grim details of the subsequent twelve hours, we chatted it up with flydubai’s ‘consumer’ (26 of them to be exact) at every single touch point. The most adorable nine year old goth kid (oxymoron?), a MILF (according to my dear colleague) on a visa run…Mohammad, Maryanne and Mohsin, find that flight manifest and we probably annoyed everyone on there.
While gabbing it up in the standstill of the jetway, some know-it-all (a claimed marketing veteran, but after all, who isn’t?) asked why we were up to this escapade? A mere half syllable escaped from my mouth before Ogilvy’s apprentice here, clearly not interested in actually hearing our answer, gloatingly declared “because you guys haven’t done any actual work on this pitch!?” Complete with a good ‘hearty har har’.
Had we not? Was this truly just a scramble, a spontaneous schism to show action and heart? Or is advertising simply that simple. Live the brand, be the consumer. Companies get too caught up in the inside-out view (and who can blame them? With KPIs and SOWs, HTMLs and LPOs, who has time to give a WTF). They hire the agency to figure out how to speak to their consumer.
What the company sometimes forget however, is that they have hired us. You didn’t hire us to regurgitate back the 3 letter-acronyms and internal jargon. You hired us to be the eyes, the ears, the heart, the fingers, the tongues and the toes - top to bottom, you hired us to be the consumer. And with tickets in hand, 6C DXB to DOH, we’re reminding you.
