You know those ‘day in the life; and ’24 hours with’ pieces that turn up in trade mags and the business section of the newspaper? They make working in AdLand sound very glamorous, but I’m afraid the life of this Planner is rather more mundane…
8.40 Arrive at work. Go to kitchen. Coffee pot is empty. Decide life is too short to wait for a new pot to filter so settle for Nescafe instead.
8.50 Read 47 new emails in inbox. Delete 44 of them.
9.05 Creative time booked for today. Decide to leave briefing until they’ve a) turned up and b) had a cup of tea.
9.30 Brief Creative.
10.00 Internal meeting. Hunt down other meeting participants in manner of herding ducks.
10.15 Found them! Go on hunt for empty meeting room.
10.30 10am meeting starts.
11.30 Read 20 new emails, delete 18. Brief in desk research. Chat about last night’s groups with the quallies. Decide amongst us that Leeds is the most over-researched city in the UK, closely followed by Milton Keynes.
12.00 Talk to New Business team about a hot new lead they have. Get sidetracked into talking about Lisa’s hot new necklace.
12.30 Lunchtime. Have missed the Sandwich Man and it’s monsooning outside so would need a snorkel to walk to the shops. Stick soup in microwave.
12.33 Stick soup back in mysteriously underpowered microwave.
12.35 Check hotmail, bloglines etc. Call blacksmith. Write blog post (check spellings).
1.10 Skim read Mintel report. Wonder who on earth writes the editorial bits which seem to specialise in stating the blumin obvious.
1.50 Take laptop up to boardroom ready for 2pm client meeting. We have chocolate biscuits. Excellent.
2.05 Clients are not here yet. Can’t do any work because laptop is in boardroom hooked up to projector. Sit at desk looking like computer-less work experience person.
2.20 Clients turn up. They have spent the last 20 minute trying to find a parking space.
2.25 Reach for chocolate biscuit to go with cup of tea. No-one else in meeting does likewise. Feel like immature greedy guts. Eat it anyway.
3.00 Client has decided to do complete 180 turnaround with npd launch strategy. This will obviously cause us no additional work whatsoever…
4.00 Meeting finishes. Write To Do Again list. Read 25 new emails, delete 23.
4.15 Go and see how Creative are getting on. Or not.
4.45 Get sucked into account team strategy discussion of the ‘too many cooks’ variety.
5.00 Dig out obscure facts & figures for the PR team to use in a press release. Remind them that a show of hands in the office does not equal ‘our survey said’ for PR purposes.
5.30 Move car as according to the tannoy I am Blocking Someone In. Delete more emails, tidy desk, check hotmail.
5.45 Try to leave. But someone is Blocking Me In.
