Agency Newsletters

But if we first met you as a slim, 120 lb dancer and you've ballooned to 350 lbs on a 5'4" frame, you need a new headsheet! If your agency has grown, shrunk, moved, added offices or client categories, you need a new agency headsheet! Please update your data. Garbage in, garbage out. Don't kill the messenger when we get you an audition for a size 7 assignment and you show up as a size 14!

TECHNOLOGY MARCHES ON; MAN DOESN'T

I never thought I'd be old enough to think of industry colleagues as "young," but I've gotten there. What puzzles me is how much they have yet to learn. Then I wonder why they haven't? I experienced this more than usual the last week or so, and I've been sharing my observations with friends and colleagues. They tend to agree. Look at technology and look at computers. They've evolved, have they ever. Automobiles have too. Gadgets, all kinds of things, our own homes and appliances, almost anything tangible. We're quantum-leaps ahead of where we were.

But on the human side, I venture to suggest that if we took a time machine back to the days of Moses and went to the market to meet with marketers, we'd find them discussing the same things, struggling with the same concepts, asking who does what in a

"quid pro quo" relationship and then questioning the ethics of it all, just as we do today. Why don't humans evolve like technology? I don't have any answers (yet), but it does make one think... have any theories?

POWERPOINT DISASTERS, NATURAL AND MANMADE

God help the poor presenter! Clients tell us, and I've seen it myself, although we're not necessarily talking about agencies here, where a presenter using PowerPoint will stand center-stage, glaring into the projector beam, then swing around pointing to their 8 x 12 foot image and remark - "I know you can't read this, but let me tell you what it says..."

This same presenter will undoubtedly dissolve and evolve from image to image where what's "projected" has little in common with the words being mumbled into the lavaliere mike. Hasn't anyone explained that an audience can not reconcile two presentations at once.

Then watch out for this one. The event tech says they'll flip the switch to your presentation laptop, your lavaliere mike and your hand-held remote when your turn comes. Everything is fine until you discover that the wireless mouse transmitter is still on the prior presenter's laptop. Have a nice day!