My first rejection (that counts, ergo est, I was actually qualified for the job in question, more or less) of this blitz came this morning. It makes me sad but not very because it was in London, and as exciting and awesome as that would be the apartments are tiny and expensive and the winters are oppressively dark. The only complaint I'd like to register in respect to the news is that they opened the rejection letter "Dear J___," and I found the familiarity misleading. Please. If you're not going to give me money, address me by my last name.
The stupid fucking conference I went to yesterday was purgatorial. Two speakers, one on neuromarketing and the other on more abstract psychological aspects of emotional marketing were very interesting. A few others were decent. The rest were bloody dismal, especially the fucking useless Youthography presentation. How do those people still get work? Every time I hear a Youthography presentation it's the same damn thing. Involve the young this, don't assume that, the occasional "shit," "piss" or "ass" thrown into the text of the presentation because the balding failed rock star speaker is trying to sound iconoclastic. Blathering on endlessly about involving youth and not consecending to them, while using a slew of meaningless buzzwords as jargony and illiterate as the most traditional of mass media marketers. All in the context of presenting consumers aged 14-29 as a meaningfully coherent demographic and admitting traditional media is still the best way to reach the young.
I ask you . . . ?????? That's all. Here is a brief list, by no means exhaustive, of the abuses of the English language that were committed yesterday:
1. "a granular approach"
2. "it needs to be more aggregate"
3. "a grassroots advertising campaign"
4. "we utilized a methodology"
5. "the best way to measure kids is an ad-sensitive approach"
Geez. Anyways, it wasn't all bad. The psych emo marketer sat next to me at lunch; I didn't recognize him without his reading glasses, but then we had a nice conversation about Carl Jung and the role of religion in modern life and the marketing industry. Nice talk with my boss, too. There's a bit of a media storm he's caught in at the moment, which he SHOULDN'T be in - meaningless nonsense because of a small error in my old department and now he's getting hassled with newspapers claiming he's not returning calls when he spends all day returning them and semi-literate partisan bloggers getting bloggy - oh, it makes me mad.
5 commenti:
Oooh, my favourite is # 4! How brilliant! Your lunch conversation about Jung, religion in modern life, and the marketing industry sounded very pleasant. Don't you like meeting people that you can have a meaningful conversation with?
I agree with you, a formal rejection letter should be addressed by last names. Actually, so should an acceptance letter!
It is amazing that the fact that not all young people are dumb could be the basis of an entire conference. It's a good thing you're getting out of there soon enough.
I like "a grassroots advertising campaign" - funny concept. All these well-wishing hippies getting together to pool their efforts into convincing others to buy their products. What would that be? Grassroots and consumerism are oxymorons.
Exactly. But tell that to the greasy, balding iconoclasts at Youthography.
If there's one thing I hate more than a marketing organisation, it's a marketing organisation that tries to be hip. That's like the press secretary for the U.S. president carrying around a briefcase with a red button in it that's a facsimile of the one used to trigger nuclear war.
I'm mad and blathering.
Balding men in black leather jackets with tassles on them saying words like groovy.
Exactly. I so want to tell them to deal with whatever psychological issues drove them into marketing, and stop fucking trying to convince me they're cool. They're not. They're marketers. They might get to be "slick" or "avuncular" if they work really hard, but cool is a closed and locked door once you enter the industry.
I, for example, have given up all hope of being cool. At the moment, I'm going for either "nonchalant" or "imperturbable."
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