Blogging Woes

So I'm not sure if it's kosher for me to complain about blogging on my blog, but I am.

I've been meaning to write a new post for a while, because I had several snarky things to say about things like tradeshows and wretched Valentine's Day at the office, amongst other topics. But finding the time at work (which is the only time I can blog, as it's where my inspiration stems and bitterness peaks) can be difficult, and sometimes it just ends up feeling like an action item.

So, here are all the things I've been meaning to say so that I can cross this action off my list and have some peace of mind.

Tradeshows

Pointless events that result in absolutely nothing except for sore feet and wasted time. It's funny, because several of my clients find that they get most of their sales leads through online efforts, yet they still decide to puddle through these things because their competitors are going or it's considered "the biggest show of xyz."

Now, from a PR perspective there are some good opportunities to get a few media briefings and get some face time with the client and reporters, but in reality is this worth the stress of preparation, plane ticket, hotel room, food and drinks, cost of entertaining client, blisters, time and most importantly....boredom? The boredom of walking the show floor, squinting at every goober that walks by in hopes they're the tech editor your client has been dying to meet with.

Not even schwag can make these events worthwhile.

Valentine's Day

In general, this day is a lame excuse for people to profess their love and appreciation for their significant other. However, some people (mainly women that work at an office) find this day to be a competitive event.

Who will get the biggest, most extravagant, gratuitous display of flowers? Winners to be announced no later than 12 p.m. PST.

And, oh, the poor boyfriend who was a bad puppy and either a) forgot to send flowers; b) sent flowers, but not to her office to display on her desk; or c) sent carnations because his sensible head couldn't rationalize spending $75 or more on things that will die in a few days.

*Note to this poor soul: Please wear a long sleeve shirt and protective eyewear to minimize scarring from the claws.

Coffee

Why is our office coffee so bad? I'm not going to blame Peet's, but when my coffee/cream ratio is 40/60, something's not right.

-Signing off from San Francisco

Powerpoint: The Killer App

I spent all of yesterday trapped in a room full of people, staring at Powerpoint presentations. There were about, oh, 13 presenters and each one had their own special presentation to show off. I sat in the most uncomfortable chair on the planet, listening to people who were essentially reading off every single word on each slide in their respective presentations.

If that isn't a preview of the Ninth Level of Hell, then I don't know what is.

Now I know I look deceptively young. I'm small. I have youthful features. Hell, I get carded when I try to order a latte at Starbucks but what on God's green earth gave these people the idea that I didn't know how to read?

Maybe it was out of courtesy that they didn't deviate from the words on the screen because... I could not read them. Unless you were a cat (and sadly, none of the humans in the room were) I don't think anyone could have read anything on the screen. I don't think anyone who sat more than a foot away from the massive 8x8 ft screen could read anything. It's hard to when the font is the size of sand granules.

I effing HATE Powerpoint presentations or, as I like to call them, "Satan's reading material for the damned."

I don't think they are a necessary evil. They're just evil - as in 'sacrifice a goat and chant White Snake lyrics backwards' evil. Whoever invented the Powerpoint at Microsoft should get their ass kicked, no joke.

But seriously, it is a business tool and maybe, used effectively, they could be helpful. The problem is Powerpoints are almost never used effectively.

People do stupid shit sometimes- they ride motocycles without helmets, they buy full price at Banana Republic, and they try to cram as many words as possible into 30 or more slides and think others will care.

The odd thing is, people seem to rely on slide presentations to the point of dependency. I'm in the communications industry yet a lot of the people I work with just don't get that Powerpoints are the worst way to communicate with someone. When asked for data, the first application people usually click on is the Powerpoint icon.

Why? Whatever happened to innovation? Creativity? Thinking outside of the box (or in this case, slide)?

What happened to talking?

The end goal of a Powerpoint is to express an idea and what usually happens is that any spark of brilliance or true original thought is lost in a hideous, chaotic mess of words and ridiculous images.

By the end of the day yesterday, I was ready to stab my eyes with the little plastic sporks my client had so kindly provided for me to use during our 'working' lunch. Seriously. I was ready to slash someone's (preferably a presenter's) tires. See how they liked being trapped with no escape.

I know that each time I have to work on a Powerpoint presentation, the Devil is setting aside my own little spot in Hell.

-Signing off from Seattle

Update: Donde Esta El "Crapper?"

It's my belief that the office "Crapper" has not left the building (as we all originally thought when a certain someone got the boot). For those who need a reminder on the bathroom atrocities that go on in the ladies room, please refer to the December 6th blog entry, "Crap..."

It's 6:55 p.m. and I am leaving the office to wait 20 minutes in the rain for the bus. So I decide it best to use the ladies room before leaving.

Now, I was fortunate enough not to see what someone had for dinner the night before left in the toilet bowl, but someone did leave the toilet seat cover plainly on the seat.

Seriously, people. How hard is it to a.) put all expendable toilet items IN the toilet; b.) turn around and make sure it made it in; and c.) flush.

So suffice it to say, this seems very much like something the Crapper would do, so I think I'll tread with caution when entering any stalls from now on.

That's all.

-Signing off from San Francisco

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Thanks to Seattle's insightful posts on the crop of (obtuse) interviewees wasting lobby space, I decided to take a moment and think about what the hell I really do all day.

PR. Um, yeah, not a change the world type of job, but it's important to a lot of companies, especially for those that I work for. Considering their marketing dollars are pretty tight, some of them go as far as to demand PR to directly increase sales (which, yes, is a tangential result of the job, but should never be the primary purpose). But, essentially they rely on us to help them stand out against the other five million tech start ups to compete with the proverbial 900 pound gorillas out there.

At most times it's pretty basic, and to be honest it's a boring and predictable cycle of the same thing over and over again. There's a distinct cycle of events for every specific activity we do to build up a lot of buzz and drama about something - anything - to garner coverage. Sometimes it's for a trade show event, funding news, press and analyst tour, or my personal favorite (insert sarcasm)...the "Thought Leadership" campaign.

Here's the basic cycle of events for a typical product announcement:

1. Client wants coverage

2. Client has no new product to announce

3. PR Team brainstorms and suggests to announce a "new" version of product because they added a cool new GUI (i.e., version 2 dot and a half of "leading systems management solution")

4. PR Team drafts press release and Client scrapes bottom of barrel for a customer

5. PR Team begs and/or pitches media and analysts for a briefing

6. Client complains why CNET, Forbes, and WSJ don't realize they are "the most innovative technology out there" and how they are "the ONLY one" to do what they do (PR Team nods head in agreement to appease Client)

7. Miraculously, PR Team books Network World, eWeek and IDG amongst others

8. Predictably, Client can't provide a customer that will speak to the media

9. Somehow "amazing" coverage appears and PR Team sends each and every snippet of an article or pick-up

10. Client complains that the reporter referred to them as the VP of business development instead of VP of products

-Signing off from San Francisco

Get Over Yourself Rant, Part II

On the flip side of things...

Being an AC or intern is not a fun job. As one quotable Vice President of an agency said to me, "No one goes into PR to be an account coordinator."

Truer words were never spoken!

I bitched about the new breed of hires in my earlier entries but before everyone jumps down my throat (or gives me a standing ovation, which seems to be the case), I want everyone to take a moment and think back to their entry level days. Yeah, remember those times? Early mornings, ridiculously late nights and oftentimes, weekends spent slaving away on a coverage report or media list? Remember the blood, sweat and tears shed on action item grids?

Remember all the power-crazed people you had to work under?

Everyone has their horror stories, right? Allow me to share a few of mine:

• One manager had me send out 300 personalized "Save the Date" emails in one night because she thought it was a good relationship building exercise. No, not three. Not 30. But 300. I was in the office until 10:00pm personalizing each note according to her specifications, even though a general (shorter) blast would have sufficed.
• When I was an AC, an AAE came to my desk and yelled at me for a good 10 minutes because I had spelled someone's last name wrong in an action item list. This was an internal email and the person whose name I spelled wrong, who worked within the agency, didn't care. Did I mention that it was my third week on the job?
• I was asked to send an action item via instant message to someone else within the office. Guess what medium they used to ask me to perform this action? You guessed it- instant message. Ding ding ding!

These are the more harmless events. You can ask 'San Francisco' about the time someone asked her to write a paragraph on each of the network drives purely for their own personal pleasure. I've known people, fresh from a promotion, who were so heady with newfound power set out to make life a living hell for other people.

But notice something here- the agencies that have people who treat other people badly usually lose their talent. On the one hand, you have lazy new hires that just don't want to put in the time to learn the ropes (and no, you don't actually know everything so hush). On the other, you have agencies that have trouble retaining talent because they treat new hires like scum.

In the end, can't we just treat each other with respect? Like in any business or industry, people coming in should appreciate the experience and knowledge that *legacy* folks have and understand that they probably don't know jack about anything and the *legacy* folks should remember how they started out and act accordingly.

Didn't mean for this to sound preachy but there you have it from someone who's been on both sides of the fence, so to speak.

-Signing off from Seattle

Who the hell do you think you are? (or the 'Get over yourself' rant, Part I)

Is it me or is the collective influx of new agency hires (junior level) a bunch of whiney, lazy jackasses?

Sorry, I had to get that off my chest. I'll be more polite from this point on. Or at least I'll try to be.

I have a lot of friends that work at different agencies across the country and lately I've been hearing the same thing over and over again- mainly that new hires, usually the ones at the intern and AC levels, seem to think they're more important than they really are.

I know what it's like to be an AC. Believe me, at that level, leaving at 9:00 pm was a good thing. I got thrown the most crap (and the least appreciated) projects every day. I will admit, I've grumbled under my breath, I've cried at work and even considered quitting to work at Starbucks. At that point in my life I thought that anything had to be better than the special hell called work that I had to endure.

But you know what? Though I may have complained outside of the office (usually with a bottle of wine and a few good friends), within the sacred walls of the agency, I worked my ass off with nary a complaint. I listened, I watched, I learned. I shut my mouth and held my breath when I was a millimeter away from bitching about how much and what kind of work I did because I just didn't feel it was professional of me to do so at my level. I knew that the people above me knew more and had more years behind them and I respected that.

It seemed like the people I came in with had the same point of view. They worked hard and they sucked it up and moved on when things were going bad.

Now it seems like these new hires think they're far too good to create a media list or track coverage. I don't know if it's a generation gap thing or just plain stupidity but I have heard the most ridiculous things come out of the mouths of babes.

A few come to mind:
"That's not in my job description."
"I feel I can do more strategic work on this account than just a coverage report."
"When I wrote a press release for my PR class, it looked like this and my professor really liked it."

Sometimes it's amusing but most of the time I feel the need to hit these people over the head with my headset. It doesn't matter what school you graduated from or what type of PR experience you got in class. It's like these people don't realize that school and the so-called 'real world' are two different places.

In school, you paid to be there and so your hand was held. Gently. Lovingly. In the real world, even your hardest class is a cradle compared to a day at an agency. An irate manager might just fire you if you tell her that tracking coverage is not in your job description.

Guess what my friend, you're right- it's not in your job description because you don't work here anymore! Surprise!

Is this sense of entitlement truly a result of the dot-com boom? Do these kids, fresh out of college, truly believe that they can move up in an agency as swiftly as they go through levels in a World of Warcraft campaign? I don't get it. The people I moved up with were professionals. They knew how to learn from their experiences- they were willing to learn. Now it seems like the new breed of PR hires aren't willing to learn and they expect that everyone should recognize their genius.

Let's just put this out there once and for all- you're expendable. We all are but those junior levels especially. Interns and ACs are easily replaced. See that young buck walking through the door with stars in their eyes and sporting a new suit?

That's your replacement.

-Signing off from Seattle

Quick Quips

I sit in an office with one entire wall that is a window. It’s a pretty nice view, especially considering we’re on the 20th floor.

I find it interesting, however, that my officemate and I choose to close our blinds and sit in a fairly dark office (mostly because we also keep the lights off and only use desk lamps when the sun goes down).

Some may say we do this in order to reflect our mood - which, in case you haven’t noticed is always snarky and just to the left of tolerable - but it’s not. I just like the dark. Bonus happy points if it’s overcast outside.

*****

We have these painstakingly inane monthly meetings that always get rescheduled at least once. However, our oh-too-eager and oh-too-annoying office manager decides to waste our time and hers by sending meeting reminders for the entire year.

Hmm, brilliant.

*****

Word and Excel. Knowing how to use these are pretty basic job requirements for most any office job. You would think that the people we hire at any level would have this skill, right? But, nope.

Apparently, it’s one of those things on our job requirement list that got left on the second page and forgotten at the printer. Oops.

-Signing off from San Francisco