Marketing Stories

Silly little Vignettes

Working in marketing nearly destroyed me.

If you’ve seen Mad Men, you have an idea what marketing is like. The long hours. The deadlines. The impossible to please clients. The show makes it look way more glamourous than it really is because it cuts out all the droll inbetween work done by henchmen.

My firm specialized in pharma marketing, so it was even worse deadline-wise. On top of the usual rigours of marketing, we also had to make sure whatever we were advertising fell within the guidelines set by the FDA. Our clients’ legal teams would subject us to WEEKS of content and design review to make sure we wouldn’t do anything to get them sued. I’d often work 12 hour days. Sometimes I’d work weekends. Once, I almost had to work on Thanksgiving.

It was pretty uncommon for marketing agencies to have their own dedicated webdev team; they usually contracted that sort of thing out. It was a shrewd decision by the company I worked for though: contractors billed by the hour. We were salaried. We weren’t paid extra for the fifteen or twenty hours of overtime we put in every week. It put immense strain on our home lives and mental healths; I regularly tell young folks these days that work-life balance is the number one question they should ask about in job interviews. Money cannot stand in for sanity.

We coped in the best way we could: by behaving like rambunctious frat boy animals at every opportunity. Here are some stories about the things we did to make our tenure bearable.

Refugee Camp

I joined the company at the start of a massive growth spurt. I think I was something like employee number 28 when I joined in 2012. Within 6 months, we would nearly double in size, quickly outgrowing the office we were in. Fortunately, there was a suite available just down the hall from our office, and it was decided the dev team should move first so that the account teams could stay closer to their project managers and creative directors. Unfortunately, the suite we were moved to was basically just a big empty room with no furnishing whatsover.

The dev team had to give up their fancy cubicle desks and filing cabinets for an arrangement of folding tables and extension cords. All of our company rooms had adorable names so we knew where our scheduled meetings were being held. We ignored our cutesy name. We called it the Refugee Camp.

Gulliball

We were a hip, fun office, so unorthodox seating solutions were all the rage. So, being natural fidgeters, many of us had those giant inflatable yoga stability balls in place of office chairs. They were quite fun to bounce around on. One day, I had a brilliant idea: what if I could get my ball to balance on one of those 55 gallon Rubbermaid trash barrels, like a massive version of the cup and ball game? And so, Gulliball was born.

As we had to wait for reviews of our work to be done (a process that involved screenshotting views of the website we built and printing it out on legal sized paper for mark up), we’d make a ring around the trash can and take turns trying to bounce the big yoga ball JUST RIGHT so it would sit on the lip of the can. Great fun

The Fingerpaint Incident

By the summer of 2013, we’d grown so much that we needed to move out of the building we were in. We’d purchased an old book store to be our new home, and of course, a new location meant a rebrand. A rebrand meant the business cards and signage and whatever else we used for identity needed to be redone. Part of our fun culture was making a fingerpaint on your first day; your own personal brand mark that was used on said business cards and placards. One guy on the team’s fingerpainting was a sort of Lovecraftian Eye of Horus. It was really cool.

We were in the middle of a big web project that was in its (no joke) eleventh round of reviews when the studio team came to him. “So when we rotate your design...it kinda..looks funky.” It did; it looked a lot like a certain part of the female anatomy.

“Can’t you just...not rotate it?” he asked.

Studio shook its head. “Then your logo gets cropped on the side.”

“So what?” he replied. “I don’t have time for this!”

My boss played peacemaker. He didn’t have time for this either. “I give you permission to take an hour and make a new one.”

My coworker hated this. Why couldn’t he just use his original design? So in an act of protest he folded a piece of paper twice, poured a swirl of black paint on it, refolded the paper up and swished it together a few times. He took it down to the studio. “There!” he said with maniac glee. “I didn’t even use my hands!”

Studio did the only natural thing: they assumed he had used a certain part of the male anatomy to make his new design. All of us had to be interviewed by HR to corroborate the story.

It’s one of the most absurd things that has ever happened to me in my professional career and it was about the time I realized how ridiculous corporate life is.

Chair Racing

Our new office had tons of space and our bosses were fans of the “open office” concept. Banks of cubicles ringed the lode-bearing columns strewn throughout the office, but otherwise you could see from one end of the building to the other. The dev team had our own corner in the back of the room, and our brilliant project managers decided it would be a good idea to set up a table next to our desks where they could stop by to show us proofs and what not. Naturally, it became a general use meeting area because it was convenient, and people would often sit there to discuss real work while ruining our vibe.

We hated it.

But! We discovered the stools the project managers had chosen for seating here were extra rolly. It was absurd. You could nudge the stool and it would roll a good five yards before stopping. The next logical thing to do would be to use these stools to race around the office.

One night, each guy on the dev team selected a stool and put his shoulder blades on it and we used our legs to propel ourselves in a circuit around the central staircase. Straight by the studio, through the kitchen and by the phone booth style meeting rooms, then swing through the rows of cubicles where HR sat, then back to the dev table. We were like deranged hermit crabs.

Everyone (but us) hated it.

There were new, heavier rolling thrones around the table the next day.

The Gondola

The heavier chairs did not stop us. “What if we used a broom stick to push each other around?” one of us said.

“Like one of those things in Venice?” someone else said. A gondola? Brilliant.

We found a large roll of packing wrap leftover on our old loading dock and faced two of these chairs towards each other and fastened them together with a thick layer of plastic wrap. Someone sat in the back with a broom stick while the other sat in the front. We looked up a youtube video of stock “gondola music” and paddled around the office shouting “bon giorno!” at everyone.

The meeting table became standing only.

The Tower of Ramen

Our company had a dedicated community outreach person who set up events for local charities. We usually did some kind of food drive or another, and one year we did a team competition. The winning team got a giftcard for lunch or something, I can’t remember, but I do remember they said the highest volume donation would win. As a shared resource, the dev team was its own competitive entity for this challenge. Another team, the account folks from our biggest client, were cocky about winning.

“Volume?” we asked. “Not weight?” The community outreach person agreed. We smiled and pooled together something like $250. One guy on our team had a membership to BJ’s, a wholesale retailer. He bought all the cases of ramen noodles the budget allowed. I think all told, we had something like 1800 packs of ramen.

He brought the bounty back to the office while we were stuck waiting on legal review and we built a giant tower in the middle of our competition’s work space for them to find the next day.

We won the contest but they insisted we violated the spirit of the rules. Sore losers!

The Girl From Ipanema

Due to the deadlines, egos, and inanities of corporate processes, we obviously got extremely stressed out. One way we got people to stay away from us was by playing stupid 10 hour videos on Youtube. We started with “Bacon Pancakes the New York Remix”¹ and a 10 hour loop of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky. One day we made an inspired choice. The Girl From Ipanema.

It actually soothed us. We went into a trance-like state listening to this on loop. The copyeditors came over to sit in our area. They loved it too. Today, when I get too stressed, I’ll put it on. Never fails.

Boar

We were a cool office. Dog friendly was one of our perks. On any given day, there was a dog in our office. We had three legged Jackson who hated my water bottle. Max who loved to run the stairs. Mocha, a trained service pittie who watched mainstreet from a pillow. A dozen others.

The most famous “dog” though wasn’t a dog at all; he was a pig named Stunner. Our receptionist’s family owned a local farm and she raised pigs and kept one as a pet. Not one of those pot-bellied pocket pigs; an honest to god 150lb boar. He was docile and house broken and loved to wander the cubicles.

Unfortunately, he quickly discovered what a treasure trove of dining options he had in our trash cans. He’d come tip them over and enjoy whatever was in them. Stunner was not picky. You could shoo him away, but he made his discontent known with an ear-piercing shriek.

One guy on the team was fascinated by Stunner and started buying him snacks. He’d run to the market on the corner and buy a few apples. He’d watch with glee as then pig would scarf them down hole. It was pretty impressive, to be honest. Eventually he got an even better idea. “Can I feed him a watermelon?” he asked Stunner’s caretaker. She was bemused but agreed.

Stunner ate the thing in like 6 seconds, and left no trace of the fruit whatsoever. I finally understood why boars in the stories were so scary.

Dog Armor

Another favorite dog in the office was a rambunctious beagle named Aston. She was a very vocal dog and howled at anyone who made direct eye contact. She used to come visit us and howl for no reason. One guy gave her a piece of bread and she stopped bothering us. Aha.

She loved hanging out in our area after that. She was always curled near our our little meeting table, the one that we had not-so-silently protested.

“I’m gonna make her a suit,” one guy said.

“She’s going to hate it,” I replied.

“No she won’t, will you girl?” Aston wagged her tail. He found a huge roll of bubble wrap on the loading dock and wrapped her up in it. Aston didn’t care. She just stood there wagging her tail. He carried her around in her little bubble wrap armor.

“That’s so mean,” I insisted. Aston howled at me.

“She loves it! This is the best dog,” he said. He bought her a Wendy’s jr hamburger as a secret prize for being so good.

Chili Contest

Like most offices, we had a Chili Cook off competition one spring. Everyone spent time bragging about their secret recipes. We had a better idea.

We piled into a car and drove over to Wendy’s and ordered 12 large cups of chili and dumped them into a crockpot.

“We got my secret family recipe here!” my coworker said with a grin. “Good ol Aunt Wendy!”

We came in second.

Chewbacca Contest

“One of the freelancers has a really good Chewbacca impression,” our head of strategy said to me before a meeting. I was fond of making Wookiee noises myself.

I frowned. “Not better than mine.”

She laughed. She loved challenging my ego. And the wheels starting turning.

A few days later, the company founder came up to me before the staff meeting. “I hear you do Chewbacca,” he said and waited for my impression. He was delighted to hear it. “We’re gonna have Chewie-off at the the meeting. You in?” I had no doubt in my abilities.

After the usual spiels about how well the company was doing and new business and what not, he pulled me and the freelancer writer aside and said we were going to have a blind Chewbacca call contest. Winner got tickets to a show at the local performing arts center. We had our staff meetings in the building’s open kitchen, and a huge black curtain could be drawn around it if we had clients in house.

He drew the curtain and handed us the mic. We took turns bellowing into it, delighting the entire office.

I got to see John Mayer from the 10th row for free.

Hero

One day, I had Enrique Iglesias stuck in my head. “I can be your Hero baby!” I sang as I wandered in. I walked by the finance officer’s desk. “That’s a good song!” she said sweetly.

I smiled. “I can take away your pain!” I continued.

Our analytics savant was a taciturn man from Latvia. He looked up from his spreadsheets. “She said it’s a good song, Beau. Not good singing.”

The man rarely spoke unless he was giving an analytics report, and this burn was so precisely applied, I couldn’t be anything but impressed. I’m not sure anyone has gagged me so quickly as that before or since.

Brien O’Crisp

A guy on the team had one of those rubber horse masks. You’ve probably seen it; a wide-eyed stallion with its mouth agape.

An afternoon of reviews had us antsy and we decided to build a mascot for our team. We duck-taped the mask to the headrest of the chair, and found a company-branded fleece in a supply closet for his body. We had a box of surgical gloves lying around and stuffed them with packing peanuts. Brien O’Crisp was born. We even gave him a dinging bell like Tio Salamanca from Breaking Bad.

“What is THAT!” Our front office manager demanded. Why, it’s our newest dev, Brien O’Crisp! “Get it out of here. We’re taking photos.”

We wheeled him into a conference room nearby and went back to work. It ended up being another late night, to our complete lack of surprise.

Our cleaning lady came in and started emptying our trash. She went into the conference room. “HOLY SHIT!” She shrieked.

It was the first time we’d ever heard her speak. We ran to see what was wrong and she was laughing by the time we got there.

Brien O’Crisp had startled her. He fit right in.

Nerf War

It was only a matter of time before someone brought in a little nerf pistol and started shooting someone with it. When you pack a half dozen stressed out boys together, they are bound to start launching things at one another. Of course, this turned into an arms race. A little single shot dart launcher was thwarted by a three shot dart revolver. The dart revolver was beat out by a nerf gun that could be loaded with clips of darts. The Nerf AR was bested by a nerf sniper rifle.

You’d think this was something HR would have stopped at the genesis. Nope. Half the office was in on the war at one point. Everyone kept a sidearm on their persons at all times, and regularly used their computer monitor as a rampart to take potshots at their least favorite project manager.

The war came to an end not from an edict on high, but because one guy on the team had gotten in trouble with his wife for spending too much money on nerf guns. We gave our toys to the charity outreach person to donate.

Olive Branches

Working with us was annoying. We knew weren’t oblivious that we were rowdy. It’s kind of a blessing that we were allowed to get away with it so long. We did a few things as a team to cherish our fellow coworkers.

Once we had a hotdog cook off in the kitchen. One guy brought in his propane campgrill and put on an apron and chef toque. We bought 100 hotdogs, buns, condiments, chips. A random Thursday afternoon became a social hour for the office.

About once a month, we’d all go buy a bunch of fruit from the market before work and carve up a nice breakfast plate for the office. We’d take turns making coffee and tea for whoever approached and spent the first thirty minutes of the day eating mangoes and grapes and pretending like we were on vacation…before suffering for the next ten hours.

I’d regularly make “Beaunana” bread, which is just banana bread made by me. I’d cut the sugar in it and add pineapple juice and syrup instead. I’d write a poem and announce the bread with a building-wide email. I usually made it plain, with chocolate chips, and with peanut butter and chocolate chips. Six loaves, all gluten free because our charity person had Celiac’s. Nothing buys corporate capital easier than a homemade baked good, let me tell you.

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I got a lot of excellent experience and worked with some truly talented folks. These are my fondest memories of the time there though. Not the accolades or the things I worked on. All that stuff is ephemeral. We played hard, sure, but we worked way harder than we needed to. Your job shouldn’t have to turn you into the Lord of the Flies so you can make it through your day.

I ended up getting a much healthier job working as a consultant on video games in 2015, after exactly 3 years in marketing. I had to learn a new set of tools and technologies, but I had one skill down pat: I knew how to beat the stress.

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