by Albert Berkshire
I expect that everyone has morning rituals. Certainly, some must roll out of bed and land in their running shoes. Others stumble sleepy-eyed into the shower and pretend the new day hasn’t yet arrived. Still others may bemoan their own existence because they just can’t face the day.
Around here, after our private “at-home” rituals are not long behind us, we gather in our spankin’ environment and take a fun approach to starting our day here.
Once I’ve gone through my 12-step program for anger management (it’s 12 steps from my desk to the coffee pot), we sit around and talk about life and about commercials.
This morning? Spiderman playing golf and the Incredible Hulk building a rowboat on TV...because everyone retires. “What are you doing after work?” How would we do that in radio?
Hunting and fishing print ads. The fun things you can do from a fish’s point of view. What people would do with their net when they’re finished fishing for the day (cool beer?). Imagine portraying that in radio!
Parents who live vicariously through their kids. Writing the hippest ads for an AC station that targets parents who really want to understand the mindset of their kids. Hey, doesn’t any 40-year-old soccer mom want to feel and be treated like she’s 30 again? We do it everyday.
We poke fun at the PD and the morning show, and we talk about how something they said could “...be even funnier if...”.
We read the blue sheets (our creative request forms) from the salespeople and laugh at the spelling mistakes. We toss around ideas about what we could do if this client was advertising on a different station. How we could make them sound soooo much better “...if they didn’t offer the best selection of multi-coloured automatic stamp lickers and a fine assortment of beany babies...”
We talk. We communicate. We laugh. We disagree. We share. We agree. We smile. We look. We go about our day.
Welcome to it. If you’re really good (or really cheap and lucky), this is where you’ll spend one third of your adult life—give or take a few hours of unpaid overtime.
Remember, you’re only here because you’re the best at what you do. Everyone else (as you think back) has faded into the past, and you should now realize that you got here by REALLY giving a GOOD shit about this business, this career, this craft.
Here’s to the prima donnas in the biz—I hope they enjoyed sleeping in today. We’re already spinning yarns and making people smile. Because THAT is what WE do.
We’re still here, as are you, because you take the time to think about what it is that you do. Me? I think, therefore I am…still here.
♦
