Here I sit at 3pm on a Sunday

I've never worked on a Sunday at a Full-time job before. 

Sunday has always been a day of rest for me. Wife, daughter and I go to church, eat fried chicken and relax in each others company.

Today, my work Mac's keeping me company.

But this isn't something that bothers me too much and here's why: 

1: I still got to spend the morning with my family at church (no fried chicken though)

2: I'm getting ahead of my work load, meaning I can focus on things more thoroughly during the week, without needing to stay here until 10 pm

3: My bosses have trusted me enough to give me more responsibility with each day I'm here.

The 3rd one is the most important for anyone who's coming out of portfolio school looking for a job(though to me the first one is the most important).

The economy is bad. Which is a tremendous understatement. Our agency is in a rough spot with the loss of a major client a few weeks back, yet I'm still getting more work to do. And because I do a good job and get it off my plate on time and even earlier in some cases, they trust me with even bigger projects.

It's hard to fire a cheap, young creative who gets his work done on time and does a good job.

I don't know if they're be layoffs here, but I do know that if they come, I'm going to work so hard at being the best Jr. writer at the shop that they'll have to take a real long look before they drop the axe on me and if they do lay me off, that they'll have nothing but good things to say about me when I go to another shop to find a job.

PJL

Oh poop.

So yesterday morning, we lost one of our biggest clients.

I've never seen a person lapse into a catatonic state before, but I imagine it would leave me with the same feeling I had yesterday as I watched the account team and creatives on that account receive the news. 

Immediately, they took the day off and went for beers, a better brand of beers than what we had been drinking ;)

But in the people that stayed at the office, I was inspired (I can't blame those who left for drinks, hard to work on a client that just told you we don't want your creative anymore). 

The people that remained at the office didn't walk around like zombies, they set themselves to their work, and were determined to kick ass.

I am determined to kick ass.

Making the Worst List

Last night on my way out, I got my ego smacked down a bit.

Our agency does a thing called 4 great 1 bad. It's a review with our chief creative on each teams' recent work. We choose 4 great pieces and brag about them, the people who worked on them get to present its all great and a good way to impress your bosses and we choose the worst recent piece to show and the CD explains what went horribly, horribly wrong.

The very first project/campaign I ever worked on for my agency is our 1 bad.

I knew it was going to be, the client dictated the art direction to match a campaign for another aspect of it's business (that we don't work on). But I had gotten them to buy off on a really great headline and body copy for the first piece.

Problem is, they loved it so much they used the same headline and same copy on all 15 executions. Did I mention they used the same lay-out.

Obviously, this is a case of the client overstepping its bounds and not listening to us.

But still, nothing like being told the first ad you worked on for your agency is the worst one your teams done in recent memory.