AdVice

I’m told a lot of people join advertising because there’s a certain amount of glamour associated with the business. I certainly don’t think advertising is as glamorous as acting in films. But there is one aspect of our life which coincides with that of movie stars: apparently we too are paid to wait. At least that’s what some of our multinational clients seem to believe. You are usually told, say, on a Monday afternoon, that the client needs to have a campaign presented to him on Tuesday morning. It’s a life and death situation. The brand is being launched in three weeks, the client is travellingabroad from Wednesday, so unless the work is approved on Tuesday, the advertising will not be ready in time for the launch.

You tell your team, sorry guys, we aren’t going home tonight. Inform your spouses, unless they’ve got tired of the waiting thing and already left you.

You’ve bought a bit of time from the client, so you stream bleary-eyed into his office on Tuesday afternoon. You peek into the marketing manager’s cabin. He is in the midst of another meeting. He signals you to wait outside. Half an hour later, the marketing manager’s flunk informs you that that meeting is over but the marketing manager has popped in to see his boss. So then you wait some more. Those endless cups of caffeine take their toll. In the toilet you bump into the marketing guy. You gather that he too is doing the caffeine thing. You also gather that you have more to wait. He tells you that the meeting with his boss is taking longer than anticipated. But he’ll meet you in another three quarters of an hour, tops. He generouslyinvites you to wait in his plush cabin.

You move into the plush cabin. Time keeps on ticking. Your eyes fall on volume “T” of the World Book Encyclopedia on the bookshelf. You take it out and turn to page 226. The first sentence reads: “Time is one of the world’s deepest mysteries.” It isn’t very enlightening. But at least it does give you the sense that you are not alone. You imagine that the writer too had done his time in waiting rooms. Wondering how others could put such little value on his precious time. For, surely, that must be the deepest mystery of all.

The World Book also tells you that different cultures measure time differently. In a moment of blinding clarity you surmise that this must be the explanation. Agencies and clients have different cultures. Tick! As an advertising guy you measure time in 30-second TV commercials. As a marketer of half-a-century-old multinational brands, your client measures time in product life cycles. Tock! You step into an entirely different time zone when youenter the portals of Big Brands Inc. Tick-tock! Your client and you are two different animals with, get this, different circadian rhythms.

You’re no Einstein. But you’re beginning to understand the special theory of relativity. And you’re beginning to see why Einstein called time the fourth dimension. In fact, you’re thinking it’s just another name for this zone you’ve entered — the plush cabin where you spend your life waiting for your client.

A full two hours after the appointed time the marketing man is finally free to meet you. But the thing is it’s past 5.30. And he has to pick up his son from tennis practice so could we meet the next day. But, but, but what about the trip he was going on? Oh, that? That’s been postponed. And the launch too. You see, Manufacturing isn’t ready with the product yet.

Time for another cup of coffee.

(Sumanto Chattopadhyay is associate creative director with Ogilvy & Mather Advertising. His views are not necessarily shared by his employers)