It was a Monday morning. The Boss was pacing up and down the length of the entire office.
There was a deadline looming. And a classic monday scenario followed suit: a full office, a pending job on top of the priority-list but zero ideas. The Boss paused for a few minutes only to gulp down a huge cup of black coffee and continued pacing again. An eerie silence filled the place. I looked around and saw people scribbling down onto their notepads.
The Boss came to a halt at the centre of the meeting table and cleared his throat. That was the Boss's way of sending out the war siren. The entire staff in the room stopped scribbling and started flipping their pens, clock-wise to antilock-wise to clock-wise back again. Some even started tapping their legs synchronously. The new interns, who were unaware of the Boss's work-style, stared at him, their eyes full of anticipation, hopeful that everyone would soon gain a direction on the pending job.
I tried to open my ears as wide as I could because I often missed out what the Boss said. Not because its boring, but because it is hardly ever audible.
When the Boss started to speak, it was over even before we knew it,"Team, I don't know what will you all do, but in 2 hours I want the Client happy" Brief, vague and a nightmare. In an industry where it is considered offensive to ask the Client to fill out a feed back form, re-working on a concept is one of the most tricky jobs. Much more tricky in this case because we tried out every permutation and combination of concepts, pictures, graffiti and what not to crack the campaign. We tried our hands at "mainstream", we also tried our hand at "intelligent", "abstract", "emotional", "fact-based", "interactive"to list out a few.
Everyone on the team agreed to meet up again in a while to brainstorm about the ideas and parted around lunch time, just in time Alia arrived. Alia, the three year old daughter of the Boss, who hung out at office after her kindergarden hours, filled the office with her trademark squeals every afternoon. On that day, Alia was particularly inclined on going to the creative room and draw like all the design guys did.The creative studio was a mess that day, as the printouts of all of the iterations that we did so far were strewn around in a haphazard fashion. Since the creative team was in a fix and was trying to brainstorm, the Creative Director made Alia sit on the table at the centre of the room.
What the Creative Director did not know was that a copy of the campaign printouts were resting at the centre of the table. Alia, unaware of the ruckus that was attached to this campaign, simply picked up a pen lying on the table and started to practice all that she learnt in the drawing class that day. She drew an apple, a butterfly, a worm, a tree, all over the ad layouts. I noticed this, while I was on my way to get coffee and added the caption " Learning inspired from nature" to the layouts.
Half an hour into brain-storming, my Boss sent for me. It is moments like these that set panic attacks into motion. I started recounting everything that I did since I set my foot inside office that morning, every little action, every little word inclusive, trying to understand why the Boss would wish to see me.
I found a visually beaming Boss at the edge of his seat in the cabin. His source of happiness were the doodled ad layouts. No sooner I entered the room the Boss began appreciating me. It wasn't audible as usual but I did hear "excellent concept", "client approved" mentioned in his lengthy, single-tone, almost inaudible discourse.
I collected all the layouts, heaved a sigh of relief and made my way to the office table. En-route I halted at the Client Servicing Room as a group of female colleagues were discussing something in squeaky, excited voices. On approaching them, they shared the gossip promptly over cookies and coffee. Apparently the Boss found Alia scribbling on the ad layout and scolded her about it. Alia made her first ever "I am sorry dada" card owing to this campaign, one of the Client Servicing woman added, her tears all moist.
All of our research-driven strategies failed. All the logic in the world did not make a sale.
During this process, something unexpected defied logic and laughed at our process: the creation of a child.
The day left me reeling but I learnt one of the most important lessons in conceptualization that day: create like a child would and the idea will sell, anyway.
At the end, the pending work was complete and Alia became a better person. And not having a strategy was the strategy that worked inside a company, on yet another working day.
