Today's happiness -- Feeling Heard. Upper management does not understand my client. They are a Fortune 50 company, a position they achieved by being the tortoise, not the hare. They are the epitome of slow and steady. So as much as I enjoyed last week's brainstorm, I couldn't help thinking it was a waste of time. It was just another innovative idea the client didn't ask for and won't ever implement (and therefore won't pay for).
I have ideas the client would go for. They are not exciting. They will not win my agency awards or get us written up in Ad Age. But my client would appreciate them, even if the late-and-not-lamented Alex dismissed them as "small ball."
So I have been suffering chronic frustration every day. Until Tuesday.
It was my team's day to work onsite. James, a VP, grabbed me by the elbow and sat me down in a secluded part of the office. He thinks I'm an asset and asked me how I felt things were going. I told him. He was very receptive -- and I found out he's as frustrated as I am. It seems he's been working 60-hour weeks on projects like last week's brainstorm, and missing summer weekends with his wife and daughter to work on initiatives that won't go anywhere.
In Tuesday afternoon's team meeting, he shared my idea! Giving me a nod, he said, explained that the client has a branded information portion of their website.* Much of our digital communications -- emails, banners, etc. -- drives consumers to this area. And it sucks. Hundreds of the articles are old, or repetitive, or send consumers to broken links (webpages that no longer exist). Why don't we audit the site for them? We could report to our client what's there, what should come down and what should be added. We could actually add value and give them something they need, not something we want to do.
By the way, this "small ball" idea of mine would result in literally 100 hours of billing for our agency. No industry buzz, but revenue.
It's now on "the list." It's the third item on "the list," but it's there.
James listened to me. James acted. I was heard.
Each day in August you are to
post about something that makes *you* happy. Pretty simple. And, it
doesn't even have to be every day if you don't want it to be. It's a
great way to remind ourselves that there are positive things going on in
our lives, our communities, and the world.
*How could our upper management not know this portion of the
website exists? It's indicative of what's wrong with how we handle this
account.
