Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much

On a monthly basis, I work on two multi-advertiser promotional programs. One that appears in the magazine and one e-mail blast. Each one typically features anywhere from three to thirty advertisers.

Long story short: advertisers send their materials (images and copy) and I, or the art department rather, design the promotion. Once it's designed, I send it to back to the advertiser or their media agency for approval. Simple, right? Oh, how I wish it were! Instead of e-mails saying "Looks Great, WG1. It's approved!" I get e-mails saying:

"The client would like to change the copy and the image."

"The font color needs to be changed. Can we pick our font?"

"WG1, we understand that you need approval by Friday. However, the client it out of the office until two weeks from Friday, can we get you approval then?"

"Where is the listing on the page? Our product cannot be next to any food advertisers or technology advertisers. Also, can you be sure that our listing is the largest on the page?"

"We really love the overall style of the page, but we'd like to change the font, colors, size and send new images."

I'll make (most of) the requested changes and send the listing back to advertiser. Then, they come back with more changes. I send the listing, they send more changes and it just keeps going until I finally tell them the page is going to print or the email blast is going out to our database.

I simply don't understand how the advertiser can send me the materials on the due date and a week later change absolutely everything about the listing. These programs are only the beginning. With bigger, more detailed programs the requests are more and more outrageous. Kind of like this:


(Writers note: I tried to embed a video here and it wasn't working on some web browsers and it seemed screw up the whole blog. Since I'm not computer savvy at all, here is the link to the video: http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2008/07/23)

Yes, this is a little extreme. Ok, a lot extreme. But sometimes it truly feels like I am dealing with the people in this video. They are crazy, they don't know what they want, random people pop out of nowhere with their comments and I'm left sitting at my desk and pulling out my hair.