iAgree – For those unwanted ideas.

STATUTORY WARNING: May bring back disturbing memories. Reader discretion is advised.

If you have served your time in advertising, you will, in all likeliness be familiar with the scenario mentioned below.

Client servicing walks up to you and drags you by your torn jeans and disheveled hair to the client meeting scheduled in the next half an hour. You might be an art director. Or a copywriter. They couldn’t care less. They don’t give a tiny rat’s stinking arse. As long as you’re from creative, you’re good to be served on a platter, with fresh ideas on the side.

You reach the venue, step into the client’s conference room, highly aware that you're not on home turf and soothe your nerves sipping on the tasteless coffee. Servicing talks about, well the things they talk about, and then you’re put up on display. Suddenly all eyes are on you. Maybe all ears too. Suddenly you feel lab rat who’s being watched closely. By now the caffeine starts kicking in and you stir up quite a storm with your ideas and scripts. It seems like everyone on the other side of the table is listening to you with rapt attention. You reach a crescendo, feel light headed, and sit down, thinking you’ve cracked it. You're positive that your appraisals are secure. And just as you're about to heave a sigh of relief, you hear a voice, “you know, it’s pretty nice, the work you’ve brought to the table but I had an idea…”

You're jolted out of the lull. You're shaken. And stirred. But feel like nothing like a martini. All you realize is: there goes the weekend.

Knock knock. Hey you! Houston calling base. Wake up! It was just a hypothetical scenario. There are clients under your workstation. Or your chair. None in the cabinets either. Don’t be scared. Focus. Focus on this piece. It may save your life. And your precious, non-renewable weekends.

If you're blaming client servicing for all your troubles, don’t. Those poor blokes are like Jewish polish in a ghetto. They might carry a baton but they have no power. Really. It’s either them inhaling the Zyklon B or you. The choice is fairly obvious. What you need is a drug/pill to ensure that just unplanned ideas never happen.

Say hello to iAccept!

What if a single pill could render the client incapable of ideation? What if every meeting meant smiles and hugs all around, and possibly a few mugs of beer for all? What if you didn’t have to increase the logo size and ruin your layout? What if you could bring back the good ol’ days of advertising when smart ideas weren't dumbed down? Sounds like a utopia? Not really. Not anymore.

After countless hours of research and brainstorming, we(me and this out-of-his-freaking-hash-infected-mind chemist friend of mine) have come up with a pill that prevents the impregnation of mind with unwanted ideas. We call it iAccept. It is, simply put, an idea contraceptive. It makes the client a lot more receptive to ideas that otherwise would never see the light of day, it lowers the client’s inhibition about going ahead with ideas that haven't been tried and tested before, it makes the client trust you, and client servicing, completely and unconditionally and most importantly, it prevents them from expending grey cells faster than a Uzi. A lot of clients don’t have much ammunition anyway. That’s why the iAccept cuts off the thought flow from brain to tongue. (Oops! Statements like these can be career limiting.)

Anyway, iAccept is an emergency idea contraceptive pill that can save you a lot of hassle, but it has a few drawbacks/handicaps.

·         Unlike regular emergency contraceptive pills which give you a window of 72 hours AFTER the intercourse, iAccept has to be slipped BEFORE the orgy begins. Which is good in a way because you may not want to be a part of that orgy to begin with!

·         You will have to carry something edible to offer to the client because the client definitely won’t allow you to shove a funny looking pill down his/her throat. And if, by chance, the function of iAccept are known, you won’t even have a snowball’s chance in hell.

·         There may be side effects that make the client temporarily delirious. Which should not be something you're not used to, it is just to give you a heads up.

·         Finally, and most importantly, the pill, iAccept is fictitious and a figment of unbridled imagination. But you can, if you have a close friend who's a chemist, start scouting the possibility and feasibility of such a pill. After all, someone did come up with the truth serum too, right?

Client servicing people, if you're reading this then let me tell you I have nothing against you. Ok, almost nothing against most of you. On occasions, you can be really nice people and truthfully, you're just carrying out orders. But the question is, if iAccept becomes a reality someday, will you stand by the creative to put the plan into action? And oh, to the rare breed of nice clients I have come across over the years, I apologise. Don’t take this personally. You're just collateral damage of this piece.