A former colleague of mine told me a funny episode from her working life.
In her role as event manager of a big event, the owner of a castle handed her the master key that gave her access to all areas of the building. He told her that if she lost the key, she would be liable for ten thousand euros. Sure enough, when she went to the ladies' room, she promptly dropped the key in the toilet. All attitude faded from her at that moment as she bent low with her arm and fished the key out again. How we laughed! For my sake, I was sure that the part of this woman I had always found utterly refreshing had put herself to the test and set out to find out how far she would go. Isn't it a real thrill to walk around with such a precious thing for an evening?
Another time I was out with a photographer to do some life shoots of the models in a brothel.
We were the hired PR agency for a well-known cigarette brand at the time and lived on the fattest of budgets. We were marvelling at the interior of the house and surrounded by half-naked feather boa models when the photographer got a call from his mother. When asked where he was, he replied, "At a whorehouse." Rarely laughed so much!
At a PR event, which was all about deciphering the code that was on the commercially available magnetic cards using software from a company we represented,
I was sweating blood, fearing that the police might storm the event at any moment. But in fact there was a lot of television there and my ex-boss was a clever dog who always told me that "all PR is good PR". He liked to do something just on the edge of legality or even above it, I never found out.
Once I was a fake guest in a pilot talk format
where we did a complete shoot and rehearsed beforehand just like actors their respective roles that we were to represent in front of the camera. With make-up and all that jazz. We had a blast pretending to argue seriously. The whole film was later to be checked by the state media agency for its suitability. I never found out what happened to it. But I saw those formats all over the places.
Someone, I even think it was my half-assed ex-boss once said to me that one per cent of all events in this world make it into the media before the other ninety-nine per cent and that they all come from the news agencies.
That made me wanting to stay unimpressed from then on. Yeah well, it worked sometimes really well and at other times to my dismay.
I worked as a free lancer for a really ghastly and nasty woman
who reigned over her agency staff like a dreaded queen. She ordered everybody around so much so that all were afraid of her without any exception. Her customers where of the same ghastly kind and those who were in their grip for too long, talked like this colleague in her beginning thirties "I hate my parents. Yeah, sure, they will give me money, for they must take care of me."
All the staff and senior management of our agency were invited to a casino by the larger partner agency.
We drank and ate the finest food, we wore fine clothes, and we each got fifty euros as a little surprise after the meal to go gambling in the casino. I made out with a colleague even though I had a boyfriend, which everyone knew. The next day at work I volunteered to tell everyone about my little escapade of an amorous nature and was dismissed by those who didn't like me anyway and laughed with those who did. What a blast it gave me, what a thrill it was to walk on this tight rope.
Since every self-respecting agency does something with charity at some point and wants to look a bit good in the world, it was the same for us.
We did a campaign for "Bread for the World" for "no money at all" and had a lot of fun creating the slogans and visuals. I didn't waste a single thought on starving children, because that wasn't really the point. It was about the good ideas in the campaign. We fed ourselves and not the others with this good cause. Little did we know, of course, we were young and stupid, weren't we?
How Ethiopia is written in German. Man, how proud we were of this big word in a little word. The ad didn't look exactly like the one above, of course, but well, you get the point, don't you?
I flew to Amsterdam for an international agency meeting
where all the agencies of standing met on behalf of the client. The task was to initiate an extremely important global campaign through an extremely expensive conference. We very important people were fed with excellent food, slept in excellent hotel beds and had excellent technical discussions.
Incidentally, nothing ever came of the whole thing. There was never a global campaign for this brand. They still use the tried and tested slogans and visuals dictated to the agencies by the parent company. I guess they needed some tax write-off costs.
One of my most personally embarrassing moments went down in my history as a PR chick because I spoke such bad English at the time that I was barely able to make polite small talk. And I was therefore in a permanent embarrassment to stay away from people. I had to have a quick breakfast to avoid too much conversation, a quick coffee for the same reason and a quick turnaround to the room in the evening, well, why do you think? How I got there in the first place had to do with the fact that I had been part of the PR team before I got a senior position myself at some point. This constant alertness and me getting tired of being quick with everything, led to me staying in the hotel bed with a pounding migraine on day two of the conference.
Those are all work related anecdotes from my former life and my former me. It's long gone but in vivid memory for all the events who were either funny or dreadful. The rest vanished into nothingness. Though I probably can dig out some more, if you want.
Bye bye!
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Title image: my own making