Diary of: Stella Bayles: Thursday 29th July 2004
Wow today was tough.
I worked so hard to get that coverage. Weeks of event planning, inviting journalists, selling in different story angles, chasing, chasing again. Changing the story angle. Chasing again. Finally, the coverage began to land and after the last minute panic we smashed our targets!
I couldn’t wait to celebrate with everyone. The relief of hitting target, the pride of my national news hits this week and joy of it being over today was worthy of a few drinks!
“Great work on the Bold campaign Stella — you smashed the coverage target and the client loved your Mail Online piece. I can’t wait to show them the full report tomorrow morning in the quarterly review. Can you send me the report by 8am please”?
It’s Thursday night in Soho — It should have been THE night to be out with all of my agency mates. Procter & Gamble is one of my agency’s biggest clients and this campaign was a hit — we were set to celebrate tonight! Not me. Shit!
It’s 3:30pm.
I haven’t been monitoring, mounting and formatting the coverage as it’s been coming in (who does?!) and besides, the execution of this campaign was frankly a nightmare. I’ve been selling in non-stop for weeks!
I have over 100 pieces of coverage to find, mount, measure and format by 8am tomorrow. Arghhhhh. This will take ages!
I could potentially bash this out and leave by 6:30pm but I managed to bag an invite to the Christmas adidas brainstorm at 4pm. If I’m not in the brainstorm there is no chance of me working on the campaign.
My dream is to work on adidas. That is why I joined Hill & Knowlton last year. That is why I went into PR in the first place! I’m not missing this brainstorm. No.
I’ll just have to stay late and miss the pub.
The adidas brainstorm was brilliant. Everyone loved one of my ideas. It ran over the scheduled hour but we all left buzzing with creativity.
This is why I went into PR….but then I remember the Bold coverage report.
5:30pm.
Coverage 1 out of 100. Find, screenshot, clip, mount, format, measure.
This is going to take forever.
7pm.
This warm glass of white wine my friend brought to my desk through pity isn’t helping.
I’ll continue to sit, staring at my screen, click, screenshot, paste, re-size, circulation search, search again, date check, client link check, brand mention check. Format. Wait for powerpoint to stop crashing. Format again. Save. SAVE! Must remember to save. I can’t have a repeat of last month when I lost hours of work.. Save, save save!
I’m getting tired.. Must remember to save!
7:30pm.
Maybe some music will wake me up and make this process faster. Anything to make this mind-numbing task speed up! I’m soooo bored.
8pm.
Why does reporting it always take longer than I imagined? Why is it always a nightmare? I must be so rubbish at Powerpoint formatting.
I must be rubbish at my job.
9pm.
I can see everyone through the window in Soho Square. They look drunk and they’re having fun. I’ve lost my Thursday night feeling. In fact I’’m losing the will to live doing this report. There must be a better way.
9:30pm.
I am starving and I’m knackered but now it’s the important bit; measurement and reach totals.
Concentrate Stella. This cannot be wrong!
10:15pm.
After checking my calculations three times (I never trust myself at this time and maths isn’t my strength!) I FINALLY sent the report to my Account Director.
Well, I sent it just after Powerpoint and Outlook crashed with me trying to save it down as a PDF. Oh then I has to find a compress PDF tool which I can never remember the name of!
10:30pm
I say bye to the security guy and walk past the bar everyone was at. They’ve gone home.
No end of campaign celebration. No fun. No dinner and an overwhelming worry that my measurement numbers might be wrong. Arrgghhhhhh!
This is not why i went into PR!
This is diary entry from 13 years ago.
Fast forward to 2010 and although my personal situation had changed the pain was still being felt. I managed a PR team that created coverage reports weekly and the pain I once felt was now experienced by them.
My frustration had turned to guilt. I hated leaving the office and seeing my team sat copying and pasting screen shots and fiddling around with Powerpoint. They were creative talented comms people but carrying out mind-numbing tasks.
Something had to change.
