DEEP Inside A Creative Department All-Nighter.
Happy Friday, the only night of the week I knew I was safe from not getting any sleep.
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This will be the first post in a new ongoing “Deep Inside…” series. I got lots of inside stories.
Do you Millennials even work all-nighters? (Do you even ever work until 8? I know I know, you work 24/7 from home. Horseshit.) I’ve worked well over 100, for sure, I don’t know the exact number. I once worked two, back-to-back (with no sleep).
The following is a (mostly) true account of one such night. In fact, I experienced almost this exact night many times over.
(This is from the not-that-distant past when everybody still came to the office to work.)
…As the day progressed, the two creative teams on the new biz pitch had hoped against hope that their creative director would still be cool with their two campaigns he had loved (and approved) when they presented to him that morning.
He said: “Great love ‘em, we’re set”. He even meant it, at the time.
Cut: to 6pm, and boss man has had the work spread out on his in-office $10,000 conference table for seven hours, looking at the campaigns, re-looking at them, all damn day.
He no longer loves them.
He now tells the four of you: you haven’t quite nailed the brief (oh, but we fucking have, though). He has written down a couple of lines that are, not headlines, but “direction” lines, half-thoughts. He has also “sketched” some “rough” layouts that make zero sense.
You take his scribbles back to your desk and stare at your screen, paralyzed.
You’ve been here, at this exact moment, with this exact problem, with this exact feeling so, so many times. You’re nauseous, pissed, scared, and hopeless. You have 12 (overnight) hours to come up with and execute a new campaign with video, print, and digital components. Your brain feels like it couldn’t come up with who’s buried in Grant’s tomb.
It’s Tuesday, 7:45pm. Your Chinese dinner of “chicken” and broccoli has arrived.
You co-pop an Adderall and a Klonopin. A young AD offers you coke. You decline.
After dinner, the CD retires to his office couch, a very comfortable couch. His office is a soundproofed glass cube, so we-all can see him sleeping soundly with his hand down his pants.
It’s now 8:45pm. The always-hovering account exec, free dinner in belly, smiling that smarmy smile all “good” AEs have perfected, says “I know you guys got it, see you in the morning” and slinks out to the elevator bank. Fuckface.
But you don’t “got it”. You hope the other team’s got it. They do not. They’ve been killing each other repeatedly playing Call Of Duty because they’re the piss-ant junior team and they know it’s up to you.
At 1am, the CD wakes up, opens his door, and screams BODEGA RUN! Your female art director volunteers to go just to get out of the testosterone body-odor stench. She brings back the mandatory two bags of Doritos, several candy bars, a huge box of Fruit Loops, and cans of disgusting sweetened Starbucks double espresso.
An hour later, you have a throbbing headache, acid reflux, and rancid silent gas. What you don’t have is one good idea. You do have a senseless one involving Russian Matryoshka dolls as have several thousand lazy creatives worldwide.
At about 3:30am, as the Klonopin is unfortunately winning out over the Adderall, you and your AD stumble upon something, yet again performing the impossible mental gymnastics feat of cobbling together the CD’s scribbles into a coherent, interesting-even, video concept.
The CD likes it, of course. (He can claim it’s his idea.) You then spend the next three hours frantically fleshing it out. Hello Sun!—It’s gonna be a Golden Day!
You proofread all the comps/boards, stagger outside, get on the uptown A train home for about 2-3 hours sleep before you get back on the downtown A train to work on the current client stuff you put off for the pitch.
Sitting at your desk, dead, you (again) consider getting your drum set out of storage to try to re-start that punk cover band.
I've lived this nightmare several times. My record, which I hope never to repeat, was 117 hours on my weekly timesheet. This was in Germany, where there are strict government limits on the amount of time anyone is supposed to work, but you know, advertising. Someone from HR came down and demanded that I change my weekly hours. on the timesheet I refused. I know the person went back and changed it himself, but I didn't care. I worked those hours, and I wanted it on the record, if only for a little while.