A friend, one of the few who does not - thank God - have any connection with a business school, works in advertising. Those few heartfelt but mostly moronic ads are produced by people like her. Not my friend - she is good. She has risen fast on the dint of producing consistently noteworthy stuff that subtly incorporates ideas around, say, feminism or family.
It's hard work, mind you. An ad that runs for a mere 30 seconds on TV takes several months of preparation. Everything from the creative idea to the script to the graphics to the visual imagery needs to be locked and cleared by the client before shooting begins. And shooting itself can take forever.
My friend is in the art section, which means she works on the artwork that accompanies a campaign. The liaison between the creative team and the client is done by a department called client servicing. The scripting is handled by another department. It's an interesting symbiotic mix which, with the usage of new-age tools, has spawned a business that is refashioning how products and services are perceived by the consumer.
In this particular case, the ad that my friend worked on was for a top-class recruitment firm that had debuted in India a year back and was looking to create brand awareness by launching a 30-second television spot. The brief was straightforward: "Clearly distinguish us from the other players in the market by focusing on our global presence and interest in hiring from top-class B-schools, primarily IIMs and XLRI."
After much brainstorming, this is the banner that the writing team came up with: "We hire people from IMD Switzerland and INSEAD France, and now we are looking to hire you. Hundreds of people apply to these institutes every year yet only a handful make it through. We expect the same standard from our recruits in India."
The client felt this was too convoluted and indirect a message. (I agree: no matter how many people the IMDs and INSEADs of the world reject, competition to get into the western schools can never match up to what our poor young guns face in trying to enter the hallowed and sparsely populated ramparts of the IIMs.)
Now it is client servicing's responsibility to take feedback and convey it to the respective department. The woman from servicing in charge of the campaign wrote out a long email, providing pointwise details of the client's "straightforward" feedback. She then sent it to "All".
Yes, "All".
Everyone from the production supervisor to the creative director got to know what the client thought about the writer's work, and since this had been the contribution of one individual in the writing team, the victim of the mishap was faced with the embarrassment of living down public knowledge of her ineptness.
"How unprofessional!" said my friend, "Who in their right mind emails to 'All'?"
I laughed. But so true. At my earlier workplace (the website of a news channel), inter-department emails often clogged the server because everyone who was anyone was made to listen in on the trials and tribulations of whatever went wrong wherever in the organisation. So, if input had a problem with the uplink signal or if output was mad at the erroneous ticker running on the screen, we in web got to know about it, even though we could only gawk in incomprehension. Not even just that - silly things like drinks invitations and farewell mails were often sent to "All"!
The funniest incident was when this woman in the bureau who had been with the news channel for seven years moved to Singapore to study further. Her farewell email ran to several thousand words and thanked everyone from the office boy to the editor-in-chief. It was mawkish beyond measure: "I will always remember the time when X and Y and Z dropped me home at 2 in the morning after we had had a 24-hour shift following Pramod Mahajan's shooting"; "I can't believe I am leaving this place. It's been my home and soul these seven years"; "The doors of this place will always remain open to me and I hope to carry forward this journey with you in future. So long, mates!"
You would think she was going on some life-threatening expedition into space. And it was very well played too. Using the valedictory email to keep her options open and rebuild singed bridges along the way.
Back to the point: how does one live down death by email? I don't think one needs to maintain different voices for personal versus office emails. Different levels of formality, yes, but you can be courteous or assertive or profound or disdainful or whatever you wish to be if you choose your words carefully and reread the email for tone before hitting "Send". In fact, a certain savoir faire is called for in using line and para breaks to convey exactly what you intend to say. With practice, all of us can master these nuances.
So, go ahead. Try. Experiment. Run riot (okay, maybe not). Do whatever, but do not, for the love of God, send to "All".
The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
