If nothing else, I have learned some truly invaluable lessons working in the corporate environment. I hadn’t realized the extent to which the agency environment is utterly free. Even though you work for a client and you could lose the work and lose your job, while you’re working you know it’s a job. You know it’s a job because you’re working for a company that's working for someone at another company. It’s twice removed from you. The people judging you, your bosses, etc, are judging you through the lens of another company. They give you a lot of leeway – the client is a pain in the ass, the schedule sucks, the budget blows, and we can’t do the kind of creative we want so god bless you for sticking around.
In addition, one project really doesn’t affect another that much. Two teams can work on huge projects side by side and don’t have to know what the other is doing. Sure, they have to share resources and sometimes that gets a little annoying but it’s not like a change on my project changes everyone else’s project in the entire company.
But that’s exactly what it’s like working in a corporation. My group launched a microsite. Another group was running print ads to coincide with the launch, another is planning a viral seeding campaign, another a huge buy with You Tube and a partnership with My Space. Then there’s the whole internal team with their own marketing schedule, restrictions and requirements for banner ads, interstitials, emails. One thing changes, like the schedule, the URL, or the creative, and everything has to change. And those things are all connected to other things.
The onsite marketing is scheduled in among a dozen or more groups with their own needs and demands and changing parameters. The media buy is fixed and can’t change. The print ads are already on the press, can’t change them now. And that’s all before I even get to what my boss is telling his boss and so on and so forth. Just hope and pray that by the time the CEO sees it, it’s up, it’s running and it’s exactly what she heard it was going to be. In an organization like this, every little thing affects a dozen groups and potentially thirty or more other people. There are people I don’t even know, haven’t even met, emailing me saying they didn’t know I was doing x, y, and z and can they know more because something in their group depends on this information. How is that possible?
The biggest result of this kind of environment is that it’s impossible to disengage. At the agency level, I’m running the project and the client is somewhere else. In another building, another city, sometimes another state or country! If I feel like taking a 15-20 minute break to write a blog entry, I can. I know I’ve got a few moments, I know exactly what’s going on and I know the client won't barge in on me. Not so in the corporate environment. There’s no hiding from someone who wants or needs something from you, there’s no unplugging for 15-20 minutes and frankly, I don’t completely know what’s going on at any given moment.
I feel sometimes like I’m keeping a power plant from having a meltdown. Keeping small problems from getting bigger, creating solutions to potential problems and all the while trying to keep an eye on the future, well at least tomorrow. One of my friends at an agency we work with put in an interesting way. He said in the agency world, the enemy is the project itself. Getting it done in time, on budget, and with the best creative. Everyone in the company and the client is moving and working towards a common goal. In the corporate world, the enemy is right next to you. Whether you want it or not, you're all working towards the goal of being your boss. So four people are jockeying to fit into one slot - and that's only after the one that's already there has left. It is definitely a much more complicated organism, one that I feel is much more intelligent than I am. I'll keep you posted.
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