Special dispensation from Lord McKelvey of That Ilk saw me spared a long night with the Fighting Kazakhstani Cocks and their over-sharpened spurs and allowed into the marble splendour of the Guildhall in my Bob Cratchitty Black Suit and inky bootlace tie in order to attend the Financial Service Forum Marketing Effectiveness Awards.
Jumping and twitching with joy and brushing bantam feathers from my lapels I met my esteemed, solemn, and yet very Britishly nervous client Mr James Frost, Marketing Supremo at Witan to discover if we had won an award for our magnificent Jump Direct Mail Pack in the Direct Marketing category.
Toying with our food ( and in my case surreptitiously pocketing it against the cold nights on the McKelvey Estate) we waited beneath the complex and convoluted statues commemorating great battles and naval triumphs of the C19th.
Imagine our joy as we skipped merrily onstage to receive our commendations!
Which set me to thinking. Naturally I am only allowed to toil in Lord McKelvey’s service because I have won more gold creative awards than the Master can shake his otter-skin riding crop at. But though we weren’t winners, merely commendees, I take more pleasure in this particular award than in many of my MMs, IDMs, DMAs and even my 100th share in a little yellow pencil.
Why? I hear you chorus.
Well the clue is in the name. I’d rather be rewarded for ‘Marketing Effectiveness’ than for any amount of spangly creative brilliance. To know that one’s work has helped a business to achieve success or even meet targets in these straitened times is infinitely more satisfying even than provoking the envy of fellow creatives with their distressed hair, impossible trousering, mad shoes and little pointy teeth.
I’m sure that the thousands of creatives who scrutinize Lord McKelvey’s organ every week may disagree, but as I bed down for the night amongst the chicks who are just too big for the incubators and fill my raggedy pyjamas with their scritching and chittering. I feel a warmth that doesn’t come from their little yellow bodies: it is the dactylic heptameter ‘marketing effectiveness, marketing effectiveness’ lulling me to my few troubled hours of sleep.