If you're looking for a reason to throw yourself under a bus, I suggest reading We Got A Look Inside The 45-Day Planning Process That Goes Into Creating A Single Corporate Tweet at Business Insider.
It is written by someone who, I guess, is supposed to be an advertising reporter. But it's written with the clueless insouciance of a sorority girl wandering into a 9-man circle jerk.
The story goes something like this: a bunch of poor bastards are squandering their young lives in a social media "war room" creating useless nonsense while the agency milks its clients out of thousands of dollars .
Cutting to the chase here, the article tells the story of "13 social-media and advertising specialists" who took 45 days to "plan, create, approve, and publish" a tweet about cheese.
One fucking tweet -- 45 days!
Why? Because only social media specialists can be that fucking stupid.
It takes me 30 seconds to write a tweet and that's because I type with my feet.
The New York Times can publish a 50-page newspaper every fucking day of the year, but these cement-heads need 45 days to make a tweet.
Can you imagine how much money the agency made on that tweet?
I am in the WRONG FUCKING BUSINESS!
You have to read the details of this folly to appreciate the lunacy of it. According to the report, someone from the agency's social media team...
"...met with a copywriter and graphic designer to brainstorm tweet ideas for the next month. It was then that the copywriter suggested a tweet centered on the idea that Camembert, a French cheese popular during the spring, was best served at room temperature.The world to see? This company has 100 followers on Twitter. My hernia scar has more followers.
The copywriter and designer met the next week to create the image for the tweet, which was then pitched at a team meeting... The meeting includes (the social media genius), the copywriter, a designer team, and a project manager.
Then it's on to an internal review, where senior copywriters and strategists sign off on the work over the course of the following week. The post was then sent to Président Cheese and, some 45 days after conception, published on the internet for the world to see."
And what was the result of this monumental whack-a-thon? This shining star of brilliance:
Can you imagine what this would have been like if they only had 44 days?
Here's the best part.
The tweet was posted on April 30th. As of May 24th it had zero retweets and two "favorites" (I'm guessing the Président and his mother.)
I can tweet a picture of my cat's ass and get fifty times better results. On the other hand, my cat's ass looks a lot better than this incomprehensible photo.
Remarkably, the writer for Business Insider seemed to think this astounding absurdity was admirable and praiseworthy instead of being one of the most insanely wasteful and idiotic abuses of "marketing" the world has ever seen.
Kudos to the agency for pulling off this amazing scam. And to the client, all I can say is... how generous!
