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| I win an award for the agency! |
Probably the worst feeling you can have in your career is to
be connected to a scandal of someone elses making. It is bitter, causes anger
and saddens, but when it happens early on in your career, it is horrendous to
your sense of stability.
Having worked so hard on the Lufthansa account, as part of
the team and following all the protocols of creative cooperation, I was
rewarded with my own account, American Airlines. Since we owned a small staff
of people under 30 in numbers, it was easier for me to handle one account and
my boss the other.
My first encounter with the client representing American
Airlines (AA) was at a staff meeting in our conference room. He was a
well-dressed handsome man in his mid fifties, and seemed kind of unctuous to
me. He had a Spanish first name and a
Waspy last name, with a full head of thick silver and blond
hair, wore expensive cuff links and well tailored suits. He was in charge of
this multi-million dollar enterprise for the airline and we were but a part of
it.
Along with the agency were a type house, a few printing
firms and other businesses such as retouching and conversion processes that had
to support my efforts. Things were running very smoothly, when all of a sudden,
there is a meeting with the big boss about the account, calling all the staff
of the agency together, via a memo. That morning I had heard somewhere a vague
reference to the airline on the news, but since it was such a big corporation,
I paid little attention. There was no reason for me to be suspicious of
anything, I had met in their offices and they met in mine for meetings so there
was no cause for concerns. The working was flowing. So what was the meeting
for?
The Chairman stood at the front of the room and addressed us
all, his ever-present cigar in his hand, he started by telling us that the Federal
Government had indicted the agency and him in particular. He said that an
indictment was not in itself a statement of guilt but a request to appear in a
trial, one that would be conducted before a grand jury! Furthermore, all work
on the AA account was suspended permanently! I remember feeling the crush in my
chest and the feeling that somehow I was betrayed.
It turned out that the client had put pressure on my agency
and all the other suppliers of services, extorting huge paydays, or else he
would pull the account and we would all lose millions of dollars! One of the
printers had blown the whistle and got the Feds involved. When they went to
arrest him, he was long gone, with a nice fat fortune and his girlfriend
secretary, to Portugal where no one could touch him.
Of course this became a huge black mark on the reputation of
the agency, the boss himself and caused the agency to start its descent into
oblivion, it was time for me to move on.
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