The Nightmare Before Christmas
Deadlines! Who needs ‘em?
They are the ultimate driver for everything we do in commercial life and at this time of year the ultimate deadline is Christmas. Having been in Brand and Market Communications for almost 4 decades it hasn’t escaped our attention that during December the deadline condition is amplified – creeping into the already exaggerated operational tension to create almost total panic! From the very start of the Advent season a form of terror sets in. It feels as if our partners, suppliers, even our clients, invent projects that seem to have appeared on schedules when the previous week they weren’t there. Budgets have to be spent (or we’ll lose them), when for the rest of the year budget management is always an unshakeable mantra. Diaries have spaces that need to be filled in an impractical attempt to continue the facade of ‘busy’, right up to the bitter end.
And what’s funny here is that we just don’t seem to learn – each year the same pantomime unfolds before our eyes. Is it fair to call it a farce? How about seasonal symbiosis? Probably not! But the rush towards year-end does make people behave in a way that, for the previous 11½ months, you would consider to be out of character.
So what happens? Well, it becomes very difficult to get relevant content together so deadlines get stretched into January to allow for more ‘research time’. Meetings, conference calls or WebEx’s get cancelled because key participants “can’t make it!” – code for not feeling well after the office party or out doing Christmas shopping or, in a more sympathetic light, legitimate victims of the ‘office sickness’. And travel becomes difficult or inconvenient when people take a more pragmatic look at calendars, or become concerned about waiting for an empty train to leave a deserted station as the next winter storm approaches.
And so, 2 weeks of a forced dance gives way to a pre-Christmas calm when the reality sets in.
The creep into the seasonal psyche recedes and we focus on the important stuff – like our own Christmas party.
Which, of course, is another story!
Posted by Idealogy
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