Excellent emails received

And its only Tuesday.

From “Bottleneck” to someone on my team. On a daily basis, we receive input on creative projects from no less than 10 people. Once we sift through the chicken scratch and peanut gallery comments, we create something accordingly, send it out to the creative team, have it “approved” and then proceed to push the project to production. This email came day before the project was due to be delivered, from someone not on the creative team:

Hi –

S, B and I reviewed this and we’d like to make the following changes:

Swap placement of the baby photo and the copy block
Left-align the top banner copy and remove the period. Also, if you can bump up the type one or two points, it would be great.
Underline the product names
Make Shop new baby gifts > a button
Remove comma in bottom banner (“Don’t forget the new parents ,” )
Change bottom banner Headline to “Don’t Forget Mom & Dad”
Change bottom banner call-to-action: “Shop gifts for new parents >”
Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks!
Bottleneck

I responded:
Hi Bottleneck,

We can add the button and underline product names, but I do not agree with switching the placement of the baby photo and the copy block unless there is a marketing reason behind it. From a creative standpoint, the copy block breaks up the space between products to make it less busy. Maybe if we removed the column of products on the top, we could expand then move the copy to the left and keep the baby image to the right. Is it that the space is too cluttered? Or is the messaging hidden? What are your concerns with the current layout from a marketing perspective?

Also, we can certainly up the point size on the top banner, but I do not agree with left aligning copy–it is a bit bizarre given the length of copy that exists. I think we should keep it consistent with what we do on our online banners and center it.

Bottleneck has a million other things he needs to improve on his end. He needs to focus on getting us creative briefs and feedback in a more timely manner, rather than try to pretend as if he is yet another art director. Marketing feedback, provided there is a reason, is welcome. This is not.

When my boss talked to him about it this morning, he straight up lied and told her that he wanted to change the arrangement because of something our email client suggested. He is lying. We created this email BASED ON what the email client said. Now he is saying otherwise. What a douche.

Other douche emails:
From Sly’s manager:

Here is the first few papers for review.

Looking for:
Grammer/Spelling
Voice consistancy
Layout consistancy

Thank you for your help. You should be receiving 2-3 of these each day. Call if you have any questions.
D

comment: no wonder his manager wants him to look over those papers. He “grammer” [sic] suck.

And yet another email strain from an art director from another company to another friend of mine:
From: Bitch Boss
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 9:24 AM
To: RS
Subject: RE: Good morning!

Yes please.

Also, are you using instant messanger?

From: RS
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 9:31 AM
To: Bitch Boss
Subject: RE: Good morning!

I have an account for msn.
Do you want me to log in so we can chat instead of emailing?

From: Bitch Boss
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 9:45 AM
To: RS
Subject: RE: Good morning!
No, our company policy is no instant messanger unless used for work purposes and since we don’t use it on our team and also that you are a temp, please do not use at work. I hope you haven’t been using it a lot.

comment: first you ask if she has messenger, leading her to believe that is how you want to communicate. Then when she logs on, you tell her its not acceptable and belittle her by saying she is “just a temp.”

Seriously, where do they find these fuckwits?