Welcome to Friday Fiascos...

A weekly look back at some of the f**k-ups and misdemeanors I've experienced and witnessed during my career...        

The meeting that never was...

A short story this week folks, from the heady days of the 1980s.

I was running a very large global account - which will remain anonymous to protect the parties involved in this tale.

One of our clients had a serious drinking problem - generally involving at least two bottles of chablis with, or for, lunch every day.

Consequently, we nicknamed him "Chablis Bob" and we had one rule when working with him - never have a meeting after lunch if you can avoid it.

Here's why:

On more than one occasion after a meeting and the contact report had been faxed to him, Chablis Bob would ring and dispute the meeting even took place.

Once, he was extremely aggressive and accused the agency of faking the approval of the ads. He had no recollection of the meeting, said it never happened and threatened to fire the agency for misconduct.

So, as Baldrick famously used to say "I have a cunning plan".

We had developed a radio, outdoor and letterbox campaign as part of a test for a new car wash brand the company was launching as a franchise. The company installed a couple of branded sites and we were testing if we could make them profitable with the help of some advertising and P.O.S. promotion.

Chablis Bob called the meeting for 3pm, so my account and creative teams all nervously headed to his office for the big creative presentation.

Suffice to say Chablis Bob was a tad groggy, but we proceeded with the presentation, because we had embedded a surprise.

The Creative Director had recorded the approved radio scripts, but in between the proper scripts added a fake commercial - number 3 of 5 commercials. It was decidedly sexist and without going into too much detail, had a bloke ribbing his mate about his experience in a hot wet tunnel with a blow job at the end - picture a typical car wash facility with a giant overhead hot air dryer.

The Creative Director wanted to see if Chablis Bob would approve it or not, given his expected condition.

On cue, when the fake commercial played, we all laughed and cheered at how good it was. Chablis Bob sat up and shook his head and asked us to play it again. He wasn't sure if we were serious, but we played it a couple more times, raved about it and then played the additional real commercials.

All I can say is, the fake commercial almost sobered Chablis Bob up. He asked if he could sleep on it before approval and we agreed enthusiastically.

The next morning, a sober Chablis Bob rang the Creative Director and had a good laugh, asked him to trash the original of the fake recording and approved the real commercials. He kept the only copy.

He also agreed to only morning meetings with the agency in future. And he became a much better client because of it...