Do you ever just find yourself falling short? I try so hard sometime to keep up the appearance of being cool, collected, in-the-know or at least showered. It seems that the majority of these efforts go in the gutter the second I have some sort of client involvement.

I’d like to say becoming unintentionally disheveled is limited to a couple of mishaps during my travels last week, but that would be lying.   My history of client-related oopses is long and storied.

The spills began with my first Range meeting.  Imagine, if you can, me as a fledgling account specialist. I’m young, new, unsure, wobbly and totally not cool. I’m nervous, I have no idea what to wear, the client is huge, and also, did I mention I’m nervous? So I try not to muck it up.  I keep my FIRST EVER MEETING outfit simple, hoping that my black skirt and heels will keep the white-hot glares of imagined criticism to a minimum.  And once I’m dressed, I think I look Professional, and people who look Professional don’t do things like busting ass down a flight of stairs, tumbling forward in a skirt or crashing spectacularly into the entryway of an office-park deli.   Which, of course, is exactly what happened.

This would be the first of many such blunders, always trying to put my best foot forward, inevitably walking in with mustard on my shirt.

Flash forward a few years later.  It’s a meeting with the same client, but by now, I’m leading this one. I’ve met with the big wigs numerous times, presented information, knocked ‘em dead, etc. The very last time I was there our meeting was held in the official corporate “conference room”. The table, I kid you not, was and is the biggest I’ve seen to date. Easily 200 yards in length, solid marble. There was so much technology in that room it was absurd. Remotes to raise blinds, switches to turn on switches—I felt like I was in the Batcave. So there I am, presenting away to a bunch of people who are new to our side of the business, and needless to say, I need to make a strong impression. Slide 16 speaks to this, slide 17 speaks to that, slide 18 has “sharts”. That’s what I said, out loud to 20 people, 15 of whom did not know me. Meeting black out ensued.

Cursed is probably a little dramatic, so I’ll just say that I’m a little accident-prone.  Which brings us to my recent meetings with two new clients.

I Traveled last week and met with some clients. One gentleman who I was introduced to informs me that he is from Denmark, to which I quip back, “Oh, you’re Dutch.”

Him: “No, I’m from Denmark, I’m Danish”

Me: “Oh – Right. I knew that”

Meal continues, conversations span the galaxy, approximately two hours pass. The check is brought to the table when said gentleman offers to help pay, saying – “Let’s go Dutch?”

Me: “Wow, you guys say that too, even though you are Dutch?”

Him: I’M NOT DUTCH – I’M DANISH

Me: Thinking….I’m never going to win Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit or even be able to help my child in geography.

Finally, on the same trip, I had a few more meetings, all of which required a certain dress decorum. I wore new shoes for approximately 30 minutes before they had given me giant, painful, hellish blisters on my feet. We still had quite a bit of walking to do. Fortunately my friend/co-worker had some emergency band aids stashed in his backpack. Between meetings we escaped to a McDonalds for coffee and first aid. I get the band aids fashioned on – which, I might add, is an attractive thing to do in a restaurant full of casually clothed people when you’re dressed up and slapping adhesives on your feet. Band aids on and we go into the next meeting. Of course, the band aids have done nothing to alleviate the pain from walking on giant blisters.  Walking into the meeting, I casually look down at my poor feet and realize that the band aids are now hanging out my shoes. And I’m walking through an office where the people are dressed better than I could even imagine dressing like on my best day and I have band aids flapping around like a pair of old, bloody pricetags. Pretending that I’m a still a class act (or maybe just invisible) I yank the band aids out and shove them in my purse.

And then I walk the rest of the way gritting my teeth, realizing that I really shouldn't be surprised.  In an effort to make me feel less alone, I ask you this:  what meeting malfunctions have you had? 

So anyway, as another week goes by without a new episode of Lost, I'm left with my imagination running wild, pondering the possibilities of what I'll see when the show returns on the 24th.  Is the Temple another station or does it have something to do with the statue?  Why did Michael get a haircut?  Will they have written Walt's apparent sprint from whiny, obdurate ten-year old to morose, scowly teenager as a function of the Island's peculiar temporal effects?  And what brand will exclusively hold my attention during the story breaks?

See, I don't have cable, and while my TV has rabbit ears, for whatever reason, it can’t nab an ABC signal that doesn’t make my TV look haunted.  So I watch Lost on ABC.com.

You might think that watching TV on a laptop’s monitor kind of sucks, and if you’re used to the expansive grandeur of a 52” plasma screen, then yeah, TV on a laptop monitor is probably disappointing.  But my TV still has a tube, and it’s small, so I don’t care.  Plus, I don’t have to sit through so many commercials.

Ah yes.  TV commercials.  You know, the things you sit through the Super Bowl for?  Well, for the most part, I hate them.  Okay, so the recent Pontiac one is pretty awesome, but that’s only because it incorporates Spy Hunter, the arcade classic that taught me how to drive.  I understand that if not for TV commercials and their precious, network-exec-salary-paying dollars, we wouldn’t have shows such as Lost¹.  So I guess I tolerate them, but only barely.  After all, I don’t need a Cialis or McDonald’s ad to mark the appearance of a major plot point.  I can figure those out on my own.  Moreover, I don’t need Cialis or McDonald’s.  In fact, rather than making a connection with me, they are instead building a brand association with narrative interference.  Or, I guess, trips to the kitchen or the bathroom.  This is probably not an original thought, but when I hear the phrase “I’m lovin’ it,” I am reminded not of glistening, sculpted McMeat, but of the Triskits in my kitchen or the Charmin in my bathroom.  That and the fact that it will be another four minutes and thirty seconds before I find out why Sayid is playing golf and flat-ironing his hair.  And that really sucks.

But thank the maker² for streaming video.  When you watch Lost, or The Office, or I guess, Buck Rogers³ online, you only have to tolerate a single brand pestering you a handful of times, for a measily 30 seconds.  This is waaaaay better than breaking up the show into 8-minute blocks surrounding five intrusive minutes of various products I will refuse to buy out of spite.  So I’m okay with Honda sponsoring an online episode of Lost.  It doesn’t necessarily make me want to go out and buy the new Accord, but I appreciate that their interference is minimal and strangely polite.  If this is a sustainable model for televised content, then it’s okay by me.  It certainly works well online.

¹Nor would we have shows such as Two and Half Men or According to Jim, which is less of an argument against TV ad dollars as it is an argument against TV.

²If you got this reference, I'm sorry for both of us.  Also , would you be able to run a game of D&D on Friday night?

³If you recently read about Hulu.com in Entertainment Weekly, probably. 

It still amazes/frustrates/baffles/confuses me how hard online agencies and marketers have to fight for even the smallest of budgets. That’s not to say we shouldn’t have to make a case for why we need an extra hundred thousand dollars here, or million there, but whenever I see ads like the one below (whose production costs alone probably top the entire annual online marketing budget), it still baffles me. And because I am in a pensive mood, it also makes me begin to question why we all work so hard for such a small piece of the marketing pie. Is it because we all have just a slight slant of masochism in us? Are we just stupid? Maybe we all truly care about our clients and really believe we can convince them to stop wasting their money on raps about cable television packages? I truly hope it is the latter - otherwise a lot of us need to sit down and reconsider our lives.

I mean, really? This is what people want to spend tons of money on?

Remember V?  You know, the 1983 NBC miniseries about an alien invasion?  Starring the guy from The Beastmaster?  Not ringing a bell?  Well, V was about the Visitors, a race of old-people-sunglasses-wearing aliens who come to Earth, park their flying saucers over major cities¹ and sheepishly ask for humanity to help them save their dying planet.  In exchange, they offer to share their amazing technology, crimson wardrobe and stunning, early-'80s glamor.  All is well until The Beastmaster, employed here as a TV cameraman, catches them eating live mice.²  While the aliens' diet is merely off-putting, their true intentions (global conquest!  using people for food!!) are cause for serious alarm.  And also, they have lizard faces underneath their human disguises, and that's pretty gross.  I'd long since put V's lesson of be-wary-of-powerful-entities-swearing-they-mean-no-harm out of my head until Wednesday, when Tom Phillips announced Google's SEM intentions following the offical closing of the DREADED DOUBLECLICK PURCHASE(!).  If you missed this, basically, the Doubleclick deal is done, and Google has further tightened its primary-colored fingers around SEM.  Or not.  According to Phillips' Wednesday afternoon post to the Googleblog, the search giant's³ Doubleclick intentions are not as nefarious as everyone feared.  So what, exactly, is Google planning to do with the SEM side of its shiny new toy?

First of all, it's selling Performics SEM, the search agency side of Doubleclick to a third party.  A lot of agency-types heaved sighs of relief at the expected (though unconfirmed) news that Google won't be pushing them out of business.  Not like this, anyway.  Secondly, the engine is also integrating Performics Affiliate into its product line.  While most of the articles talking about these shuffles haven't really highlighted this facet of the Doubleclick deal, from an affiliate's perspective, this is pretty intriguing, and by intriguing, I mean terrifying.  If you're an affiliate, your competition is now a lot bigger and stronger.  Of course, if you're a publisher, this is akin to winning the big prize on a scratch-off ticket, since SEM integration will likely get a lot easier. 

I think what's going on here is that Google has found a way to spread its revenue around should paid clicks continue their alleged slow down.  Instead of conquering the proverbial world, perhaps Google is preparing for the possibility that its planet may be in peril.  On the other hand, the moves add a whole new level to Google's commercial presence.  It already wields Google Product Search and offers shopping cart technology in its ads, but now it has direct access to major advertisers on a new part of the business.  Never mind that it now has tons of traffic-hungry affiliate marketers right in the palm of its hand.  If these guys aren't running AdSense, already, you can bet they'll be registering for it now. 

Obviously, Google has no intention of subjugating the earth and eating people,⁴ and selling Performics appears to be a gesture of good faith.  However, it will be interesting to see what happens across the affiliate landscape.  My advice?  Watch the skies, and look out if you see Larry and Sergey donning red jumpsuits.

¹This plot device would be aped thirteen years later in a bigger, louder, crappier movie that suggested, among other absurdities, that an alien species able to master interstellar travel could be bested by Jeff Goldblum and a Powerbook 5300.

²Incidentally, in light of his affinity for animals, I'm going to assume The Beastmaster is a vegan.

³Googleliath?

⁴As far as you know.