Needless to say, things can become messy. Where I work, people seem to have a slightly loose perception of what their job is, and what it is not. In a dramatic turn of events 5 minutes ago, I was informed that the design and content of advertising material is to be decided by the editors and not by the Brand Manager's crew. Not so shocking to me, I'm afraid...

So, basically what they are saying is that the current advertising material is not up to the standards... Who's standards? Journalists'? But why on earth can't people get one very obvious fact? Marketing is a science, and people who work in the field know a whole lot more about it than people who are making the magazine... Is it so difficult to understand that? To some, it obviously is.

Now, some journalists out there might be offended by what I said here. But let me assure you, it's worse than what you think I said.

See, the standard advertising space we are using in one of the dailies is (checking the file out) 235 × 75 millimeters, or roughly 9 × 3 inches. Please, get out some paper, a ruler, and a pair of scissors, and cut out a rectangle of that size, to see how large (small in this context) that is. Their (editors') idea was to place photo of the cover to the far left, on a 41 × 75 millimeter strip (1.6 × 3 inches) along with the magazine's logo, date, and price (which is printed on a pretty white flower). All those things crammed into a 41 × 75. Then, on the remaining space, which is now 194 × 75 mm (a whopping 7.6 × 3 in) we'd cram scaled down versions of the actual pages from the magazine. "How many of them?", I asked. "As many as can fit?"

So, you see how stupid this is? I do.