Boomm celebrates Halloween in a big way.

One year, we held a scary story contest that resulted in some remarkably imaginative entries. Another year, our CEO Gary Mattes created a lighted sign that eerily glowed “BOO,” until the letters “MM” illuminated to complete the agency name. But the most frightening memories by far are from our old, haunted offices in La Grange.

Boomm employees still whisper about “The Twins,” our resident ghosts. These spectral sisters were always making unexplained noises, knocking objects off shelves, rumbling about in the dusty attic, or triggering car alarms during client calls. The Twins made working late at Boomm an adventure for the brave hearted.

In the spirit of this haunted season, we thought it would be fitting to share the tales of some other ghostly apparitions that haunt the hallways of agencies. These are all true-life B2B horror stories. In fact, you probably have encountered one or two of these frights in your career.

Frankenstein Creative

A small B2B agency has a big campaign presentation coming. Everyone works extremely hard, and many good ideas are discussed. The agency team narrows the ideas down to a select few, and all are distinctly different. One concept uses original vector graphics to tell the story, another is based on customer experiences with lifestyle photos from the field, and the final concept is a fantasy that takes us inside the mind of the prospect.

On the day of the presentation, the client representatives are overjoyed with the work—particularly the variety of ideas and concepts. As the meeting disperses, the client team is already talking about increasing the campaign spend and the agency team is thinking ahead to the B2B awards shows.

It’s a golden time for everyone, until the monster shows up.

The client CMO has a hard time choosing one concept over the others. She spends hours going back and forth without a clear winner. As a fallback, the CMO suggests combining them all into one “super concept” that will have the best parts of each.

The rest of the client team is horrified by this idea, but no one has the courage to admit it. As a result, the hapless agency creatives try to stitch together disparate elements from each concept and mesh them into one semi-functional idea.

The result is truly terrifying: Frankenstein Creative. It’s a lumbering monster of a campaign that looks cobbled together and cannot communicate a single thought. Frankenstein Creative strangles good ideas, crushes strategy and unleashes dismal ROI that will haunt the client and the agency for years.

Zoom Zombies

The download session is Wednesday at 10:30 am. It will be a virtual discussion involving the sales lead, R&D, category managers, and a few members of the C-suite. It’s an important initiative and coordinating everyone’s calendars was a nightmare for the B2B agency, but now it’s all set thanks to the marvels of remote meeting technology.

When the download session time arrives, some very eerie occurrences strike. The sales lead is a ghost because he can’t login. The category managers have no audio even though they appear to be screaming into the microphone. The C-suite is visible for a few seconds but then vanishes into some netherworld. And the category managers are blocked by a phantom firewall.

The agency is frantic. Is it the platform, the version, solar flares? Should we reschedule, switch laptops, start drinking?

Perhaps the most mysterious development of all is that the platform was working fine earlier in the day. But when it mattered most, the virtual meeting attendees became Zoom Zombies. These poor souls were destined to sluggishly wander the internet, fruitlessly seeking the warmth of human connections.

Budget Vampires

The client has major ambitions. They’re about to launch an important new brand and the agency is challenged to generate a buzz across all channels.

This is an exciting time, and nothing is out of scope. The client and agency discuss brand identity, a new website, explainer videos, trade show materials, sales support, social media, and public relations that will get subject matter experts in front of decision makers. In short, it’s an omnichannel explosion that’s certain to drive leads.

The runway to launch is short, so the agency jumps right into brand development and strategy at the same time they’re creating a statement of work. The client contact assures the agency team that everything will get green lighted. “I have a meeting with finance later today…and I’ll call first thing tomorrow with approvals,” he proclaims.

But the next morning, no call comes in. Then, the afternoon slips by without any contact. The account lead tries calling but gets no response.

Finally, precisely at midnight, a text comes in.

“Finance questioning everything. Pls HOLD for now.”

As the week goes on, more scary revelations come to light. No website, videos or trade show. No sales support, social or PR.

The agency realizes they’ve been the victims of Budget Vampires. These ghouls lurk in the shadows as the project starts, then take a serious bite out of the campaign. It’s not officially dead, but it’s certainly weak and lifeless.

 

That was scary stuff, particularly if you’ve lived through it. But no one ever said B2B was for the faint-hearted.

We hope you have a safe and happy Halloween. And if you happen to see The Twins out trick-or-treating, give them our best.