The last person asked

The National Day work is finished about now. The film is cut, the line is written, the green is the right green. Then, near the end of the meeting, somebody says it would be good to run it past one of the Saudi team, just to be sure.

I have watched that sentence in a great many rooms. It is always kindly meant, and it is always the same mistake.

The person being asked has a job, and this is not it. There is no time allotted for it, no line in their objectives that mentions it, and no authority behind it. What is being requested is not judgement. It is reassurance, seven days out from a date that cannot move, on work already paid for.

So the answer comes back in the only shape the situation allows. It is fine. Maybe soften that one word. Everyone leaves relieved.

Two things are true in that moment. The company has admitted it cannot tell whether its own work belongs in the market it is speaking to. And it has placed that admission on the desk of whoever happens to be from there, at the point in the process where saying no costs the most and carries the least weight.

The check is not the problem. Its position in the calendar is. Asked at the brief, the same question is cheap, and the answer can still change what gets made. Asked a week out, it is a signature on something nobody intends to remake.

The tell is who holds the pen. If the person who knows the market is the last one asked, the company has hired a safety net. If they are the first, it has hired an author, and the difference shows up in the work long before it shows up in the room.