We spend a lot of time with clients—trying to make them laugh and drink, reassuring them of our endless (sometimes even slavish) capacity to do anything they put their mind to. And however much they like us as people, clients are keenly aware of this dynamic ... this sense that they're holding our balls between their (for now) relaxed hands.
It's a relationship designed to make them as comfortable as possible. The result is that sometimes they end up saying some pretty weird stuff.
After working with a client over the course of a year-long project, New Zealand agency Strategy Creative produced a notebook to house the quotes that the client rallied off. They're out of context, meaning that members of the team—who received the notebooks as gifts—have probably had to explain them hundreds of times already. (We'd like line-by-line explanations, too. Somebody? Anybody?!)
The 55-quote piece of memorabilia is called We Said Some Shit. And even if we don't always know what's going on, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy them. Many echo moments we've been in before. And if you've been project-side, you'll definitely get a laugh.
They range from blithe TMI:
To delightful morbidity:
To the kinds of half-baked metaphors and mangled platitudes you hear in brainstorms that are taking too long:
And everything in between.
They also recall the intimacy that comes with a long-term project, which hopefully is part of what we do all this for. Because it's all about connecting, right? And you know you've succeeded when people get weird.
Below are a few more images and some design close-ups.
