New Biz All-nighter

Unless you are in the communications business (and on the agency side) odds are the last time you pulled an all-nighter was in college. Thanks to technology, even all-nighters in the agency biz are becoming less common but they do rear their ugly head from time to time. We recently pulled a pretty good old-school all-nighter here at Tailfin for a new business piece, the kind of project that almost always gets pushed to the back of the line. A few days after this, a few things came to mind that are good lessons for those of us in the agency business (and those of us in regular-type business as well).

Sometimes these things are unavoidable. Duke Ellington once said (allegedly) “I don’t need time, what I need is a deadline.” Deadlines are the drivers of everything we do, and when you weigh the deadlines for clients versus the potential clients, it’s easy to guess who wins. So the only time you can put yourself first – as your own client – is when the phones go quiet, the emails subside and the sun goes down (this is sometimes equally true of real breakthroughs on client work).

You can see a week of work played out in one night. If you want a good snapshot of how your organization is really running, keep scoreduring an all-nighter. You can see working tendencies and interpersonal skills played out in a mere twelve hours; camaraderie and cut-throat rage, under-the-gun smarts and deer-in-headlights dead-ends. But unlike the 9-to-5 workday, you can also see how much individuals really care – about their work, about each other and about the success of the agency. It can be illuminating…or scary.

In the end, an all-nighter can be a kick in the pants. Yes, on the “day after” everyone is pretty much worthless and walking around in a tingly caffeine haze. But more often than not, real, smart creative ideas filter out of the wee hours , as can a new found respect and empathy for co-workers. In the days and weeks that have followed out last 36 hour slog, oiur team has felt a creative re-invigoration and even instituted some otherwise boring organizational processes to make us all work – and live – a little smoother together.

When it’s all said and done, the all-nighter is both beauty and beast – lot’s to love and hate. But it is also a badge most old-schoolers still wear with pride – something that says “No, I don't wear a tie to work, thank you very much,” as you turn and walk away in your all-black agency-issue threads.