And Good Riddance!

Sunday marks the end of the month of February on the 2006 Advertising calendar. I won't be sad to see it go.

It started with this, and continued with this:

I'm sitting at work this afternoon and get a call from the Account Supervisor on one of my largest client accounts. This story has been brought to his attention--all the way in New York--through feedback from a local store. He's curious to know exactly what the piece was and who originally published it.

He wondered as well whether we had or were planning to discuss the story in our pages. Branding issues, no doubt.

I was able to address his questions and when I got off the phone I wondered exactly why I had bothered. Seeing as how he explained we've been dropped from the corporate buy for '06.

In-between, came $10,000 in revenue lost to re-rating. Sprinkle in a smattering of accounting adjustments and order cancellations and the month has become a nightmare.

Before I left for the day, I did some quick math. That Account Supervisor who tried to pump me for local intel? His account spent $43K with us in February 2005.

Even with scaled back spending from year-to-year, that account was the difference between 103% of goal and not-even-in-the-same-ZIP code.