Advice from the dead on how to party down

Just to follow up my little squib about banks, here are extracts from a message about “party etiquette” sent to its hapless employees by one big US bank.

“After a good year’s work, you’re entitled to let loose with your co-workers at a holiday party. Right?

Wrong. No matter how festive the occasion, it’s still a business setting. Follow these tips to avoid damaging your reputation as a competent professional.”

Then there’s lots of nauseating crap about how to dress, not to drink too much, don’t just spend the time with your office buddies, network – “introduce yourself to senior managers (i.e. arse–lick, pal – that’s the way to the top here)”.
Then there’s stuff about timing, “Don’t really want to go? (Who would?) Avoid turning up 20 minutes before the end? And “don’t party into the wee hours.”

It’s really excellent advice if you want to be the most boring, humourless twat anybody ever met.

Anyone who wants as their epitaph “She was a competent professional” deserves parties like that

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

1 Comments

  1. Love it.

    It’s now wonder that many people dread going to their company parties, with attitudes and rules as you described.

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