News
Gruesome Scene: Salesperson Found Dead After Requesting Another Last-Minute Sales Deck

BOSTON — A salesperson was found dead at their desk Wednesday evening, AirPods still in ears, moments after sending a Slack message requesting "just a few quick slides" for a meeting scheduled in 15 minutes. Police responded to a wellness check when the victim failed to appear at Taco Tuesday happy hour.

Initial investigation revealed the marketing team all have air-tight alibis. "I was in a very important meeting about our meeting schedule," stated the Content Manager. The Designer was "stuck in an endless email thread about logo placement on cocktail napkins for a partner dinner," while the Product Marketing Manager was allegedly "reviewing a one-pager that was actually 47 pages."

Investigators noted the victim's final Slack message read: "Hey team! Client meeting in 15 - can we throw together a quick custom deck? Just needs our updated story, full walk through of the solution, and maybe a new customer case study. Oh and can we make it NFL themed? Thanks!"

The case remains under investigation. The marketing team has been asked not to create any slides about the incident until further notice.

Editorial
The Special H*ll of January Conference Season

From the Mind of B.F. Spaulding

Publisher’s Note: The following was found scrawled on a Marriott notepad, stained with what seems to be scotch.

Let’s talk about January conference season, my friends. That special time of year when marketing professionals everywhere dust off their roller bags, kiss their New Year's resolutions goodbye, and venture forth into what I can only describe as travel purgatory.

I'm writing this from gate H17 at O'Hare, where I've taken up permanent residence for what appears to be the foreseeable future. My flight home from Las Vegas for CES has been delayed three times, rerouted twice, and is now, according to the gate agent's blank stare, "evaluating its life choices." I don't blame it. I've been doing the same since I agreed to attend four conferences this month.

The thing about January conferences that no one tells you, even though I'm telling you now after my fourth bourbon, is that they represent the perfect storm of poor planning. You've got the post-holiday travel hangover, where every airline and hotel is still recovering from their Holiday mental breakdown. You've got weather that can only be described as "actively vindictive.” And you've got thousands of business travelers, all trying to prove they're starting the year "proactively," crammed into convention centers that somehow maintain the exact temperature and humidity of a tropical rainforest.

CES is the perfect example. Somebody, in their infinite wisdom, decided that right after the holidays was the perfect time to send half the world's technology and marketing population to the desert. The same desert that's experiencing what locals call "unusually cold weather at” night and what I call "dear baby caesar why is there frost on the showgirls on Fremont.” You haven't lived until you've seen a convention center full of people wearing their "Vegas business casual" outfits desperately searching for a cup of coffee.

Then there's the annual pilgrimage to various industry conferences, strategically scattered across America's coldest cities. Nothing says "digital transformation" quite like trudging through three feet of snow in New York while clutching a laptop bag and desperately searching for a Starbucks that isn't packed with 200 other conference refugees.

I have a theory – and this is where the fifth bourbon really starts to speak – that January conferences are actually an elaborate psychological experiment. How else do you explain the decision to host major industry events at a time when:

a) Most budgets have just reset, leading to a mass delusion that “this year we'll be more efficient” b) Everyone's still bloated from holiday food, making the dreaded "conference chair shuffle" even more uncomfortable c) The airlines are still apologizing for December while proactively screwing up January d) Hotel rooms are somehow simultaneously overbooked and overpriced

But perhaps the most devastating aspect of January conference season is the cruel timing of it all. You've just survived the December client closing battles, the year-end reporting marathon, and the "quick" planning meetings that somehow consumed the entire week between Christmas and New Year's. You've made promises to yourself about work-life balance and healthy habits. Then January 3rd rolls around, and suddenly you're eating dinner at 11 PM in an airport TGI Fridays, expensing a $14 airport smoothie with extra chocolate, and trying to remember which timezone your body is supposed to be in.

I keep my little black book of conference horror stories. Most of them can't be published without significant legal review and possibly witness protection. But I'll share this one tidbit: I once saw a VP of Marketing try to trade their company's entire swag inventory for a direct flight home during a snowstorm. The gate agent declined, but only after seriously considering the offer of 500 power banks and 1,000 stress balls.

The real kicker? We'll all do it again next year. We pack our bags, download conference apps we'll delete by February, and venture forth once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I’ll ever know.¹ Armed with nothing but our laptops, a one-pager, and the vague hope that just maybe this year the hotel room will have a working thermostat.

If you need me, I'll be in the airport lounge. I've got three more conferences this month, and my therapist says I need to "process these feelings in a healthy way." I assume she meant bourbon.

B.F. Spaulding is the Editor-in-Chief of Marketing Burnout. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the publication, but we're too afraid to tell him that. He can most often be found at various airport bars across the country.

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