7 Tips to Help You Survive Your First Adland Christmas Party

You know where it is. You know when it is. And you’re casually dropping into conversation with friends who have lesser jobs that you now work in adland and the Christmas party is coming up. You yawn with indifference but inside you are biting your knuckles and running on the spot with excitement. Now, this is the time of year for really living it up and you’ve probably worked hard for months so you should have fun… but if you want to have a job in January, read on.

1. Do not tell your boss exactly where he/she is going wrong with their hugely successful global corporation. If you really can’t fight the urge, avoid shoulder prodding as you make your point. 

2. Do not eat anything wrapped in pastry and then do the above. Or talk to anyone. Or shout in someone’s ear above the music because all they will pick up is vol-au-vent.

3. Do not wear a velvet lounge suit. Looks great in GQ, doesn’t it? Looks even better in your mind. But velvet trebles your body temperature in five seconds. Arctic explorers wear it. The Large Hadron Collider is insulated with it, probably. And when you take the trousers off at night a drainpipe full of sweat will pour out of each leg. You get my point.

4. Guys, do not dance. For the love of all that is good in this world do. Not. Dance. Do not slide across the floor on your knees, tie around your head. Do not bite your bottom lip and double gun people. Do not try to breakdance to Walk This Way or move two fingers across your eyes like John Travolta or do the robot to anything. You will fall, you will fail, you will wake up with only one working tendon crying into your hotel pillow for 90 minutes.

5. Don’t email a client. They don’t really want to hear from you and ‘the guys’ during office hours, let alone at night, and when you’re hammered. Even if it is to wish them and their family Merry Christmas your auto correct and one-eye focus will guarantee you type something libellous, if hilarious.

6. You will choose the wrong meal but don’t go on about it. You know when you get the menu a month beforehand – usually in the summer and after you’ve just had lunch - and think the salmon salad sounds nice? Then on the night itself, mid-winter and you’re on your third bottle of red, everyone else is tucking into steak and fat chips and you’re stuck flicking balsamic all over your shirt as you try to get some rocket onto your fork. 

7. You are not qualified to set up your own agency. Christ, you’ve been here two months straight from college and now you think that you, Fat Si and Wattsy can go it alone because you’ve ‘done like everything already and you can do the art stuff and I can do the words and like it’ll be brilliant’. You haven’t. He can’t. You can’t. It won’t. Stop talking.

You will, of course, ignore all of the above. And so you should. You work in advertising for god’s sake and no-one tells us what to do.

Max Vinall is Head of Copy at Jellyfish