Where Is Our Win?

Spider-Man 3 took in $151 million in domestic gross box office receipts in its first weekend of release. Add to that the $231 million it had already earned in foreign markets and its worldwide take was already $382 million, which tops the movie's "official budget" of $258 million (though there are "unofficial reports" that the budget topped $300 million). Even adding in the estimated $140 million in marketing costs, and this film is already a given success. Hell, I had to buy my tickets a week in advanceso I could see it in IMAX! As of this week, Spider-Man 2 had taken in $320 million domestically and $526 million internationally for a total of $846 million worldwide!

It's the same story for Shrek 3 and Pirates Of The Caribbean 3. Shrek 3 took in $122 million domestically on its opening weekend and as of this week has earned $289 million worldwide. Shrek 3 was reportedly budgeted at around $160 million so it's already surpassed that and it really hasn't hit its stride yet in the international market. Pirates 3 took in $136 million domestically on its opening weekend and as of this week has earned $624 million worldwide. Its budget was reportedly around $150 million.

But I don't really care that much about any of these movies; I don't have a personal stake in it. But as I was looking at the numbers yesterday, I imagined what the atmosphere must be like in the offices of these studios, in the offices of the production company and everyone else involved. There must have been some intense celebration, champagne bottles popped, caviar being wheeled in, and for good measure, piles of money being rolled in (probably not the last thing), but there would definitely be some celebration. Why not? They won! And then I thought to myself, what do we consider a win in my office? When would we have cause for celebration? Sadly, nothing really came to mind.

At work, we don't have anything that I define as a "big win." Sure, we theoretically "win" accounts, but lately the market has been so shitty that we're more concerned with keeping our current book of business rather than getting new accounts. Even when we do manage to keep an account (which I did a few months back...it was a pretty big account), it still feels anti-climatic. Yes we went out to lunch to "celebrate," but it was a pretty weak lunch and then it was back to the same grind. We were basically "celebrating" the fact that we had kept things at status quo.

I need some wins at work. I need something to celebrate.