There’s a one-celled organism preying on the local ad industry, and—walang bola ito—it’s neither client, creative, producer, planner or suit.
The nightmare starts innocently enough: It offers its feng shui expertise to companies, claiming to have BBDO and DM9 JaymeSyfu among its clients. Then it sizes the agencies’ friends and colleagues, and like a cancer cell, starts singling out the vulnerable: the expectant mommies, the newbies, the freelancers.
By text, it offers a tarot reading, a blessing or a mystical bracelet. Then it bombards you with peer pressure. “I’ve read for (INSERT HIGH-POWERED SUIT’S NAME).” “(INSERT ECD’S NAME) wears one of my bracelets.” “Ask (INSERT PUBLISHER’S NAME). She knows me very well.”
If you don’t succumb to its wiles, it becomes downright menacing. To one preggy person, it said, “If you don’t let me read for you, your unborn child will be jinxed for life.” Of a TV director, it once texted, “Don’t hire him. He’s unreliable. I can find you a better one.”
Some have run away from this virulent creature in fear and paranoia. Others chose to pay for its wares, which could cost upwards of PHP2,500, in the hope that it would stop the veiled threats.
As one agency owner and sometime victim said, “Ignore it. It will grow tired of you in three months. One year, tops!”
Well, one year is too much for this garlic rose. So be warned, peeps. If you see an effeminate amoeba that is about 5’7”, dark-complexioned, of medium build, looking to be in its 40’s (although it claims to be 35), sporting a really cheap black dye job, slippers and a clutch bag, give it a wide berth.
Don’t respond to its text messages, no matter how harmless it sounds. If you’re adventurous, you may choose to toy with him, as one producer did.
It offered her a feng shui reading. With a Cheshire-cat smile, she replied, “Sige. Payag ka bang ex-deal?”
