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Gone fishing: European ad industry takes a break while UK slogs away

By Kerrie Finch

August 15, 2013 | 4 min read

You know that perennial PR favourite, the words of the year that make it, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, into the new version of the Oxford English Dictionary? Here’s a fresh 2013 certified word that deserves to be thrown into the hat:

Work hard, holiday harder

Maxibreak’ (noun): Antonym of ‘Minibreak’. To sod off indefinitely for the majority of the summer without so much as an Out of Office notification.

If you are not working in, or with, mainland Europe you might not yet be aware of this phenomenon. Basically it describes the period during July and August when (just about) the entire European continent appears to switch off the lights, give the spare key to the neighbour - probably England - and set off on an extended siesta of around three to four weeks.

Although this happens year after year here in Amsterdam, it never fails to catch me by surprise. But for some reason this summer – I’m blaming the shockingly-not-pants-at-all weather – it seems to be even more pronounced than normal. Forget ‘work hard, play hard’, the dictum across the continent this summer is without doubt ‘work hard, holiday harder’.

I’ve lived and worked in Amsterdam since I moved here from London 13 years ago, and I can barely recall the days of going cap in hand to a boss, begging for two weeks' holiday (not just because I’m now my own boss). In the UK, one week is the norm; two weeks involves some serious corporate ass-kissing, and three weeks or more is going to need a wedding or a baby, or possibly both, to justify it. In France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands? Employees have no such qualms about heading off for a month or more.

I’ll admit it, at first I found the whole thing disconcerting. Where was the staying power, the elbow grease – the pain of long days and short weekends? Now, I’ve come to see it as a necessary refuelling period that keeps mainland Europe (and Scandinavia) running smoothly at all other times of the year.

And yet, as a communicator by trade who works across borders, things do get a little tricksy when it feels like there’s not a soul out there to communicate with. Here’s a snapshot of the scenarios that puncture the summer months for the FinchFactor team:

Scenario A: Plan to release time-sensitive story to media; start to warm up target journos a few days in advance; discover, through the process of speaking to a receptionist, an intern and/or a cleaner, that the entire news room has left for Acapulco. Repeat again and again until you eventually admit defeat and decide that the only ‘warming up’ European media will be doing is throwing a towel over themselves as they exit the outdoor infinity pool.

Scenario B doesn’t even get to that point as it involves failing to find any clients in the right time-zone to sign off the press release in the first place. Gah. It’s enough to make you wander the empty streets howling “Hello? Is there anybody theee-eeere?” at the top of your lungs.

Bring it on, September, bring it on.

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