ColemanMedia Report

The out of office auto-responder of Director of Southwest Sales Chase Atkinson sent an email message to Junior Media Planner Jared Kleinsmith early Monday afternoon, just minutes after Kleinsmith reportedly replied to Atkinson’s meeting request earlier that morning. According to email server logs at Ogilvy & Lather, Atkinson sent a message with the subject line of “Happy New Year” at 8:43 a.m., which Kleinsmith replied to just after 1:15 p.m. Two minutes and 12 seconds later, a message with the subject line “Out of Office” was received by Kleinsmith. “Really?” said Kleinsmith. “It’s annoying enough that people send emails the very first second I get to the office after a holiday. But when they don’t even know how to turn their auto-responder off, it makes me want to punch someone. My eight-year-old brother could program that to turn off at 9:00 a.m. How does this guy still have a job?”

A report released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Monday revealed that “Out of Office” emails outnumbered actual work man-hours in the advertising industry by nearly 400 times from Thursday, July 2nd to Friday, July 3rd. According to the report, nearly 110 million automatic “Out of Office” email messages were sent throughout the industry, versus a combined 267.5 hours of actual work performed during the same time period. “Our data indicates that throughout the entire ad industry, approximately 47 people actually showed up to work on Thursday,” said lead IAB research Carlos del Funcionario. “And further study reveals that those 47 people instigated or received approximately 72% of the Out of Office emails generated during that time. We saw Out of Office volume decrease significantly on Friday, July 3rd, as our estimate for employees physically in the workplace fell to just Roger in Ad Operations.”