Selling the Dream

by Hugh Mackay

  He nodded vigorously. ‘Go on, Linc.’

  Linc obliged. ‘The good news – at least it’s good news for GBH – is that the frontal lobes are the last part of the brain to get properly connected to the rest of the network. They don’t fully mature in most of us until we’re into our late twenties or early thirties. Until then, we’re easily affected by other impulses – the desire for pleasure, in particular. Pleasure. Thrills. Boundary-riding. Risk-taking. Testing the limits. All that stuff we can remember from our own adolescence and young adulthood. Putting sugar in your next-door neighbour’s petrol tank. Overtaking on a blind corner to impress the girls in the back seat of the car. Shoplifting for the hell of it. Stealing from your mother’s purse. Eating a litre of ice cream or twelve bananas at one sitting. Chucking your rubbish out of a car window because you know it’s the wrong thing to do.’

  Around the table, no one could remember doing any such things, but they assumed other kids, including Linc, had had a more colourful adolescence than theirs. (In fact, the young Mikey Hunter, cautious to the point of timidity, had himself never knowingly transgressed in any way. His brief caper as a collector for the Civilian Limbed and Maimless had been his sole act of juvenile bravado, and even that had been more in the nature of a commercial experiment than any sort of thrill-seeking venture. Sugar in a neighbour’s petrol tank? The very same neighbours whose cars Mikey was lucratively employed to wash? Mikey wouldn’t have dreamed of putting that commercial relationship at risk.)

  Linc pressed on, in full declamatory mode: ‘So if we were parents, we’d be seeing this as a justification for more discipline, more supervision, more guidance. But we’re not parents – well, we might be parents in another life – but right here, right now, we’re marketeers. We’re entrepreneurs. We’re here for GBH, goddammit! So this is the best news we could have. Our target audience is people whose frontal lobes are not fully formed, plus – get this – all those who wish their frontal lobes were not fully formed.’

  Jerry experienced a moment of anxiety. ‘We’re not going to be mentioning frontal lobes in the campaign itself, are we, Linc?’

  ‘No nononono! This is what we know. All they know is that they want to have fun. Throw off the shackles. This is not a product for sensible, rational adults. This is a product that lets the kid in you off the leash. Take the plunge! Test the limits! It won’t kill you!’

  Linc had risen to his rhetorical climax, and now he stopped, acting as if he’d had a sudden insight. He smacked his forehead, right across those precious frontal lobes.

  ‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘Did you hear what I said? Did you hear what that kid in the red jumper said in the focus group?’

  He jabbed a button on the wand in his hand and there appeared on the screen a picture of The Ripper with those very words slashed across it like a warning. In fact, it was the opposite of a warning; it was a challenge. It won’t kill you.

  Before anyone could respond, Linc whipped his smartphone out of his pocket, hit a pre-dial and said, ‘Send him in.’

  ■

  Along the corridor in the fuchsia conference room, an all-day meeting was in full swing. The representatives of BudJet Express, a new budget airline, had KK&C on their shortlist of possible agencies and this was the final briefing; the agency was to present some campaign concepts, and the airline was to offer a more concrete estimate of its projected ad spend. It might have been a cut-price operation as far as the travelling public was concerned but, from the agency’s point of view, the acquisition of BudJet was a looming bonanza. Jhon Kornfield wanted the BudJet Express account at least as badly as he had wanted all of Cocky and all of GBH.

  The morning had been spent on market forecasting and an analysis of competitive airline strategies. The agency team, headed by Bob Kelman, had taken the BudJet people out for a lavish lunch and they were now back in the fuchsia room and settled to the serious business of demonstrating what KK&C could do for them.

  First up, Otis was brought in to present the conclusions he had drawn from a series of focus groups. It emerged (to no one’s surprise) that the customer’s single biggest worry about budget airlines was safety: were the cheap fares only possible because of cost-cutting on maintenance? The ‘no frills’ proposition was appealing for very short flights, but then only on rational grounds: the idea that it was all about saving money rather took the fun out of it and, in the case of nervous flyers, added to the strain, since the frills were actually a pleasant distraction from the onerous task of keeping the plane aloft by thinking lofty thoughts or, as a last resort, gripping the armrests.

  In response to the research, the agency had developed three concepts to present to BudJet, each in the form of a mocked-up TV commercial drawing on a mixture of stock footage and stills, with soundtracks recorded in a professional studio. No expense had been spared.

  ‘The Joy of Flying’, the first of the three concepts, was a dreamy, shameless pitch to the baby-boomer market, full of puffy clouds and grey-haired passengers. This was intended to evoke a heady blend of liberation and entitlement, according to Markus, that combined the essence of flying and the essence of ageing. Rather overplaying his hand, he made it sound disturbingly like a masseur’s blend of essential oils for the treatment of nursing-home residents.

  The BudJet Express marketing executives were stony-faced. They had no intention of positioning their airline as a geriatric coach tour in the sky.

  ‘The Shortest Distance Between Two Points’ was a no-frills, retail-style presentation of the low-cost argument. Direct and uncomplicated, it had no music and a sensible, newsreader-ish voice-over. At least it showed some passengers who appeared to be under the age of forty, the BudJet people noted, but one of their marketing assistants captured the general reaction in a note she passed to the colleague seated next to her. ‘Blandsville’ it said.

  The mood of the meeting was becoming grim. Where was the famous Craven magic? Where was the evidence of the agency’s award-winning ability to create ‘cut-through’? Where was the Big Idea? At least Markus Craven’s sincerity was beyond question, and the BudJet people liked that. It matched their own seriousness of purpose – there was nothing frivolous about their approach to the business of running an airline. Small, new and low-cost they might be, but they still had Qantas in their sights.

  Finally, Markus unveiled his pièce de résistance: ‘Safer Than Crossing the Road’, a reassuring series of visuals featuring busy white-coated engineers, banks of humming computers, pilots greying at the temples and aircraft executing perfect landings. It was a soothing, reassuring presentation and, as the lush soundtrack swelled to its climax, Markus reached for a tissue.

  At that moment, the door burst open and a black-clad figure looking rather like the Grim Reaper burst in, shouting, ‘It won’t kill you! It won’t kill you!’ in a voice reminiscent of Darth Vader. He wore a black cape, and across his chest a large ‘R’ was emblazoned in fluoro orange.

  Chaos ensued.

  A young account executive bundled the confused Ripperman, still shouting, out into the corridor, to be confronted by a hysterical receptionist who had mistakenly sent him to the fuchsia room, where the Ripper Task Force normally met, instead of the teal room, where they were meeting today. The team from BudJet, shocked and affronted, gathered up their papers and fled.

  Markus, dry-eyed for once, slumped in his chair with his head in his hands.

  Bob Kelman, by contrast, was remarkably upbeat. By the time he had collected his wits, calmed the receptionist and pursued the BudJet people to the front door of the agency, they had already caught a cab and were gone. He had returned to the fuchsia room in remarkably good spirits, having previously been bracing himself for the possibility of having to fly BudJet Express if the agency won the account.

  He decided he would let the dust settle overnight and call Neroli Fishbein, BudJet’s marketing director, in the morning. He would apologise for the confusion, explain that the stunt had been designed for another client
in a different conference room, and offer to take her and her team out for another lunch – not to reopen the pitch, but just as a gesture of goodwill. (One never knew when any of these people might turn up again, working for some client whose business he did want.)

  ■

  Back in the teal conference room, the hitch in proceedings was soon resolved and Ripperman eventually burst in, shouting, ‘It won’t kill you! It won’t kill you!’. While there had been some loss of spontaneity, the actor under the cape rose magnificently to the occasion and delivered his lines with such panache that Jerry was swept away.

  ‘We’ll employ two hundred kids from drama schools across the country, for two weeks, repeating that one line, and dishing out little sample sachets of the product wherever they go. We’ll pay them three thousand bucks apiece; it will be a real bonus for the kids and you’ll save yourself a fortune in media production costs alone, Jerry. Stunts like this will take place in all kinds of unexpected places – Ripperman will burst into politicians’ press conferences, university lectures, football matches, you name it. And then he’ll disappear before people quite know what’s going on. He’ll pop up in shopping malls, at railway stations, outside schools . . . anywhere and everywhere.

  ‘This will be the ultimate Disruptive Strategy, Jerry: capital D, capital S. Cry havoc? You asked for it! We won’t be interrupting the TV news with some half-arsed commercial – we’ll be the news. Six hundred thousand dollars for a launch, Jerry . . . with our fee on top, of course, plus a few thousand for fines, damage-repair and other contingencies – after all, if the end doesn’t justify the means, I don’t know what does. BSUF, you said. Big spend up front. Well, you got it. One million bucks, in round figures, and you’ll have The Ripper on news bulletins all over the country, plus countless posts on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, you name it. Kids will be taking selfies with Ripperman and sending them to all their friends. Everyone will be hoping to catch a glimpse of Ripperman – looking out for him.’

  Jerry Weisbrot’s heart was racing. He was realistic enough to know his career at GBH was faltering, and Ripperman could be just the fillip it needed.

  9

  NEROLI FISHBEIN WAS a newcomer to the airline business, but not to marketing. She was widely admired for her work with Unilever and Nestlé, particularly her successful launch of several fast-moving consumer goods (known in the trade, unsurprisingly, as FMCGs) and she’d had a brief contract with Ford, working on their marketing strategy for the post-local-manufacturing phase.

  She was hired by BudJet Express, first to immerse herself in their Asian operations and then to set up the marketing function for the Australian launch of the airline. Neroli was convinced of the truth of the old adage that ‘nothing happens until someone sells something’ – whether that something was a seat on an aeroplane or a jar of instant coffee was of no real interest or concern to Neroli. It was this relentless focus on retail sales that had impressed a succession of CEOs and CFOs.

  Neroli and her colleagues had been appalled by the disruption to their meeting at Kelman, Kornfield & Craven. They had left the building assuming it was a deliberately offensive strategy, possibly designed to throw them off balance or to soften them up for something to come. Or perhaps it was a feeble attempt at humour. If so, it was an error of judgement that Neroli would not easily forgive – no one made jokes about any brand she was working on. Ever.

  By the time the cab had reached the BudJet office at Mascot, it was beginning to dawn on Neroli that this might have been nothing more than a terrible mistake. That lurid letter ‘R’ on the madman’s cape, for instance, bore no possible relevance to BudJet, and even the most offbeat sense of humour could hardly have led an earnest, sincere guy like Markus Craven to raise the subject of death in the middle of a pitch about airline safety. She now saw that rushing from the building in high dudgeon might have been an over-reaction.

  On reflection, she saw something else, too. Any agency that was capable of pulling a stunt like that for one of their clients – she was thinking confectionery, maybe, or a kids’ toy – while doing such solid work on an airline campaign was an agency with just the sort of versatility and flexibility she was looking for, even if they weren’t very good at coordinating their conference room bookings.

  Neroli decided she wanted to meet the brain behind that zany superhero-type promotion, if that’s what it was. Not right for BudJet; no way. But a promotional brain like that could be an asset. From her time at Ford, she knew there was a radical difference between brand-building and retail promotion. Sometimes you needed two different agencies to do those two different jobs – the brand agencies were often too precious about their work to get the gutsy feel needed for retail – but it looked as if KK&C might be capable of doing both things at once. She decided to email Bob Kelman in the morning, apologise for her abrupt exit, acknowledge that there had obviously been a mistake on someone’s part, and see if she could arrange to meet the brain behind the ‘R’ thing.

  As it turned out, Bob rang her first. His explanation matched Neroli’s assumption about what had happened. He apologised and invited her to lunch, which was another tick for the agency, in her mind. The guy had a certain avuncular charm, she had to admit. She accepted, with one proviso.

  ■

  ‘Did you know this place used to be an advertising agency? The once-mighty George Patterson, believe it or not.’ Bob Kelman was sitting at his favourite corner table in est, the fine-dining restaurant on the first floor of Establishment, with Neroli Fishbein and, at her insistence, Lincoln The Hunter.

  ‘I saw a plaque on the way in that referred to The Bulletin,’ said Neroli. ‘That was before Patts, I assume.’

  ‘Correct. It was always referred to as the old Bulletin building, even when Patts were here, but that was another era. The Bully moved to Park Street and the magazine itself is now long gone, of course. But they used to do everything here, including printing. Anyhow, ancient history. Where we’re sitting was Patts’ media department. I’ve seen pictures of it. Bloody amazing it was. Black-and-white tiles on the floor, a fountain, Corinthian columns, chandeliers. Through there somewhere, at the back of the building, they even installed a spiral staircase to match the period. That was the Patts style – well, the Bill Farnsworth style. He was the moving spirit back then. I hesitate to say those were the days, but it certainly seemed to be a more affluent era for the agency business. You could make a commercial, run it for years, and keep raking in media commissions.’ Bob held out his hands, palms up. ‘Not that I’m objecting to the change. Clients were ripped off wholesale, and the fee-for-service thing is much fairer all round. But agencies aren’t the money-making machines they once were.’

  ‘It looks as if you do alright,’ said Neroli. ‘Judging by your gorgeous premises, anyway.’

  Bored by the pointlessness of all this, Linc was studying the menu and deciding he was in need of rare beef. He was also studying Neroli – since his foray into matters extramarital, he was becoming more attuned to the nuances of female presentation – and what he saw pleased him. He noted her lustrous brown hair, her sparkling hazel eyes, her high cheekbones, her unblemished skin and the stylish silk scarf draped across her shoulders. All lovely. But, for Linc, Neroli’s most appealing feature by far lay in her no-nonsense approach to business. He could see that she, too, was impatient with Bob’s small talk; his nostalgic reminiscences must have seemed as meaningless to her as to Linc. This place was a restaurant now: what else did they need to know?

  Linc had spent an intense two hours with Otis preparing for this lunch. He had memorised several pages of material that he was now waiting to toss off as spur-of-the-moment, top-of-the-head ideas.

  Once the orders were placed, Linc could see no reason to wait any longer to come to the point. ‘The thing of it is, we need to make sure people don’t say BudJet as if they’re just saying “budget”. You don’t want to sound like a generic.’

  ‘We’re aware of the problem, bu
t we’re stuck with the name.’

  ‘So we have to finesse it a bit. We have to teach people how to say it our way. BudJet.’

  ‘BudJet? Go on.’

  ‘Bud is a lovely word. Evocative. Fresh. New. Laden with potential. Ready to blossom. Full of promise. I think I’d be capitalising on bud, if it were me.’

  ‘Capitalising how?’

  Linc didn’t miss a beat. ‘Every female of any age receives a rosebud as she gets off one of your flights. For a year, maybe.’

  ‘That’s a helluva lot of rosebuds.’

  ‘Sure, but what better way to position your brand in the spiritual matrix, right from the start. This can be a love brand, at the very least. Probably love and peace, given the rose associations. Throw in a few airport reunions – think Love Actually – and you’ve got joy as well. Three out of three! And roses are way cheaper than television. Not that I’d rule out television completely. But promotion has to be a huge part of your first year’s strategy. Huge. Point of difference. That’s what we want to establish. You don’t do that on television. The rose-growers will love you, too.’

  ‘What else?’

  Bob cut in: ‘Are we talking business here, or are we just shooting the breeze? Sorry to be blunt, but I just need to clarify. Maybe Linc should be telling you what he’s done for our other clients?’

  ‘I thought you were pitching, Bob. Markus showed us what he can do for us. I’m just trying to find out what Lincoln can do for us. I’m not taking notes.’

  ‘You need a big rosebud on the tail of every plane.’ Linc was proceeding as if Bob hadn’t spoken.

  ‘We don’t have that in Asia.’

  ‘You’re just another budget airline in Asia – the very thing we should try to avoid here. You can be budget and cheap – just get what you pay for. Or you can be budget and classy – real value for money. And that’s about style, ambience, image . . . and service, of course. The product matters too. But look, you worked for Nestlé, so you know how Lindt pulled it off. Classy look and feel, but terrific value for money. No one would dare say cheap.’