Selling the Dream

by Hugh Mackay

  When the work was finished, the building was acknowledged as a jewel in Sydney’s architectural crown. It was stunning. Everyone said so. Even the tasteful black-and-gold noticeboard beside the front door, identifying this as ‘Pastor John Nelson’s Home Church’, was a source of aesthetic joy. There had been some legal wrangling over the use of the word ‘church’, but Nelson’s lawyers successfully argued that although the building had been sold it had never been formally deconsecrated.

  Following an aggressive marketing campaign, the building became highly sought after as a venue for concerts, lectures, weddings and funerals, and as an exhibition space for arts and crafts organisations, flower shows and trade fairs. John Nelson continued to stage spectacular church services there whenever he was in town and a sufficiently lucrative media deal had been negotiated.

  His Christmas service, generously supported by Johnson & Johnson baby products and Huggies disposable nappies, had become legendary. Pastor John’s Nine Lessons and Carols packed the building, with a giant screen erected outside for the overflow crowd, but it was the global television audience that attracted sponsors like J&J and Kimberly-Clark. These services were rich with liturgical flourishes, including a long procession, led by a small brass band, that wound its way through Millers Point before finally entering the church building. The procession was made up of colourfully robed clergy – keen for the exposure – recruited from various churches around the city and flanked by banners held aloft by well-drilled children dressed as choristers. (The actual choir was drawn, at considerable expense, from the chorus of Opera Australia.) Year by year, the banners gradually became more commercialised, with brand names and slogans, loosely connected to the season, incorporated into the designs. Their bearers were carefully instructed to angle the face of the banners toward the TV cameras.

  The trajectory of John Nelson’s World Ministry had reached its dizzying apogee with the refurbishment and promotion of John Nelson’s Home Church. In one way, the building stood as a symbol of the perfect blending of the commercial and the spiritual; in another, it marked the beginning of the end of Nelson’s ability to pretend, even to himself, that he was an authentic minister of religion. Deep inside himself, Nelson had begun to feel the prolonged tension between God and Mammon relax into an easeful surrender to the consolations of material prosperity. Now, instead of his sponsorships supporting his spiritual work, his spiritual work – if you could still call it that – existed solely to generate sponsorships. It was all about the bottom line, and Nelson had almost reached the point where he could admit that.

  The call from Otis was like the final stage of a long and gradual descent. Though Nelson had experienced a tiny pang of regret – nothing as strong as reluctance – as he hurried to the railway station to buy a ticket to Milan, he later recalled that moment when he put down the phone and picked up his jacket as the ultimate capitulation.

  He slept most of the way to Milan.

  ■

  Arriving in Milan in the late afternoon, Nelson found himself enchanted by Bravissimo’s premises, his first impression dominated by Tifani, the receptionist, possibly the loveliest woman he had ever laid eyes on. He was charmed by Ricardo Bertone, the agency’s global head, to whom he was respectfully introduced by Otis.

  ‘I must say it’s a pleasure to meet you, Pastor John. I have seen you on television, you know. Very appealing. Otis was the one who spotted your potential for the rather wonderful project we have in mind. By the way, that little bit of jowliness that’s starting to develop in your cheeks – we can get that fixed in a clinic for you, right here in Milan. One of our clients. No charge to you, Pastor John. It will be our pleasure.’

  Bertone was a fund of amusing stories about the various agencies his expanding global empire had absorbed – none more amusing than his account of Bravissimo’s takeover of a Sydney-based agency called Kelman, Kornfield & Craven.

  ‘You are a Sydney man, Pastor John – you’ll appreciate this. There was a fellow in that agency – a rogue, really; rogue would be the best word – who mistakenly thought I was going to offer him the CEO’s job but who fucked up – sorry Pastor John, but there’s no other word for it – he fucked up so badly in a client presentation that he simply vanished in a cloud of shame. A cloud of shame, Pastor John. Whoosh. Never saw him again. Then there were the three partners who had somehow held the place together – my financial advisors tell me it was a house of cards – but who really only wanted to get a good price and get out. Well, they didn’t get a good price. We offered them exactly half what they were asking but they took the money and ran anyway. All three of them. Ran. Whoosh. Grateful to get anything at all. But here’s the point, Pastor John; buried in that flaky little agency were two of the smartest people you could ever hope to find in the advertising business anywhere in the world. A lady called Joanne Darby – you ever heard of her, Pastor John? No? You will, believe me. A very, very clever lady. Strangely enough, she never seemed to be interested in rising to the top, but now we are grooming her to become the next CEO, once our man feels she is ready and the agency is on solid ground, financially speaking. I have no doubt that when she takes over, the place will explode. Explode, Pastor John, like a firecracker. Poof . . . bang! Joanne Darby, watch out for her. We tried to get her to come and work in Europe, but she was only interested in Russia, and we weren’t. But she’ll turn the Sydney agency scene on its head, no question. What an operator! And the owners of that business had her tucked away in a back office. Madness, Pastor John.’

  John Nelson listened to all this with polite interest. He was becoming impatient to hear what the compelling offer might be. But Bertone wasn’t finished.

  ‘And then there was young Otis here. A man being utterly wasted, utterly exploited. They didn’t know what they had. They thought his value lay in entertaining and impressing clients with smart talk. We know better. We have him developing strategies for some of the biggest brands in Europe. Otis understands consumers like no one else you’ll ever meet, Pastor John. He’s what we call our macro-gut strategist. I’ll let him explain what a macro-gut strategist is.’

  Nelson was ushered out of the presence of the great Bertone and taken by Otis into a small conference room where he was offered wine and cheese. Otis turned out to be a likeable young man with a fund of intriguing facts about the science of persuasion that Nelson felt he should himself be able to put to good use – for instance, that the most effective messages always left some blanks for the audience to fill in for themselves, that repetition with variation was the secret of successful advertising, that you should only ever appear first or last in a TV ad break, and that motivation always began in the gut – the ‘macro-gut’ was the term Otis preferred in order to emphasise the full range of organs involved.

  Otis opened the formal meeting with a presentation of the spiritual matrix concept – a Bravissimo exclusive, he assured Nelson.

  ‘All this is familiar to you, Pastor John. You’re steeped in it. It’s the air you breathe. But we’re still discovering how to realise the full commercial potential of love, joy and peace, and we believe you can help us to do that.’

  The offer that followed was both repugnant and irresistible. Bravissimo wanted Nelson – in his persona as Pastor John, complete with clerical collar – to front a national advertising campaign for an Italian hypermarket chain poised to enter the Australian market. The emphasis was to be on the unimpeachable integrity of the organisation, the transparency of its dealings with suppliers and customers alike, and a pricing policy that was both fair and reasonable. Best of all, the threefold demands of the spiritual matrix would be comprehensively met. The peace of mind inherent in the offer was obvious. The tone of the campaign would be joyful, upbeat and positive, featuring TV commercials shot with ultra-bright lighting and underpinned by a catchy musical theme.

  ‘Once it gets into your head, Pastor John, you won’t be able to get it out, I assure you,’ said Otis. ‘And love? Just like an arranged marriage,
love will come in time,’ he added with great confidence. ‘Aided, of course, by the association with the charismatic Pastor John.’

  If the Australian campaign proved successful, Bravissimo’s plan was to roll out the Pastor John advertisements in other markets where he was known. They showed Nelson some scripts. His role would be to ‘top and tail’ the commercials, with other material interspersed – some about specific product offers, some about the sourcing of the company’s fresh food items, some about the chirpy and obliging staff, some about local community engagement. It was impossible not to be flattered. Even at first glance, Nelson could see how this would benefit JNWM – not only the money but the exposure, the profile, the brand awareness. Otis was even talking about having Pastor John books available at the checkout counters of every hypermarket. Nelson liked that idea very, very much. He had always thought his books were under-appreciated.

  One million dollars. Did Pastor John think he would consider doing this for one million dollars? Otis said it as though Nelson might be going to haggle. It would be spread over three years, admittedly. And it was only Australian dollars, Otis conceded. But still. A million dollars is a million dollars. What did Pastor John think?

  He didn’t think. He just accepted the offer on the spot, shook hands with Otis and, after a languid weekend in Rome, submitted to the recommended cosmetic surgery before returning to Sydney to shoot the first set of commercials.

  And that’s how John Nelson found himself gazing into a camera lens once again, saying with all the sincerity he could muster: ‘I want to talk to you about integrity.’

  ■

  Once the private battle that raged within Nelson’s soul between his desire to remain ‘pure’ and his desire to put John Nelson’s World Ministry on a sound and sensible financial footing had been so decisively won by the forces of economics, Nelson had assumed he would be able to relax into a pragmatic – if private – acceptance of the truth about his priorities. But it hadn’t turned out to be quite that simple. He was not as comfortable about the capitulation as he had imagined he would be. The ground seemed to have shifted. This was no longer a contest between God and Mammon, after all. To his surprise, it had turned into an even darker, even uglier war between ego, fed by his public image, and despair, fed by a bitter self-loathing.

  Why couldn’t he simply go on riding the wave of adulation and affection from his adoring fans? Why was he constantly being distracted, destabilised, dragged down, by the knowledge that people were loving someone he couldn’t be, had never been, and perhaps never wanted to be? He was far too ambitious to qualify for sainthood – he had always known that about himself. But he had once been able to laugh at himself as he donned the mask and faced the cameras, or murmured obsequiously into the ears of prime ministers and presidents, or charmed and perhaps even inspired the congregations that gazed so expectantly at him. Now, he seemed to have lost the art of being ‘John Nelson’. Or had he lost even the desire? What had become of the dream? And what was the dream?

  Recording the hypermarket ads had been a revelation, in its own way. Nelson was astonished at how easily he could manufacture the look and sound of sincerity in the service of a commercial enterprise in which he had absolutely no emotional investment. What did he care whether a chain of Italian hypermarkets succeeded or failed in Australia? Yet he had managed to sound as if nothing could possibly be more important to him than that. The director had lavishly praised Nelson’s performance in front of the camera, and the team from the Sydney office of Bravissimo – including Joanne Darby, who was every bit as impressive as Ricardo Bertone had said she was – were as delighted with Nelson as he was disgusted with himself.

  After the last of the scripts had been recorded, Nelson left the studio in a state of uncontrollable agitation. ‘Confected sincerity – is that my stock-in-trade?’ he asked himself. He felt weary beyond words, yet he was filled with such a toxic combination of loathing and anger that he was energised by it. ‘I’m running on empty,’ he said to himself, over and over, as he walked aimlessly about the city. ‘There’s nothing there. There’s nothing left.’

  For two weeks, he wrestled with a growing sense of worthlessness. He had long since sold out to commerce – he knew that; he had adapted to that reality. But what was this anger – almost like a kind of terror – that was driving him deeper and deeper into despair? The weight of remorse was more than he could bear.

  Finally, Nelson gave up the struggle. He Skyped his creative, marketing and management consultants, told them he was terminating the work of John Nelson’s World Ministry, paid them all exactly what they were owed, and put John Nelson’s Home Church on the market. He changed the name of his company, of which he was sole director and shareholder, handed back the keys to the four Audis, retained a small personal fortune in the corporate bank account he had always controlled, phoned his contact at the travel company that had sponsored him for so many years, booked a flight to the Holy Land and went into the desert for forty days and forty nights. Well, almost: he spent fourteen days and fourteen nights at the Tel Aviv Hilton, most of them alone.

  ■

  Several years later, back in Sydney and doing his best to keep a low profile, Nelson would occasionally wonder what he might do with the rest of his life. Though a materially comfortable retirement, uncomplicated by any vestige of ambition, had its undeniable charms, there were moments of restlessness when Nelson wondered whether the motivations that had propelled him, as a young man, into the ministry – motivations he had, back then, unhesitatingly accepted as signs of his ‘vocation’ – might not yet be entirely exhausted. Though he could not imagine himself ever again playing any kind of religious role, there was a sense – sometimes fleeting, sometimes insistent – of unfinished business; a sense that John Nelson still had something significant to offer.

  The invitation to enter politics, as a participant rather than a decorative bystander, came unbidden. But when it came, it seemed to carry with it the promise of his yearned-for redemption.

  It all began with another phone call, this one from a man named Harrold – two r’s, he stressed – who identified himself as the organiser of a new political movement called Real Democracy.

  ‘Not another political party,’ Harrold had said. ‘A movement. We’d call it a collective only the vibe would be wrong. Anyway, it’s Real Democracy and, I won’t beat about the bush, we’re in the process of harvesting our inaugural candidates. You, my friend, are the pick of the crop. Top of our list. We need you.’

  Having been out of the limelight for so long (not counting those humiliating hypermarket ads that still appeared on his television screen with annoying frequency), Nelson was surprised to find himself the recipient of such unbridled enthusiasm. He couldn’t actually recall the last time anyone had said ‘We need you’ with quite this sense of urgency and apparent sincerity. Oh, Bravissimo had needed him, but no one was pretending that had any significance beyond the commercial exploitation of his media persona.

  ‘What do you stand for?’ asked Nelson, intrigued.

  ‘We stand for real democracy,’ Harrold replied.

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘It’s what we all believe in.’

  ‘And what do we all believe in?’

  ‘You have to ask?’

  Abashed, Nelson asked a few more questions about the organisation. It turned out to be embryonic. A committee of ‘quite influential’ people lay behind the movement, and its goals were modest. A single senate seat at the next election would be wonderful; anything more would be a bonus. Nelson agreed to meet Harrold at the office of Real Democracy.

  ‘A shoebox,’ warned Harrold, a description that appealed to Nelson’s new-found respect for modesty, understatement and even, up to a point, humility.

  Nelson spent a sleepless night. This, he felt sure, was absolutely the right path for him, opening up out of nowhere. Politics! Of course! Here at last was something he could believe in, something he could espouse with a mu
scular zeal that would eclipse his former rather hazy faith, something concrete. By morning, he found he was able to envisage himself in the role of Senator Nelson, standing before a cheering crowd and declaring his passion for real democracy.

  The office was, indeed, tiny. But so was Harrold – a veritable sparrow of a man. Nelson, certain he had found his spiritual home, was oblivious to the low ceiling, the cramped space and the tacky furnishings.

  ‘I’m just the administrator,’ said Harrold with that attractive modesty that had so impressed Nelson on the phone. ‘The real engine of this campaign – the rocket we want to strap you to – is a brand-new marketing consultancy called Buzzz. It was started by Neroli Fishbein, a dynamic woman who was something of an eminence in the world of consumer marketing before she struck out on her own. So there’s Neroli, plus her secret weapon – a truly extraordinary individual. In the past twelve months alone, he is said to have revolutionised the global marketing of ‘clean coal’ technology for the rebadged Blue Skies energy corporation, consulted to several governments on ways to improve their countries’ happiness index – mainly by changing the way it’s measured, I gather – and booked out the first commercial spaceship bound for Mars in 2030 – no refunds. He was also the brain behind the launch of King Neptune’s Kelp Burgers, made from farmed seaweed. And those microwavable frozen krill fritters? That’s him, too. But here’s the big one. Neroli tells me – wait for this – he’s grooming one of the Kardashians to run for the US presidency, as the first step in establishing another Kennedy-style political dynasty. Impressed?’