by Terry Fallis
CHAPTER 3
“Oh, that’s just great. We’re up against the Tupper Group,” Amanda sighed as we entered NASA headquarters on E Street SW around 11:00 the next morning. “They are good.”
A dozen or so of the most uniformly beautiful people I’d ever seen were milling about in the lobby, all smiles, returning security badges to a harried guard.
“Wow, looks like a Vanity Fair photo shoot waiting to happen,” I observed. “How do you know who they are?”
“The tall blond woman flirting with that younger suit on the left runs Tupper in Toronto,” Amanda explained. “I interviewed with her last year when I was at the end of my TK rope. I’m better now.”
We moved over to the other side of the lobby to join the rest of the TK crew assembling there. A few of our folks exchanged casual nods with the Tupperites but there was no overt fraternizing with the enemy.
“Just keep smiling, folks, and act as if we’re walking on sunshine,” Crawford said under his breath. “Diane, put those funky glasses back on. That’ll intimidate them.”
When Diane complied, I realized that he’d been serious. Diane turned to face the Tupper Group as they moved en masse towards the door.
“See, they’re retreating.” Crawford paused until they were out the door before continuing, “Okay, everyone, huddle up.”
Again, I thought he’d been kidding but was immediately enveloped in a minor swarm of TK staff as we gathered around our leader. He actually put his arms around Diane and Amanda, who happened to have ended up on either side of him. On cue, we all leaned into the scrum.
“Okay, guys, the nasty people have gone and the field is ours. This is our day. This is our hour. This is our moment. Seize it. We have the team. We have the program. And we have the opportunity. Just do your thing in there and we will win this. Americans will once again be captivated by space travel, and our world and any others they might find out there will be put right.”
Unaccustomed to the half-time Vince Lombardi speech, I only just managed to stifle an eye-rolling smile. I half expected him to shout “Break” at the end and have us all clap our hands. I glanced at Amanda and was struck by the intensity contorting her game face. She looked like a barefoot Tony Robbins disciple about to sashay across red-hot coals. I confess it was kind of freaky. But then I looked at Diane in her haute couture glasses and realized Amanda wasn’t really that freaky at all. It also registered with me that Crawford Blake had failed to acknowledge that Canadians were part of this play too. Typical.
When the coast was clear, we descended on the security guard. He obviously wasn’t used to competitive pitches by aggressive, ambitious PR agencies. I watched as Amanda took a little longer than most to enter her name on the sign-in sheet. While the guard was occupied untangling a lanyard, she scanned the paper quickly and even flipped back a page in what I assume was an attempt to identify any of the other agencies pitching. She looked at Crawford and shook her head.
By the time we’d all been issued our visitors security passes, a youngish man was awaiting us wearing a nondescript grey suit with a very “descript” tie of a colour that seemed to swirl at least five different shades of phlegm. Diane was eyeing the tie with undisguised admiration, while nausea seemed the general reaction from the rest of us.
“Turner King, I presume,” phlegm tie said.
“We’re all here,” Crawford replied. “Lead on.”
We piled into two different elevators and headed for the executive boardroom on the top floor. We were still ten minutes early. The room was empty of people but clearly had been occupied shortly before. It looked as if the fire alarm had sounded in mid-meeting. Papers, file folders, half-filled coffee cups, pens, and the odd BlackBerry were scattered around the far end of the board table, suggesting an audience of six NASA execs. When phlegm tie left us and we began to hook up Amanda’s laptop to the ceiling mounted projector, Crawford actually slipped around to NASA’S end of the table and cast his eye on some of the paperwork visible.
“Anything?” Diane asked, keeping a weather eye on the boardroom door.
“Standard scoring sheet. Blank. No sign of the Tupper tally or any other firm’s,” Crawford whispered, moving safely back to our end of the table before the NASA jury returned.
After a few minutes of increasingly agitated fiddling and cursing, Amanda got our presentation up on the screen and ready to go. We’d been just about to break out our own projector, which of course we had brought with us as a hedge against incompatible technology. But because we had lugged it to the pitch, we did not require it. Murphy’s Law.
As agreed in our planning session, we placed the business cards of each pitch team member in six neat stacks where the NASA folks would soon be sitting. We thought this preferable to attempting a round of one-on-one introductions that would have consumed the entire time allotted. Shortly thereafter, we were milling about our end of the table when the double doors to the boardroom swung open and the NASA squad entered – five older men in suits led by a very fit-looking younger woman with shortish dark hair. She was in her late thirties, or perhaps her early forties, or maybe even her late forties. I’ve never really been very good at guessing a woman’s age, dicey practice that it is. I immediately assumed that she was a communications exec because she was wearing what I’d come to accept as the “women in PR” uniform – black pants, a white shirt of some description, and a black jacket. A NASA pin in her lapel completed the ensemble. She had a commanding presence that kept the focus on her.
“Turner King, welcome to NASA,” she said as she stood behind her chair. Her colleagues had all dropped into theirs. “Sorry for the brief delay. We were just finishing up our discussion next door about one of your competitors that I’m sure you passed in the lobby. We had built in a half-hour break between pitches so that the firms wouldn’t be tripping over each other coming and going but these folks gave us such a creative presentation that we let them slip into overtime.”
If she thought she was going to intimidate me at my first PR new business pitch by singing the praises of the agency that had just left … she was dead on the mark. I felt a little queasy.
Crawford offered a saccharine smile and was about to speak, but the NASA woman clearly wasn’t quite ready to yield the floor.
“I’m Kelly Bradstreet, chief information officer and head of NASA’S Office of Communications. I’m in charge of this selection process and the relationship that will follow with the winning firm. I’ve only been with NASA a short time but my mission is the same one the successful PR firm will be living and breathing, day in and day out. In short, our job is to get the public excited again about space. It’s as simple to say as it will be challenging to accomplish. But I have no doubt it can be done, and that’s why I came to NASA in the first place.”
Kelly Bradstreet, Kelly Bradstreet. I knew that name. It took me a minute to place it but eventually I remembered. I was blessed with the gift of forgetting instantly where I’d put my wallet five minutes earlier while being able to recall nearly everything I’d read in the preceding six weeks or so. Eventually, I remembered a profile piece about Bradstreet in Time magazine. Snippets of the article came back to me. She was a marketing hotshot who had been hired a few years ago to rebrand the U.S. Army, which at the time was still saddled with the image of an aging and arthritic Uncle Sam. So she had rebranded one of the oldest institutions in America and triggered lineups at recruiting offices that hadn’t been seen since Pearl Harbor. It made her a marketing superstar. How did we not know she’d moved to NASA?
“Now let me introduce the panel before turning the floor over to you.”
Kelly’s presence had been so dominating that I hadn’t even yet looked at the grey-haired contingent of NASA execs seated next to her. It turned out to be the entire senior management team, including the administrator, deputy administrator, CFO, chief scientist, and chief of astronaut training.
I hadn’t recognized him until she introduced him, but then it was obv
ious. The chief of astronaut training was Scott Chandler, the youngest of the twelve Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon. This meant that he was now quite old. I had their faces locked in my head from reading all I could find about the Apollo program when I was just a kid. But they were ageless in my mind, never growing a day older than they were when they walked on another world. I looked at him closely and thought I could just discern faint traces of the astronaut cockiness swagger, not so much in his face, but in his eyes and in the way he held his head. It was very cool to be in the same room as one of the six humans who had actually driven that most expensive of dune buggies, the lunar rover, on that most exotic of beaches.
While seated, Crawford then introduced the Turner King team, having to glance down at his notebook just once when he’d worked his way around the table to where I sat. I was the new guy.
“Thank you, Mr. Blake. Now that we have met one another, the floor is yours. You know how much time you have, so please don’t overshoot the clock.”
Kelly sat down, looking comfortable and confident but a little out of place alongside her geriatric colleagues. Crawford Blake stood, paused, then began to walk slowly behind the chairs of his team. His southern drawl was wistful, his cadence measured, as he spoke. He wasn’t looking at the NASA panel but rather somewhere in the distance. This wasn’t what we’d rehearsed.
“My older brother tells a powerful story that has stayed with me all my life. I only regret I was too young to have been there with him. In July of 1969, he was just seven years old, away from home for the first time at a Christian summer camp on Twin Lakes. It was as remote as you can get in central Mississippi. On the evening of July 21, about ninety campers congregated in the main lodge. The younger boys, like him, wore pyjamas and spread their sleeping bags on the floor. After singing some favourite camp songs and finishing with a handful of spirituals, an old black and white TV set that belonged to the elderly couple who ran the kitchen at the camp was brought out, plugged in, and turned on. The reception was very fuzzy until tinfoil was applied to the rabbit ears. Then, as my older brother puts it, the snow on the screen miraculously parted and the picture took shape.”
Crawford paused for effect but kept pacing behind the TK delegation. I had the feeling that if he’d thought he could get away with it, he would have been delivering his soliloquy against the dramatic backdrop of orchestral strings and theatrical lighting. I’d been watching Kelly the whole time and she was beginning to fidget. It started with drumming her fingertips on her yellow pad. Then when I figured her fingers were tired and tender, she escalated to drumming her pen. Crawford didn’t notice and almost seemed to be lost in some kind of nostalgic reverie. Or perhaps he was just lost.
“Eventually he could see the nine-rung ladder running down the insect-like leg of the lunar module to the circular landing pad resting on the moon’s surface. And he watched, spellbound, as Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the dusty surface and uttered those now-famous words, ‘That’s one small step …’ ”
“Thank you, Mr. Blake, but I can assure you, the people at this end of the table are very familiar with what Astronaut Armstrong said all those years ago. I wonder if we might move on to hear about the program you are proposing we adopt to fulfil our goals.”
Kelly Bradstreet said it calmly but with an edge to her tone that suggested resistance was futile.
I saw anger flash before Crawford could recover and re-plaster the obsequious smile onto his face.
“I can assure you, Miss Bradstreet, we were just about to start into the program. I was just doing a little scene-setting,” Crawford replied, remarkably clearly for a man with a clenched jaw and gritted teeth.
“Well, please consider the scene set. Thank you.” She smiled back at him as he returned to his seat.
Diane rose, and we were off and running through the PowerPoint slides as we’d rehearsed them the day before. We had not yet distributed the coil-bound copies of the presentation for fear the NASA folks would promptly flip ahead of us in the deck and stop listening. We had decided to hand out the decks at the end.
Diane was a very good presenter and, among other things, managed to put Canada on the map, as it were. I worried that her glasses would be such a distraction that the panel would not be able to focus but they seemed to be with her. Perhaps it was just as a contrast to Crawford’s thespian overtones, but Diane spoke well but simply while standing in her place at the table. Bridget and I did the same and made it through our piece on the state of public opinion in both countries. I was nervous. When I’d initially opened my mouth, I thought I sounded like I’d inhaled a shot of helium. But after a few phrases, my voice loosened and seemed to return to its normal register. Bridget was also good and our hand-offs to one another were natural without any of the contrived “… and now David will walk you through …” transitions. I was pleased just to have gotten through it without a face-plant onto the board table.
After we finished our part, Amanda, who was wearing a “Put me in, coach” look on her face, stood to present the bulk of the program with Michael. She was keyed up and spoke slightly more loudly than anyone else had thus far. But she spoke clearly and not too fast, as did Michael. They worked well together. Amanda even mustered what looked like a smile at one point, unless it was anxiety-induced acid reflux. Now that I was done, I was able to relax and watch the faces of our judges as Amanda and Michael worked their way through the deck. Four of the five NASA men seemed to be either just waking up from or just falling into a deep sleep. The fifth man, Scott Chandler himself, was actually in a deep sleep, his face deformed by the fist jammed under his jaw. But Kelly Bradstreet was very much awake and kept increasing the pace of her pen percussion. I figured if we waited a few more minutes she’d be very close to playing Wipe Out. She seemed to be willing Amanda and Michael to get to the point. It was all too much for Kelly when they moved from program activities to program measurement.
“Excuse me,” Kelly interrupted. “I’m sorry to cut in but you seem to have finished outlining the tactics and have moved on to evaluation. I don’t mean to be rude but if you’re simply suggesting we step up our media relations efforts to drive more of the same old coverage we’ve been generating for fifty years, there’s really no point in continuing your presentation.”
Amanda was paralyzed with a look that suggested she was standing with a family of deer in the middle of a highway, all of them blinded by high beams. I glanced at Michael and his expression was very much like Amanda’s.
“Now just a minute here,” Crawford snapped as he leapt to his feet, loaded with invective and with the safety off. “We have worked very hard to develop a program that will achieve your objectives and remain true to the spirit, character, and traditions of NASA. I know you just said that you don’t mean to be rude, but I have to say that you really …”
Suddenly Amanda regained consciousness and saw the ground racing up to meet us. Just before we hit, she fired our retrorockets and changed course.
“Ahhh, thank you, Crawford. I’ve got this one. Thanks, thanks,” Amanda soothed as she motioned for him to sit down, palming the air in front of her with both hands.
“Well, I was just about to say …” Crawford persisted.
“I know, but we’re all good here,” Amanda pushed back, holding her hand up like a stop sign. “I’ve got this one, Crawford, if I could just continue. Thanks. Thanks so much.”
Unaccustomed to being interrupted, Crawford slowly settled into his chair with a perplexed look on his face – and on the rest of his body, for that matter. Diane had her hand to her mouth with her eyes opened so wide, it made me forget about her glasses. Yes, that wide. Scott Chandler lifted one lid to see what he’d missed. Amanda closed her eyes for just a second, sighed deeply, and then turned back to all of us. For some reason, she looked once at me and then focused on Kelly.
“Ms. Bradstreet, I can understand why you would think we were finished with the major program elements. I should have explained our so
mewhat unorthodox approach before we started. I apologize, but bear with me please. What we’ve just finished presenting is merely what we have come to call the PR infrastructure of our NASA plan. We need to sustain and increase the earned media coverage opportunities so that NASA’S profile doesn’t dip. But we certainly agree that more is needed to reignite the public’s passion for space exploration. We need a big idea to complement the more traditional media relations approach we’ve already presented.”
She leaned over her laptop, but kept talking.
“So thanks for your patience. Now let’s skip ahead and unveil the creative centrepiece of our NASA plan. David, over to you,” she concluded before sitting back down.
For an instant, I thought she’d said “David, over to you.” Surely I was wrong. I looked at Amanda. She gently tilted her head towards the screen while her eyes gripped me in a chokehold. I broke free from her stare long enough to glance at the screen. It seemed I had heard her correctly. The room was looking at the first background slide in my Citizen Astronaut presentation, minus the title. After an awkward fifteen-second silence, I instantly understood what she intended. And in that moment, something clicked. It might have been Kelly’s pen, but I don’t think so. Suddenly, I felt calm. This was my idea. I started to get to my feet. I could do this.
I was so focused I barely noticed the pain of smashing my kneecap on the leg of the boardroom table as I stood up, although the noise it made was fearsome. I looked again at Amanda. She nodded encouragement with her acid-reflux smile. Crawford was still sulking, looking at nothing in particular. Diane gave off a serene look with a “Don’t blow it” overlay. I turned to the NASA panel and noticed that the one eye moonwalker Scott Chandler had opened earlier had closed again. So I concentrated on Kelly, who seemed to be the decision-maker anyway. She put down her pen and I picked up the remote slide advancer. Breathe.
“A very special breed of men and women has been travelling into space for over half a century. In the early years of the space program, indeed into the late eighties, average Canadians and Americans were transfixed by the human drama of the launch and safe return of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and space shuttle missions. It was so far removed from the experience of our daily lives that we could only watch in wonder.