Ad Nomad

by Eric Jay Sonnenschein

  Forty-five minutes late, Dane and Gwen rushed into the dark conference room with two huge canvas cases on their shoulders. Eighteen hostile drug company employees awaited them. It was the last Friday before Christmas and they wanted their weekends to begin. With their heads down, Dane and Gwen set up the concept boards along the walls, avoiding eye contact with their hosts and ignoring their barbed remarks. Dane and Gwen presented the work and smoothly exchanged parts like TV anchor-people. When they were done, the clients applauded vigorously. The amount and quality of the creative work impressed them. In praising the creative team’s diligence, however, they admonished Landon and Gaines never to be late again.

  On the way home, the mood was jubilant. The creative directors congratulated Dane and Gwen for their presentation. They made jokes about being late.

  News of the Refluxidyl success traveled. Dane tasted agency celebrity. The account management team use his “runners” concept as a textbook example of the “generational theme”—a template for the new age of Me-2 drugs, in which new compounds were the virtually same as old ones.

  17. DANE AND GWEN: A SUCCESSUAL RELATIONSHIP

  The brilliant success of the presentation exhilarated Dane. He and Gwen had rescued the account from a debacle and transformed it. Dane shared the triumph with Gwen—and felt differently about her. He respected her talent, her warm voice with its bright notes, and her confidence. She had poise under pressure and was a natural improviser—always in the moment. Most of all, Gwen was strong and competent, someone on whom he could rely.

  Dane and Gwen made several business trips to the clients’ headquarters in Philadelphia. They would rendezvous at Penn Station when the concessions were opening and take an early morning train. Dane always carried a large canvas case with foam board concepts on his shoulder. The new partners drank coffee and ate Danishes on the train and rehearsed their presentations, which were often wellreceived. The marketing of Refluxidyl moved swiftly to the first round of testing.

  This partnership was special to Dane. He knew it because he usually hated early mornings, yet looked forward to rising two hours early to make the train with Gwen. He was attracted to Gwen in a new way. It was a successual attraction.

  Years before Dane had dated a woman copywriter, who claimed that successful advertising people cared more about business than about sex. Success was not just an aphrodisiac for them; it was sex. At the time, Dane thought it was twisted but now he felt the same way. He was smitten with Gwen because he had success with her and wanted more. He was attentive to her and as proprietary as a husband.

  In advertising, this was a normal and healthy phenomenon. Buzz Dingblatz, who taught Dane’s class at The Institute of Design, joked that a client often asked him where his girlfriend, Houlihan, was. Partnership was an arranged relationship, at once random and passionate.

  Dane and Gwen’s successual relationship deepened in the fertility of time. They were together in trains, stations, cars, arriving, departing, and waiting. In Philadelphia, Gwen introduced Dane to Anne’s pretzels. “After every client meeting I treated myself to one of these. The proof is here!” she said, patting one ample buttock. She laughed. “I didn’t care. They’re so good!” Dane laughed along. He enjoyed Gwen’s spontaneity and her ingenuous self-mockery. She had the confidence to laugh at herself—and mean it.

  As they rolled through New Jersey, Gwen reminisced that she often took that train years before with a partner “she loved” at another agency. Their client had been unusually sadistic, which was saying a lot in a business marked by cruelty and abuse. She would storm in late to presentations, call Gwen’s work crap and stomp out.

  Going on business trips with his partner was Dane’s idea of how advertising should be. Even Gwen’s adoring accounts of a beloved former partner did not diminish his contentment. Dane was not jealous of Gwen’s work memories. He knew her affection for an expartner was an accretion of joys, torments, adrenaline and exhaustion, over moments and years. She might eventually feel the same way about Dane. But in his view, what they had now was perfect. Gwen knew failure with her previous partners; with Dane, she had only success. And more would come.

  This was the beauty of a successual relationship, which distinguished it from a sexual bond. With sex, the past compromised the present, but with success, the past was irrelevant; only now and later mattered. And while sex rarely improved in time, success compounded.

  However, a successual relationship was no safer than any other in certain respects. On one morning train to Philly, Gwen whispered excitedly, “Look, there’s L—!” She pointed at a former rock star nearby, whose shaggy, magenta hair and multiple piercings identified her as having gone over-the-hill to below sea level. Dane was acutely jealous. He wanted Gwen to be more energized about their work, their partnership and their success than about a played-out performer—but she wasn’t. The success Gwen laid at his feet she turned into a doormat.

  Gwen thrust the past in Dane’s face and made him look at it. She exposed their winning streak in the mirror of his deep seated ambitions. He once aimed for an artist’s fame and respect but settled for a paycheck and an adman’s low status and transient achievements. Now he had to live with the compromise.

  After round one of testing, two campaign concepts were frontrunners—Dane’s “Runners” and the departed Bushkin’s “Glowing hand.” Dane believed he would have a transcendent success to transport him from late-blooming journeyman to industry superstar, agency owner and hall-of-famer. He had a perfect advertising trifecta: great partner, blockbuster account, winning campaign. His career could not get better.

  And it didn’t, not for now. Success was a large planet with immense gravitational force. As Dane’s desires approached their object, they disintegrated in the intense gravity of the heavenly body.

  18. THE WORM IN THE DREAM

  At a client meeting before the second round of testing, the product manager remarked that Left off…takes off, Dane’s headline, might imply that Refluxidyl was third line therapy—to be prescribed only when other drugs in its class failed to work. Since PPI’s were remarkably effective as second-line therapy, Refluxydyl as a third-line drug would be rarely prescribed. Rather than a multi-billion dollar blockbuster, Refluxydyl would be fortunate to make $100 million.

  All twenty people on the client side worried in unison. They had not considered this interpretation; nor had doctors in research. But if one person could imagine it, others might. Left off…takes off meant “passing the baton” to most people, but if it meant “last resort” to anyone, Refluxidyl sales would decline.

  “Left off…takes off can mean ‘hand-off’,” the product manager remarked. “But it can also mean ‘hold off.’”

  Foreheads around the conference table creased as one, eyebrows arched, and eyes welled with calculation and concern. Like a worm, the product manager’s suggestion gnawed at the Refluxydyl team’s confidence in Dane’s concept.

  “Nobody’s even implied hold off!” Dane pleaded—nicely. “The doctors love these words, this idea!”

  “Yes, but we can’t risk Refluxydyl being mistaken for a third line therapy. We need to convert six million Esophogard users!” the product manager replied patiently as Landon put his hand on Dane’s shoulder to defuse a meltdown.

  Dane was in shock. Language, his most trusted and beloved faculty, betrayed him as his fine headline was twisted and inverted by medical marketing. It was a common fate. In pharmaceutical advertising, each slogan was a chemical compound, every phrase a molecule, analyzed and evaluated in denotations and connotations.

  The product manager had seen a small crack in his headline. It related to how drugs are prescribed, the process of step therapy, or fail first in managed care. To treat a condition like acid reflux, doctors were expected to start a patient on first line therapy—a medicine that was effective, safe, accessible and cheap. To treat heartburn, a doctor might have a patient try an antacid like TUMS or an H2 blocker like Zantec. If first line therapy
failed, the doctor could prescribe a second-line therapy, like Esophagard—more powerful and more expensive. If a second-line therapy failed, doctors could prescribe a third-line therapy. The product team worried that “Where Esophagard left off, Refluxydyl takes off” could be taken to mean that Refluxydyl should be prescribed only if Esophagard did not work. This would result in a marketing disaster.

  It was too late to kill Dane’s concept so it was presented for the first round of research. In the morning session, doctors overwhelmingly ranked “Left off… takes off” first. This worried the product manager. She told the moderator to ask doctors if Left off…takes off suggested third line therapy.

  Once the question was raised, doctors conceded that the phrase could mean “third line therapy.” This was how research went all day. Of the ten doctors who ranked Left off…takes off first, six said the headline could mean “third-line therapy.” Dane’s breakthrough was broken by the power of suggestion.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he lamented later to Gwen. “They put the idea in the doctors’ heads and acted like it was there all the time.”

  Gwen stared at her screen as she worked assiduously on a layout that had to go out.

  “I understand how you feel,” Gwen said. “You want to be the hero. I once had a concept that looked like a sure winner. Finally, after years of dressing up other people’s stuff, I’d have my own idea out there. So a creative director was envious. She put it in the client’s head that the concept could be seen another way. Poof! It was gone. Honey, that’s the way it goes. Oh, well, try again…”

  19. BITTER PILL

  Advertising does not bury its dead concepts. It does not mourn its heroes. It has no heroes. Advertising moves on—and on—without loyalty, gratitude, memory, or remorse. Advertising stares ahead and worships the next chance—and the next—to plant short phrases in public places.

  When a concept goes down, no moment of silence marks its passing. People hear of it like the tolling of bells or the rumor of free food in the kitchenette. Pavlov’s creative minds salivate with the opportunity to spawn new ideas.

  Although “Where Esophogard left off, Refluxydyl takes off” lingered on the morphine-drip of research, the client’s lingering doubt about Dane’s exquisite headline triggered new rounds of brainstorming. A client’s over-thinking made Dane look incompetent. The creative assignment was no longer his. It had become too big and important for his imagination.

  The client ordered Landon to deploy every available resource on Refluxydyl. Copywriters and art directors from across Green’s many divisions were pressed into service. Freelancers were mustered like mercenaries, briefed for ten minutes on Refluxydyl, and set loose on Dane’s domain.

  Nobody told Dane that when his concept went down, he went down with it, falling from Brahmin to pariah, from sanctity to filth. He was unready to be cold leftovers for fridge removal on the last Friday of the month. He was the writer of record and would take on all comers.

  20. THE LONELINESS OF THE WRITER OF RECORD

  The first forfeit Dane paid for having his concept aborted was that he had no creative partner. During this moment of upheaval, he was like a jockey without a horse.

  He wrote pages of ideas, headlines and visuals and went to Gwen’s office to discuss them, but she was too busy managing art and production to brainstorm with Dane. Gwen accepted the sheets of paper and promised to look at them. When he heard nothing, Dane stopped by her office, but Gwen was either on the phone or at meetings.

  “Have you looked at the concepts?” He asked when he found her.

  “No, I’m sorry. I’m up to my eyeballs with studio issues,” Gwen replied.

  The Refluxydyl client had an obsessive need to suck the universe dry of ideas and litter the world with them; Green’s creatives were up to the challenge, producing concepts non-stop for Refluxidyl. Many of these contributors were newly promoted junior creatives who had started only months before as office assistants.

  Dane was trampled by the creative rush. He looked on bitterly as writers and art directors were matched en masse, like a cult wedding, while he toiled alone. Dane was not “in a good place.” He had been there before—key stroking ideas on 8x11 paper while rivals produced glossy print outs with rich images and bold type. Dane faced the prospect that another person’s concept would represent Refluxydyl. As the writer of record, he would be condemned to pen body copy under an alien headline.

  Desperate to prevent this outcome, Dane tortured his mind to devise another brilliant concept and courted Gwen to design it. He often stopped by her office with a concept in hand.

  “You want to hear my idea?”

  “I’d love to,” Gwen replied graciously. “But I’m late for a meeting.”

  Noting his dejection, she added brightly, “You’re so prolific. I’ll put it with your other ideas.”

  She opened the top drawer of her desk and inserted Dane’s latest idea on top of the stack of ideas he had been giving her for weeks.

  In that gesture Dane recognized his updated status on the Refluxydyl team. His concepts were dead and Gwen’s desk drawer was the coffin in which they were buried. Was Gwen the undertaker? Was she too busy or did she starve his spirit and kill his career slowly with smiles and evasions?

  No. Dane knew Gwen was not to blame. She was always more than his partner. She had a bigger title, more responsibility and far more experience. As group art supervisor, Gwen headed the account. She organized her studio contacts brilliantly to accommodate a client who would pay any amount for creative output. Gwen transformed the Refluxidyl team into an agency within the agency. She was the queen of the Green ants, and Dane was a drone.

  “We’re partners,” Dane pleaded. “Everybody else has a partner and they’re all on this account. Except for me—the writer of record!”

  “It is ironic. I’m sorry,” Gwen replied sympathetically.

  “When will we concept again?” he asked.

  “I wish I knew,” she said.

  “At creative reviews I tape my headlines and stick figures to the wall and they’re ignored. Words need art. You’ve got to help me.”

  She laughed. “Don't you think I want to? It’s more fun than this. Look, I’ll hire a freelance art director to work with you, so you’ll have someone to play with!”

  It was a kinky professional gesture. Dane’s partner not only permitted him to work with another art director but signed off on it. It was as if his wife, unavailable for sex, paid for prostitutes.

  One art director Gwen recruited for Dane had won awards for Volvo, IBM, and NFL commercials. He must have felt over-qualified for Refluxydyl because he sat in Dane’s office and never lifted his pen even to doodle while Dane plied him with ideas.

  Finally, the art star seemed to emerge from a long trance. “I got it!” he said. He drew a football and insisted it was the perfect symbol for Refluxidyl.

  “A football?” Dane asked with perplexity and nodded so he would not seem stupid.

  “What do people do when they watch football? Eat food that gives them heartburn. It’s a no-brainer. You can’t lose,” the rent-agenius explained.

  Dane suggested that they keep working, that a better idea might lie in wait in the abscesses of their minds. But the art director superstar insisted that no more thinking was necessary—and it might be harmful. They had their “big idea.” The advertising gods had been kind to them. It would tempt misfortune to be greedy.

  “Chill brother!” the rent-a-genius said. He spent the remainder of the afternoon on his cell, planning his birthday party. “Keep it real!” he told Dane. “What does that mean?” Dane asked. “I dunno. But I live by it,” the rent-a-genius said.

  Later, the account vice president reviewed the football ad on the wall and reproached Dane, “A football? Really, Dane?”

  21. IN FLAGRANTE DESCRIPTO

  One afternoon Dane stopped by Gwen’s office to beg her to collaborate. Her door was closed so he knocked. “Come in,” the art group supervis
or called out in her warm, musical voice that never failed to lift his spirits just a little.

  When Dane opened the door, he found his partner at her desk chatting with two junior creatives. The young writer had been recently promoted from office assistant and the art director was Carl, the degenerate who constantly sat on his hipster glass frames during drunken stupors.

  “Come in, Dane. We were looking at concepts,” Gwen said.

  “Perfidious woman,” Dane thought.

  Spread out on his partner’s floor were reams of concepts in 11x17 color printouts.

  Dane saw clouds in the Pantone shade of Refluxydyl purple, a purple giant and a man with purple lips playing a purple harmonica. Two midgets mugged in purple wrestling outfits, one on the other’s impish shoulders.

  “Hey, I used that man with the purple banjo!” Dane cried, affronted by their plagiarism of his plagiarism.

  Dane seethed. Why did his partner humor the young copywriter and art director? Did such mediocrity deserve encouragement? Of course, she was flirting, having her fun while he, the writer of record, played the creative cuckold, typing worthy concepts by the ton to be buried in the coffin of her drawer. The writer of record had no art director, yet this untried junior with no book, no experience, and no Institute of Design class—who never saved his work from being torched and tossed from a window—was prancing around on his own creative team.

  “What do you think of this work, Dane?” Gwen asked.

  “Frankly, it’s ludicrous and derivative. You can take two of anything and color them purple…and what does it mean?”

  The junior creatives took their cue to leave.

  “What’s wrong, Dane?” Gwen asked in her soothing voice that spoke to the four-year-old in him. “You sound upset. Is anything wrong?”