Dane had to think like McAdam and put McAdamism into practice. To achieve this, he needed to devise a project or test. One finally came to him. He would turn the stress incontinence brochure he had written at Green into an overactive bladder brochure he was working on at Integrimedicom. It was a brilliant way to save time. Stress incontinence and overactive bladder differed but had a similar result—involuntary urination, diapers and embarrassment. Who would notice or care that the copy was borrowed from another source? After regulatory committees filtered the language, all brochures sounded alike, anyway.
By cutting and pasting copy from the previous document into a new template, and altering a few details and phrasings, Dane composed a new brochure in an hour. The crime was so easy and perfect—Dane had plagiarized himself. While musing on his felonious innovation, he had a transformative idea. If he applied his experiment to all products and conditions, he would write the universal patient brochure template. It would describe every disease in vague language, offer a page or two of treatment options and conclude with the same mealy-mouthed advice “to see your doctor.” Only the diseases, product descriptions and charts would be left blank.
The thrill of scamming himself and the pharmaceutical world lasted ten minutes, after which Dane experienced a let down. He sensed that one-copy-fits-all might be what the world wanted but it cheated him of what he loved most—the thrill of writing something new each time, even if the originality was sucked out of it by account services, clients and regulatory panels. All diseases were not alike, even if they were talked about in similar ways and had similar outcomes.
As Dane debated whether to carry out his mass-deception, just to see if it worked, the traffic manager dumped a folder bulging with copy on his desk for his review and signature.
At that moment, Dane knew he could not be like McAdam, even if it meant making his life easier. He pushed through the slow, tedious changes by thinking about the new overactive brochure he was writing.
Case 3-B
AN OLD LADY AND A DOG
9. EASY & SLEAZY
Dane’s employment followed the pathology of a chronic disease—inflammations and remissions. After the Battle for Three Words he recoiled, but when he was not terminated, he relaxed.
Weeks passed. Dane made significant progress in learning the Integrimedicom culture. He did not protest or flinch when his ideas were stolen. He took it as a compliment when his headlines showed up in colleagues’ work. He perceived it as a power that yielded a benefit; his colleagues took credit for his concepts but they needed him to produce them. His influence invisibly grew.
Since Palmisano had failed to change even one of Dane’s three words, Dane was reassigned to Goldfarb in the free-for-all to create a new campaign for Hyalny, an injectable synovial fluid for osteoarthritic knees. Dane and Goldfarb focused on the simplicity and ease of therapy. As opposed to pill-popping everyday for temporary pain relief, HYALNY required only three shots, spaced days apart, and provided months of knee pain relief. “The easy way to OA pain relief. Hyalny” was the headline Dane wrote to convey this message.
“Injections aren’t easy,” Nadine remarked, dismissing the idea. The following morning Nadine and Sheldon showed the work they would present to the client. One of their concepts had a group of old surfers. The headline read, “It’s easily the most amazing thing in knee pain relief… Hyalny.”
After the meeting, Goldfarb seethed with indignation as he and Dane walked to Chinatown for lunch.
“Easy was your idea and they stole it,” Goldfarb remarked sharply. “Sheldon lacks integrity. That would never happen at DOA. If easy was your word, nobody else could use it.
“Words can’t be owned,” Dane pointed out.
“Easy was your idea!” Goldfarb insisted. “Nadine said it sucked. Then Sheldon used it like it was his all along.”
‘That’s what they do,” Dane said. “You said it, yourself.”
“It’s wrong!” Goldfarb retorted as a pedicab from a stand on Grand nearly ran into him.
“I can use easy in the tag as in Easy does it with Hyalny,” Dane reassured Goldfarb.
“No, Sheldon owns easy now,” Goldfarb concluded as if the rights to the word were irrevocably lost.
Dane found it strange that Goldfarb, who usually did as he was told and was candid about lacking conviction in such matters, inveighed against Sheldon’s word theft. Dane had better headlines, concepts and storyboards stolen and was blasé over losing easy. He attributed his indifference to a hard-won maturity but his nonchalance disturbed Goldfarb most.
They lunched on chicken and broccoli at Uncle Tung’s, a Chinese restaurant on Lafayette Street that looked like an old banquet hall. The misdeeds of Sheldon and Nadine made Goldfarb nostalgic for his better days.
“At DOA, people didn’t steal ideas,” Goldfarb said. “Creativity was sacred. Nobody changed anything. I’m sorry you never experienced that.”
Dane listened without envy as if Goldfarb were telling a historical anecdote from “before his time.” He wondered why Goldfarb made him dwell on the mediocrity of his experience.
“Maybe I’m better off not knowing what I’ve missed,” Dane said. “I have to appreciate what I have.”
“It hurts to see hear you say that. You used to get mad when you were ripped off,” Goldfarb replied.
“I need the job.”
“It’s a trap,” the sagacious art director warned. “If you give away your ideas you’ll have nothing left. You’ll keep your job but never get another one. That’s how they get you.”
The old seed of restlessness, sown by an unlikely source, quickened in Dane’s mind.
10. CONSPIRACY THEORY
In the next round to produce a new campaign for Hyalny, Dane and Goldfarb devised a concept in which an older couple carried shopping bags with unusual enthusiasm—by jumping in the air. It was the last thing a person with osteoarthritis of the knee was likely to do. The headline read, “I get around!” This was the applied art of advertising—a popular phrase repurposed for the consumer world.
Nadine and Sheldon meanwhile proudly unveiled their new concept: “an old lady and a dog.”
“An old lady and a dog can’t lose,” Sheldon said.
“When did an old lady and a dog become a concept?” Becky asked Dane that night when he recounted this episode. “They can’t be serious.”
Sheldon and Nadine presented the new Hyalny work to the client at the drug company’s corporate headquarters. When they returned, they convened everyone in the conference room.
“Dave Bruburger, the orthopedic division director, liked your concepts,” Nadine told Dane and Goldfarb.
“Yes!” Dane blurted involuntarily, pumping his fist. He could never purge himself of the habit of celebrating minor accomplishments in the manner of a game show contestant.
Nadine and Sheldon regarded one another with disgust.
“What was Bruberger smoking?” Nadine asked Sheldon.
“Crack. I heard he’s been reassigned,” Sheldon replied, as if the executive had been demoted for liking Dane’s and Goldfarb’s ad.
“But ‘an old lady and a dog’ will also be tested,” Nadine announced.
The showdown between “I get around!” and “an old lady and a dog” took place in a research facility in Philadelphia. Many interviewees, all with osteoarthritis of the knee, responded warmly to “an old lady and a dog” but a majority identified with jubilant grocery shoppers jumping and singing a Beach Boys lyric.
The second round of research took place in Chicago and there was no budget for Dane and Goldfarb to attend. They had to watch it on a webcast from the corporate boardroom. Goldfarb was glum.
“What’s wrong?” Dane asked. “This is great. We get to watch people respond to our work on TV. It’s like a reality show.”
“You think so, huh? That’s our work. We should be there. I don’t like it,” Goldfarb said.
Nevertheless, Dane and Goldfarb pulled their plush, upholst
ered chairs close to the monitor and waited for the screen to stop being blue. Goldfarb had recently had a few thousand dollars of overdue dental work so he did not bring popcorn. Instead, he brought soy chips from the Gourmet Garage. Dane popped Gummy Bears.
The first interview was set for 1 PM but the screen stayed blue. Suddenly an image popped on the monitor. “Here we go!” Dane said.
They saw a still shot of an empty room devoid of furniture, windows and voices. It looked like a restroom or stairwell. Dane’s anticipation grew. Five minutes passed. Nothing changed. Dane’s excitement fermented into apprehension.
“It’s like a Warhol movie I once saw,” Goldfarb said. “I didn’t like it. It was too deep.”
“Maybe the first interviewee is late or didn’t show,” Dane speculated hopefully.
“We’re the ones who didn’t show!” Goldfarb blurted, irritated by Dane’s naiveté. “Can’t you see? It’s a conspiracy!”
“Conspiracy? For what? Against whom?” Everyday, Goldfarb told Dane about an article or book he read about some arcane group responsible for every depredation and disaster, including JFK, El Niño, 9/11, global warming and mad cow disease.
Goldfarb gave Dane an incredulous look. “For ‘an old lady and a dog’ and against us!”
A half hour passed. Still the creative team held their position before the flat screen. The less they saw the more attention they paid, in case they were missing something or hallucinating the emptiness.
“Maybe it’s on a premium channel. Or pay-per-view!” Dane suggested.
“We shouldn’t have to pay. It’s our work!” Goldfarb cried. “No, like I said, it’s a conspiracy. I’ve studied these things. This has all the markings of a covert op funded by a right wing think tank and sanctioned by the Trilateral Commission.”
“All for a synovial fluid injectable ad? How are national interests served by that?”
Goldfarb looked at Dane sadly.
“They’ll stop at nothing for ‘an old lady and a dog.’”
After an hour, by tacit agreement that the show was not improving, Dane and Goldfarb stood up to leave.
“I don’t drink but I should reconsider,” Goldfarb said.
Later Sheldon and Nadine emailed the creative team: “Ooops! They put the camera in the wrong spot. But great work, guys. They loved everything.”
“Wrong room—right!” Goldfarb said. “Sounds like the Warren Commission all over again! Wrong room, one bullet!”
The testing firm released its top-line research report. “An old lady and a dog” had tested better with women over seventy, the target audience, and would be the campaign concept. Goldfarb’s and Dane’s improbable winning streak ended in predictable defeat. They left the meeting in silence.
“You knew that was going to happen,” Goldfarb said later. “They always get their way. I was afraid you would lose your cool. But you were strong.”
“Stunned is more like it.”
“The writer you replaced was fragile. He shouted and threw things.”
“Sounds healthy,” Dane replied, who envied his predecessor and hated his own passivity.
“Losing your temper is weak,” Goldfarb replied. “You have to stay strong.”
Self-control did not make Dane feel strong. When his concepts were defeated by chicanery, he lost faith in competition. Worse, he no longer believed creative content mattered. If “an old lady and a dog” was going to win every time, how could he continue?
Case 3-C
YOUR BEST MOVE: ADMIT YOU’RE A HERMAPHRODITE
11. QUEEN NADINE’S HE-REM
Dane was in crisis and his struggle was apparent to everyone. He thought he could keep his professional grief a private matter, but colleagues could be vultures, circling over floundering conviction and dying fire. His sadness was palpable in elevators, corridors, lobbies and conference rooms. Nadine sensed Dane wavering and stepped up her effort to flush him from Integrimedicom.
Nadine was expert in the arts of alienation. She gave Dane more tedious assignments, changed headlines on ads under the mere suspicion that he wrote them, and made him stay late to shepherd projects he had never seen.
Unlike some people Dane knew, whose hatred masked love or fear, Nadine’s loathing of Dane was pure and deep. During his first interview, Nadine pointed out to Sheldon that none of the concepts in Dane’s portfolio had been produced. When Nadine dismissed Dane to go home for Thanksgiving, she told him to enjoy his turkey since he would be keeping his job—it was the first time he thought he could lose it.
Goldfarb was familiar with Nadine’s bad side. He had done hard time in the harsh tundra of her wrath when she first appeared at Integrimedicom, before he groveled out of her scorn into her benign indifference. He told Dane to get her to like him by laughing at her jokes.
It was easy for Goldfarb to say but impossible for Dane to do. He did not know how to curry favor with someone who despised him and his banter was bad. Poor social skills aside, Dane feared Nadine. He had seen her before—in mythology books. She was a contemporary Cybele, the fertility goddess, whose male priests gelded themselves in a religious frenzy to roast their nuts on her fiery altar.
Nadine had not always been an implacable earth goddess; she evolved into the role. She began as an ambitious and industrious art director who aimed to succeed with talent alone. Then she worked for a demanding and attractive woman whom everyone hated but feared. She was everything Nadine thought she did not want to be until she overheard a male colleague say, “She’s a bitch but you know she’s wearing sexy underwear.”
That crude remark revealed to Nadine what she wanted most: to be worshipped so she could be four times as effective with half the effort. But since she could not command with attraction, she hurled herself on her male subordinates with high decibel aggression.
Each man on staff played a role in Nadine’s heram of male misfits. Sheldon was the beloved, senile father; Goldfarb, the impotent uncle; Ronny, the masturbating cousin; Roscoe, the sadistic, gay brother; Palmisano, the incestuous half-brother, who might kill himself from self-loathing. Rex, the traffic manager, was the servant sex toy. Dane did not know his role yet.
He would find out—at the Christmas luncheon.
Under the guise of family feeling, Nadine exploited the staff’s weakness for free food by organizing departmental lunches. These rites had a liturgy—the cover of People magazine or a bizarre internet story. Nadine was the lady at court and these were her courtiers. She raised an issue and they humored her by discussing it.
Nadine arranged the annual Christmas luncheon at Big Dong, Soho’s own cafeteria style Chinese restaurant. As the creative team ate meat over rice, Nadine introduced the weird story du jour: hermaphrodites had fallen in love and had a wedding at Taco Bell.
“So Dane, what do you think?” she asked.
“I still like Taco Bell.”
“You have to respect a man who’s true to his fast food,” Sheldon opined.
“No, I don’t,” Nadine retorted, tossing a Dane a disgusted glance. “I meant isn’t it amazing how much sex hermaphrodites can have? But if you have two genitals, does it mean you have to have sex twice to be satisfied? That’s not fair. I can’t have it once with regularity.”
“Regularity is a problem,” Sheldon quipped.
“Toilet humor from you, Shel, I never…”
“You’re a bad influence,” the executive vice president admitted.
“What fascinates me about hermaphrodites is that when they’re horny they can do themselves—with no hands, right, Ronny?” Nadine persisted.
“A firm handshake is a sure sign of too much jerking-off,” Ronny replied, with his head down as he shoveled food in his mouth with a plastic spoon.
“Of course, even a hermaphrodite has to get it hard to get it in. And that isn’t easy, is it Goldfarb?”
“No, not easy, Nadine!” Goldfarb answered with loud, empty cheer.
“I think it would be great for a hermaphrodite to work
for me,” Nadine said. “You know why, Dane?”
“No,” Dane replied as he braced himself for the innuendo that he was a hermaphrodite.
“Because if I told him to fuck himself, he could do it!”
The first laughter came like a tide of sewage after a long rainfall but crested short of inundation.
“It would make your job more fulfilling, right Nadine?” Dane shot back.
Sheldon guffawed. “Touché.”
As Dane absorbed Nadine’s hostile glare, he wondered if they would ever get along or even coexist.
12. DOWN BY NADINE
After Big Dong, Nadine was more determined to oust Dane. She seemed to taunt him, “You wish I weren’t here but HERE I AM.” And now that Goldfarb was Dane’s partner again, he was also in her cross-hairs.
Nadine routinely reviled their work in imperious monologues that precluded rebuttal and discussion. Nadine knew everything about advertising so she was a lethal critic. She reviled type-face, pictures, layout and copy, and saved her diatribes for day’s end so Goldfarb and Dane would have a long night.
“But, Nadine, I followed your design template and direction!” Goldfarb pleaded.
“Are you saying this pile of shit is my fault?” Nadine lashed out.
Her eyes were so wide in their shallow sockets that only a miraculous counterforce kept them from rolling down her cheeks. “The layout sucks and it’s not even yours! Is that what we pay you for? Stale mediocrity? If you’re bad, at least have the balls to be original, okay?”
“Yes, Nadine, I’ll redo the ad,” Goldfarb acquiesced.
Nadine tapped on her Blackberry without acknowledging his capitulation.
Dane knew Nadine persecuted Goldfarb on his account but Goldfarb would not let him take the blame.
“That’s Nadine,” Goldfarb sighed. “When she started here, she hated everything I did. I told Sheldon I thought Nadine wanted me fired. Sheldon said it couldn’t be true…that Nadine was a good person. Later Nadine called me in and said, ‘I know what you did. Sheldon is too busy. Nobody cares…’ She backed off but I have to keep her happy.”
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