What was the deepest prevailing feeling connected to this drug? Sacrifice. The loss of a man’s testosterone was the greatest sacrifice he could make, next to his life. What else could inspire such selfsacrifice? Love of country? The surging measures of an anthem stirred Dane’s consciousness. Why not suggest to urologists that it was their patriotic duty to learn the latest about chemical castration? Dane envisioned Nathan Hale with a noose around his neck, proclaiming, “I only regret that I have but two balls to lose for my prostate!” He explored this theme with a safe Marine Corps headline: We’re looking for a few good urologists.
Such a platitude was like salt—it made his creative juices flow. He extended the patriotic metaphor with Uncle Sam: Wanted: One Urologist. Then he switched to a “wake up” concept with the headline: “Make the Prosbar Booth your first stop this morning.” Now Dane was loose enough to spring right out of the box. He thought he’d get edgy with a sexual message to offset chemical castration. He drew a sultry vixen at a counter with the headline, “Don’t keep Prosbar waiting.”
Karen came by his cubicle with her comments. “Your ideas were fresh and some were funny. But you didn’t use the brand art—four men and a fish.”
“You asked for intriguing,” Dane said. “Who is intrigued by four men and a dead fish?”
“The ones who chose the concept,” Karen replied impatiently. “Would you just try this again now? We need it in layout today.”
Now Dane had to come down from Mount Rushmore and Iwo Jima and consider how to make four old men and a fish interesting and relevant to a convention of urologists. Finally, he had an idea. Since the invitation must combine men, fish and breakfast, Dane would advertise smoked fish for breakfast. Good food was always a lure and who didn’t like bagels and lox to start the day? Dane wrote a smoked fish series. “CATCH NOVA SALMON ON A FRESH BAGEL AT PROSBAR BREAKFAST SEMINAR” and “PROSBAR BREAKFAST SEMINAR: THE FRESHEST DATA AND SMOKED STURGEON.”
Dane rushed into Karen’s cubicle excitedly. He was proud of how well he had adapted to the new creative requirement, and handed Karen the new breakfast copy with a broad smile.
“Smoked fish? Are you insane?” she asked.
“You said I had to use four men with a fish, promote breakfast, and make it catchy and appealing. I did it all!”
Karen was in no mood to dismantle Dane’s enthusiasm.
“We’ll just have to use what we had before. Thanks,” she said.
Dane returned to his cubicle nonplussed and deflated. His first creative task for Prostate Team was a contained disaster—a trashcan fire. It was humiliating but he wrote it off. How could he make four men and a fish work when the idea was as moribund as the fish in the picture? It symbolized what was wrong with the prostate franchise—which he was hired to fix.
Why should he dwell on a chemical castration breakfast invitation when his How Strong Is My Acorn? children’s book was in layout? Besides, just that morning, Dane received unexpected high praise. The UNIHEALTH newsletter featured a rave review of his report on the diminished sex lives of men with thickened prostates, calling it a “compelling read” that “holds you from the first sentence and doesn’t let go.” The reviewer was the agency president, himself, a benign prostate hyperplasia (BPH) sufferer.
11. MINIMUM PI
Later that week, as Dane soared on the backdraft of “the Acorn project” and the sex lives of old men with enlarged prostates, Dane received another assignment. It was patient prescribing information for Contruro, the benign prostate hyperplasia drug, the kind of information one might find in a magazine or a drug website.
Karen and Sylvia assumed he knew how to write a consumer PI, so Dane did not ask them how to do it, though it was his first attempt. He would follow his instincts. A standard PI was detailed and clinical but over-the-counter drugs, like aspirin, had simple prescribing information to communicate to average consumers. Dane went home, perused aspirin boxes and crafted his first consumer PI. He was pleased with his resourcefulness until the next Prostate Team meeting. Sylvia turned to Karen and said, “He didn’t do what we asked!”
Dane was at the table but Sylvia did not address him directly. As a group account supervisor, Sylvia did not deign to speak to Dane, who was only a copy supervisor. Dane broke through the caste barrier. “You asked for a patient PI so I modeled this after a consumer PI I found on a box of Advil,” he said.
Sylvia stared at him in astonishment and turned to Karen. “Is he an idiot? Does he understand English? I don’t have time for this.”
Karen explained to Dane that he had written a fine over-thecounter prescribing information but unfortunately that was not the assignment. She explained that an OTC package insert was full of warnings because over-the-counter drugs were easy to buy and the FDA did not want consumers to self-medicate. In the case of a prescription drug, side-effects had to be downplayed so patients would want to ask their physicians to prescribe it. She showed him a consumer PI printed by a competitor in a men’s magazine and asked him to imitate it.
Sylvia demanded that he stay late until he completed the revised PI and editorial signed off on it. “It has to be done tonight. That was our agreement,” she emailed him.
No such agreement had been made but Dane knew he could not cross Sylvia again. He needed to redeem himself. He had relied on his famous gut for the consumer PI and it failed. Dane had suffered setbacks before but this one stung worse since it followed his greatest success. He worked in sullen silence.
In cosmology and theoretical physics, a theory as original and elusive as “Promotional Equilibrium” would have carried Dane for years or a lifetime, but in advertising it was beautiful and unbillable. “The Acorn Project,” only a week old, was already sliding into the forgettable past and Dane had the nauseating sense that his image was slipping from genius to imbecile.
Case 4-D
JOB CASTRATION: PATHOLOGY & TREATMENT
12. JOB REPOSSESSION
The next Monday, when Dane entered the lobby of UNIHEALTH, the “I” was dark so the sign read UN HEALTH. Ordinarily he would have read this as an omen but he had recuperated from his botched PI. He was still ahead on the balance sheet—two victories, one defeat, and a tie: he considered his Prosbar breakfast invitation good enough to win if “four men and a fish” had not fought it to a draw. He spent the morning at his human resources benefits orientation. Medical coverage was a principal reason he was working and his family coverage started one month after his first day, which was two weeks away.
When Dane returned from his benefits meeting he learned that Sylvia and Karen had changed his prescribing information copy in his absence. It was a coup de copy. Despite his hard work on the piece, his team now made him look incompetent and expendable. He was outraged but how should he respond? Maybe the job could not wait for his return. Or he had made more mistakes. Should he protest? No, he sensed a trap. They wanted him to complain so they could retaliate and sink his reputation even deeper. Dane could not afford the risk. His benefits had not taken effect and were already endangered.
That afternoon a party was catered in the atrium to celebrate new business. The agency president, a former copywriter, told Dane how much he liked the “acorn” and asked how the prostate franchise was going. Dane told the agency president that it was going well, except that his teammates had just rewritten his copy. The agency president grimaced and looked Dane in the eye.
“Never let anyone write your copy,” he said.
“I’m not only an incompetent but a wimp,” Dane thought.
It occurred to him that he was in the worst trouble of his advertising career. He always had enemies but even colleagues who loathed him respected his work. They even stole it. Those seemed like good times now. The Prostate Team encircled him, laid siege to his job and Dane was unable to defend himself. His brilliant, early success had weakened him with false confidence. Since people loved his work, he believed he was immune to attack. Now his team disparaged his competence and made h
im seem useless by doing his job for him with insidious and ruthless efficiency. UNIHEALTH was doing to him what Prosbar did to a man’s testosterone production; it gave him an artificial surge, only to shut him down. As Dane wrote about chemical castration he was being professionally castrated.
If the women on his team already criticized and appropriated his work, how long could he last at UNIHEALTH? Dane retreated to the men’s room and looked himself in the mirror. “Fight for your manhood.”
He knew he needed to do more than grab his testes and pound his chest. He had to change the terms of the conflict, to switch the issue from job competence to job ownership, which Bevaqua had promised him.
At the next meeting of the Prostate Team, Dane told Sylvia and Karen they were never to change his copy again.
“You might know the client but I am the only one here who has a prostate,” he said in summation.
“Awesome!” Sylvia replied. “Let me make something clear, Dane. I will do what it takes to serve our client. I’m sorry you’re offended but this is the law here—and in every agency!”
“I’m not offended. Just let me do my job!” Dane cried.
“Believe me, we want you to do your job, more than anything,” Sylvia replied with silky insouciance. “And we’re still waiting. Please, Dane, do your job.”
By acknowledging the effect Sylvia and Karen were having on him, Dane exacerbated the situation. He went to Bevaqua to head off the potential damage. Perhaps as a fellow man, Bevaqua might sympathize with his ordeal. Behind the sliding door of his fishbowl, Bevaqua was grinning into space, presumably from inner peace or the goodness of his deli sandwich.
“Dane, I’m proud of how you stood up for prostates everywhere.”
“How did you know?” Dane asked.
“It’s an open space and your voice carries.”
“Can you help me, Bill? It’s real bad.”
“What do you mean? Are they rewriting your copy?”
“Yes. But it’s worse…They’re trying to castrate me!”
“I love your intensity,” Bevaqua said. “Now channel it. You’re new here. Know the turf before you fight for it.”
“They’re all over my turf. They give me jobs without directions and scold me when the client doesn’t like what I’ve done. Then they take over for me. It’s classic castration!”
“Or miscommunication. Your team is new. Teamwork takes time.”
“But my reputation!”
“You wrote a great backgrounder and your acorn project has wide support. So you laid an egg with the patient PI. I’d take two out of three.”
“But you said I owned my job. Is it being repossessed?”
“It’s heavily mortgaged,” Bevaqua guffawed.
“That Sylvia Befunkewicz has it in for me!” Dane cried.
“Sylvia is Sylvia.”
“That’s what I mean!”
“Sylvia is a force of pharma. She’s awesome!” Bevaqua continued. “Sylvia has worked late everyday for a year. She has come into the office on 35 weekends and traveled 20 weeks of the year! The woman has unquenchable passion for what we do at UNIHEALTH. Her journey is an odyssey!”
“But I’m no Cyclops!” Dane replied, jabbing his forefinger into his forehead.
“Dane, Dane. Sylvia is dedication personified and she doesn’t wear panties!”
“How do you know that?”
“Know what?”
“That Sylvia doesn’t wear panties.”
“Dane, where did you hear that?
“From you!”
“Dane, let’s not go there. Sexual harassment lurks in those innuendoes.”
Bevaqua, an expert in reading distress in human faces because he caused so much of it, now discerned his prostate writer’s acute agitation. He snapped his fingers.
“You know what I think? Dane needs his spiritual vitamin. I want you to meet someone.”
Bevaqua summoned Marjorie. Marjorie was the world’s oldest active pharma copywriter—a spry septuagenarian with cropped white hair and Hipster narrow black framed glasses on a woven, multicolored lanyard. In her oversized motley sweater and leggings, she resembled an elf that emerged from a dark cubicle with manuscripts of golden verbiage. Marjorie had piety. She gladly toiled day and night with the quiet efficiency of a high end air conditioner. No doubt, Bevaqua meant Marjorie to be Dane’s instant role model, Jung’s Wise Old Woman archetype, and his cross-gender Virgil on a tour of UNIHEALTH hell. If Dane could be like Marjorie—hunting for obscure references, patiently numbering and renumbering citations, playing with asterisks and other superscript notations—he could succeed.
When Bevaqua discharged Dane from the fishbowl, Marjorie accompanied him down the corridor between cubicles toward “the copy corner.” When they stopped by Dane’s partitions, she whispered, “You’ve lasted longer in this cube than any of your predecessors.”
“Is this a good omen or a bad one?” he asked.
She smiled inscrutably. “That will depend on you.”
Marjorie slipped away, leaving Dane to interpret her enigma. Did she imply that his cubicle was UNIHEALTH’s site for a dark rite of initiation—or human sacrifice? Was he surpassing expectations or were his days numbered?
There was an email from Bevaqua on his computer.
“The client will ask about the data in your backgrounder. See Dr. Mooney, the science consultant. He’ll help you.”
13. DR MOONEY AND RAIN BREAD
The next morning, Dane left a copy of his statistical analysis with Dr. Mooney, a man in his late 60s, with white hair and a gentle countenance. Later that day, Dr. Mooney reassured Dane that his analysis of the data was accurate. It was the first good news Dane had received since “the Acorn Project” weeks before.
Dane had to pay for it: Dr. Mooney told Dane the story of his life.
Dr. Mooney limped with a dark wooden cane whose handle was carved in the shape of a rat. He immediately explained the limp and the cane, revealing a surprising connection he had with Dane.
“I am afflicted with intermittent claudication,” Dr. Mooney confided. “Have you heard of it?”
“Heard of it! I owned it!” Dane replied. “Well, nobody owns intermittent claudication. I only wrote about it. Mainly direct mail for a drug called STRIDALL.”
“You wrote for STRIDALL? I’ve received those mailings. I actually opened and read them. Very informative and entertaining. Well done, my boy! In fact, you were so persuasive I agreed to try STRIDALL, you know a trial prescription. Good stuff!”
Dane did not know what to make of this untimely compliment. He was glad to finally meet someone who received his intermittent claudication letter, mailer and brochure. It meant his work was not entirely in vain, although he doubted it would help him now.
“Sit, sit,” Dr. Mooney urged. “I have only one golden rule: Quid pro quo. I read your gibberish, now hear mine. It’s called the story of my life.”
“Sure thing!” Dane said. He welcomed a friend in his current situation, and one who appreciated his copywriting was lagniappe.
“I know, you must think I’m Irish with a name like ‘Mooney.’ But it was a case of mistaken ethnic identity. I’m a Jew. When my dad came from Poland, he found work as a janitor in Irish bars. His name was Muni. His employers heard Mooney, so he changed it.
“You might also surmise that I was born in a lab and got my first white coat when I was two. But my first job was in a white butcher’s apron. Everyday after school and on Saturdays, I helped out in my dad’s and uncle’s butcher shop.
“My dad and his brother came to hate each other. Sibling rivalry and business partnership did not mix—what’s new? They went their separate ways but I secretly worked for my uncle since he paid me more. What a backstabbing little so-and-so I was, right? I made amends later when I bought a house for my dad with the movie rights to my best-selling book on the sex lives of rats.”
Dr. Mooney’s eyes lit up as he noted the dumbfounded look on Dane’s face.
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br /> “It sounds like nonsense now but wait! It gets worse. That’s what a life is—gibberish that makes sense in the end. So you think I was always gifted in science. In fact, my first love was not the test tube but the tuba. Unfortunately, I got a hernia carrying it and there were no jobs for a tuba player so I switched to trombone. I wrote a trombone sonata and dreamed of doing a duet with Yo Yo Ma. Too bad he wasn’t born yet. Anyway, when I prepared for my audition to Juilliard, fate intervened.
“I loved street jazz musicians. When I thought I was good enough, I played my trombone on a corner. I made more playing on Sundays than selling meat on Saturdays. I saved the money for my tuition for Juilliard. It seemed poetic.
“One evening, I’ll never forget. My mom had made a delicious pot roast and I went out to my corner…I was playing All the Things You Are when two street thugs called me names and started throwing things. They didn’t know my ethnicity, so they called me every slur in their pee brain vocabularies. One thug grabbed my cap full of change while the other guy went for my trombone slide. I whacked the second guy with the slide but his buddy jumped me and I hit the pavement. They worked me over and left me lying there bloody with my busted trombone.
“The slide was bent but the damage to my instrument was the least of it. Using my trombone as a weapon killed the music in me. I went into a funk and couldn’t play a note. I changed majors from music to psychology.
“To earn extra money, I cleaned laboratory animal cages. I became intrigued by rats, especially their love lives. Understand that I was innocent. All I ever did was study and play music, so copulating rats were a sexual awakening.
“It changed my life. In those days very little was known about the sex lives of rodents. I was a pioneer. For my honors thesis, I studied their sexual stimuli, what turned them on. I wanted to know if male rats were excited by female rat private parts, so I shot 8 mm films of rats having intercourse. Then I exhibited it to other rats—pay-per-view. Ha! That’s lab rat humor. But make no mistake. I was in earnest. I believed I was on to something. If I could learn what turned on rats, then maybe we could turn it off, reduce rat populations and contagions like the plague. I dreamed of a Nobel. Suffice it to say, it didn’t happen because the data showed that rats are not sexually aroused by visual stimuli. Yet, ironically, the same rats in heat will hump their cheese. This insight, by the way, was the basis for my dissertation and best-selling book, Who Humped My Cheese? Heard of it? They made it into a documentary on Adults Only Animal Planet. So I entertained the world but didn’t improve it.
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