Ad Nomad

by Eric Jay Sonnenschein

  That Monday morning, after driving Iris to school, Dane arrived at the agency in time for another status meeting. This small agency had more status meetings than all of his previous agencies combined. Status meetings were typically mundane traffic reports detailing where projects were in the continuum between start-up and out-thedoor, whereas Mentos status meetings were “convene-and-ream” sessions to lay blame for the latest mistake.

  Maurice called the meeting to order by coughing in his fist and slapping his hands. A jangle of nervous energy insulated in slick moves, Maurice was an executive for a new millennium, with one foot in a corporate corridor, the other in the street. Maurice was buttoned-down most days in black-rimmed glasses, tailored suits and onyx cufflinks. But on dress-down Fridays, he knew how to keep it real in baggy jeans showing designer boxer shorts. His baritone was a tuned instrument for stately cadences delivered with impeccable diction; yet he opened every status meeting asking, “How y’all feelin’?”

  This meeting was different.

  The man with a belly laugh that could fill an office with mirth paced the conference room in grave silence.

  “People, this has gone beyond ridiculous.”

  “Nipel’s haircut?” Dick asked.

  Some tittered but Maurice brooked no levity.

  “Nipel just called. He was furious. He informed me that we inserted the wrong fair balance on the Flococcin sales aid—again! We used the atypical gingivitis copy instead of the cute bronchitis copy.”

  “That’s an easy mistake to make!” Dick said. “They’re caused by the same cute bacteria.”

  “This is unconscionable!” Maurice’s fist hammered the table. “People, we are close to losing this account. We must be more accountable!”

  “Aren’t you being a tad dramatic, Maurice?” Dick asked as he covered his face with his hands. “The copy for both conditions is almost identical.”

  “Almost! Dick, this is pharmaceutical advertising, not horseshoes! This project is inexcusably late because of our frequent miscues. As creative director, you must ensure that this does not continue. Don Mentos told me it took him ten years to get his foot in the door at Budiheim Pharmaceutical. I assure you that I will not be the one to lose it due to boneheaded bumbling. Okay, people? Let’s be professional!”

  These meetings made Dane miserable. He believed he was blameless for inserting the wrong fair balance, yet felt accused. He worried about an agency that was in perpetual trouble with a client over trivialities. Although newly hired, he sensed that his job was in jeopardy. Worst of all, Dick made light of Maurice’s fulminations, so the collective anguish seemed gratuitous and surreal.

  “Tomorrow Nipel will be here with Sandra, his new assistant product manager,” Maurice informed the team. “Sandra is a highly successful sales rep. She is an expert in hospital flirtation, doctor dinners, gifts, kick-backs, pay-offs and freebies. I want you all to be on your proverbial toes. Our clients deserve our full commitment.”

  “Will you be there, Maurice?” Dick asked.

  “Unfortunately, I had a previous commitment at my daughter’s school PTA bake-off,” Maurice said. “But Nancy will be on hand and she and Nipel have forged a strong bond.”

  Nancy, a large-boned newlywed from nearby North Sasquatch, Connecticut, bobbed her head in accord.

  “Epoxy or crazy glue?” Dick asked.

  Case 5-D

  NIPEL’S GIFT & THE BOSOM BULLY

  15. SUMMIT WITH NIPEL

  Dane braced himself for his first meeting with the infamous Nipel. The best thing Dick ever said about the Floccacin product manager was that he was a buffoon. He usually called him a vermin.

  The meeting was for two o’clock. A platter of fruit and cookies tastefully placed on the table multitasked as refreshment and a breastwork between client and agency.

  Nipel and his new assistant, Sandra, arrived late enough for the green bananas to turn yellow. Nipel’s mouth was curled in a perpetual smile while Sandra resembled a life-sized American doll in a pantsuit.

  ‘I’ll say one thing for you guys: you’re consistent. You never fail to make a mistake,” Nipel said.

  “Hah! Hah!” Dick said. “It’s no wonder we make mistakes when the jobs turn around so fast they give us whiplash?”

  “Mr. Genius Creative Director, I know you’re a comedian when I see your layouts.”

  Nipel’s voluble hands and barbs were the stuff of stand-up and demanded laughter. For the Floccacin product manager, the agency was more than a marketing partner—it was a captive audience.

  “Really, guys! I love your dancing bugs. But we must feed the regulatory beast its favorite dish—an accurate fair balance. The fair balance for Bacterial Exacerbation of Chronic Bronchitis is not the same as for acute diaper rash. If by some miracle the patient reads the fine print, he will be confused and treat a disease he does not have!”

  “Who’d know the difference? It takes a microscope to read the fair balance!” Dick said.

  “Then be happy, Genius Creative Director! Regulatory wants the fair balance larger!” Nipel announced.

  “If a patient has both conditions, both fair balances can be right,” Dane interjected.

  “Acne and bronchitis: what are the odds of these co-morbidities?” Nipel asked.

  There was laughter.

  “These populations may intersect. Teenagers, for instance,” Dane said. “Maybe they’re your target audience.”

  “Teenagers. I like that. You may have something,” Nipel said.

  “Can we get back on track?” Dick asked testily.

  “The point is this,” Nipel said. “You creative icons with big ideas suck in boring details but boring details are what we pay you for.”

  “Good news! We hired Dane. He’s a master of boring details.”

  “Excuse me for saying so but we have bigger problems than the type size on the fair balance—like better ways to reach doctors,” Sandra interjected. “I don’t want to depress anyone but I went on calls with our reps. Guess what? They never opened the detail aids—not once. The rep has one minute to talk to doctors. There’s no time for fair balance or anything else.”

  The agency people shifted nervously in their chairs. If clients started to think advertising was useless, they would stop paying for it.

  “Mr. Creative Genius, here’s an idea,” Nipel said. “Design a bug suit for reps to wear. Then they fall down in the hospital corridor.”

  Everyone laughed. Nipel beamed before turning somber.

  “You must have heard the scuttle bug. Massive layoffs are rumored. Even my job is not safe. But before I am dead meat, I want to leave my mark on medical marketing….a legacy for Floccacin product managers of the future. I see it as a guidebook of medical guidelines for bacterial infections for which our drug is indicated.”

  Nipel paused to let everyone absorb the magnitude of his vision. Dick had mentioned the guidelines guidebook to Dane. Barbara started it more than a month before Dane arrived and it was presumably near completion. Dane only needed to set a deadline for Barbara but when he questioned her about the project she was vague about it.

  “It will be my Stonehenge, my Taj Mahal. Fair balances come and go but the Floccacin guidelines guidebook is forever, guys. Don’t fail me.”

  “We won’t, Nipel,” Dick said in a low, earnest voice, his jaw set with rocktitude. He turned to Dane. “What’s the status of the Floccacin guidelines guidebook?”

  The room was silent. All eyes fell on Dane, along with the onus of producing Nipel’s masterpiece and the weight of eight people’s buck-passing expectations. This was his moment to look strong and effective. His facial muscles tightened and nostrils flared. He squared his jaw and said, “The Floccacin guidelines guidebook is well underway.”

  “Can you tell me when it will be delivered?” Nipel demanded.

  “In two weeks,” Dane said involuntarily, as if the voice spoke through him without his consent.

  Everyone nodded. They loved Dane’s take
-charge style.

  For seconds, Dane experienced the warm rush of public approval. He liked how it felt. He knew how to seize a moment! No, he squeezed the moment.

  The heroic feeling was fleeting. It occurred to Dane when he left the meeting that he still had to complete three of the ten pieces Maurice had given him. They were due in 48 hours.

  He needed help. To receive it, he had to be a manager and delegate to Barbara. But he couldn’t.

  16. THE BOSOM BULLY

  The prospect of asking Barbara to do anything made Dane feel sick. He had phoned her to smooth over the awkward moment an hour after it happened, thinking this would make everything normal, but then avoided her for days. The inappropriate contact passed from awkward to dangerous as time converted it to myth.

  Confusion added smoke to the fire. Dane could not define or explain this unprecedented event. It was amorphous, which made it more frightening. Sexual transgression was the skeleton key to the moment. Barbara’s act was aggressive and sudden. She seemed to use her breasts to subvert and subdue him.

  Dane had to get over this. He needed to talk to someone. He phoned Goldfarb for advice. In his quarter century in advertising Goldfarb must have witnessed his share of situations. At first, Dane described the circumstance to his ex-partner in euphemisms as decorous as thick drapes. But when he thought he heard Goldfarb snore gently, he came to the point.

  “She grabbed my face and held it between her breasts,” Dane admitted.

  Goldfarb’s silence was now intense as his cinematic mind arranged the bodies and set up the lights.

  “She turned on your engine before she turned off hers,” Goldfarb quipped.

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  “Your face did it all.”

  “My face was there, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It was there all right. How were they? The breasts—were they large?”

  “It’s irrelevant.”

  “I can’t help you if I don’t know the facts.”

  “They covered my ears.”

  “Oh, yeah! Did she say anything—before, during, or after?”

  “She mentioned weasels—.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of ‘Give it to me!’ Weasels… Interesting.”

  “Does it mean anything?” Dane asked.

  “I think it means you are the weasel…So how did it feel to get an old-fashioned facial? Good, right? Exciting?”

  “It was suffocating. I was turning blue.”

  “Do you think she was part of a conspiracy to undermine your power by making you faint? She’d leave your body in her vehicle with evidence…like her bra!”

  “I don’t know,” Dane bit his lip. “It’s a cancer in my mind.”

  “That’s why she did it.”

  The worst could not be confided on a company phone between sheet rock walls. Barbara’s act thrust itself into Dane’s bedroom. He was tormented by guilt, unable to forget the shameful exhilaration of illicit contact. Amateur psychologist that he was, Dane tried to exorcise the lewd memory by simulating it in a controlled setting. When Becky removed her bra before bed, Dane asked her to put on his flannel shirt, then rushed to her, knelt at her feet and plunged his face between her breasts, to relive the taboo in the sanctity of marriage. Becky recoiled at his violent urgency and said her breasts were tender. Dane apologized, more repentant than ever for imposing Barbara’s sexuality on his wife.

  “What should I do? Go to HR?” Dane asked the sagacious art director.

  “And say what? That you were attacked by her breasts? They’ll fire you—if they don’t have you committed first,” Goldfarb replied.

  “That’s what happened!” Dane insisted.

  “No one will believe it. Listen. This woman is your bosom bully. It’s been going on for years but guys are too macho to admit it. A woman uses her breasts to provoke and intimidate. Look at me, don’t look at me, let me put it in your face, but don’t dare touch them!”

  “I can’t do a thing?”

  “Relax! What did we say about living in the moment? There’s a lot worse out there than breasts in your face. Lie low and let it blow over. I worked with a guy who had a bosom bully. He went to HR but she turned the tables and claimed he made her uncomfortable. Who do you think they believed? Then other women came forward and said he stared at their chests. Then they found a Juggs anthology in his office. He said it was planted but did anybody believe him? They made his life hell with in-your-endo’s. His Secret Santa gave him two plastic jugs and someone hung a bra from his office door. Then his wife left him. He had to go for therapy twice a week to keep his job. Then he was downsized. Last I heard he was selling lingerie at a Lord & Taylor in Paramus.”

  “Oh, no! I’ saw that guy…when my wife was buying a nightgown.”

  “Right. Don’t let it happen to you! Keep your face away from her.”

  Goldfarb’s confirmation that the situation was serious reassured Dane. He realized it wasn’t all in his head. Even so, he was in a predicament. When he hung up with Goldfarb, the phone rang with the extension he dreaded most.

  “So are we on for lunch?” Barbara inquired.

  Dane panicked. “We were having lunch? I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “I thought you mentioned it. I wondered if you had free time.”

  Free time! Dane panicked. Breasts! Face! No!

  “I wish I did. It’s a bad time, worse than bad. They dumped a ton of work on me.”

  “I’ve been there,” she chuckled. “It’s disappointing.”

  There was no sign in her voice of insinuation, accusation or innuendo. Maybe they had bounced back from their moment to being colleagues again. Dane felt he could reach out to her professionally.

  “I’ve got a stack on my desk,” Dane said. “Can you help?”

  “Sorry, I can’t. I’m swamped,” she replied.

  Just like that Dane was back in a familiar place—buried under his work-load in his one-man managerial delusion.

  “No problem,” he lied. “I’d better get back to work. Can’t stop until it’s all done. So can we do it another day?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Dane exhaled. She sounded friendly. Maybe everything was alright.

  17. BAD BOY

  That night Dane had a nightmare. He was selling lingerie in a Kmart when he woke up, shouting, “Black bustiers are not 20% off. This is a white sale!”

  His first panicky thought was that he had awakened Becky and she would wonder about the content and meaning of his cry. He looked to his left. Becky wasn’t there. She was out of town. Dane was alone with his bad dream, which somehow made it worse. He needed reassurance but had none.

  Since sleep was no longer possible in his agitated state, Dane worked until daylight to complete the last of Maurice’s ten projects. While he wrote, he paused and glanced at the bed next to his desk. He imagined Becky curled up in repose—her serenity and innocence intensified his guilt.

  “I didn’t do anything,” he whispered to her photograph on his desk. “I never wanted it to happen. It was so fast.” He turned back to the screen and continued to work.

  Later that morning, Dane showed Maurice the ten managed care pieces he had completed ahead of schedule by working evenings and weekends.

  “Well done and I raise you a bravo!” Maurice said, in a manner strongly suggesting that Dane was making his mark as a “Mind Marketing Medicine.”

  “You’ve done so well that I have one more thing for you to do!” Maurice handed Dane another voluminous job jacket.

  “But first, let’s celebrate!” Maurice declared. He brought his hands together, his eyes darted left and right, and he pulled his miniature Italian espresso maker off the shelf. “You must try this coffee. It’s Kona Volcano blend. The beans were roasted on a lava bed. It puts fire in the belly!”

  Just as Dane waited to receive Maurice’s caffeinated appreciation, the phone rang. It was Dick, calling for Dane.

  “Come t
o my office,” Dick said curtly.

  Spilkus was glaring at his flat screen in the dark when Dane arrived.

  “Where are the company names you never showed me?” he demanded in a low, sullen tone.

  “I showed you everything,” Dane replied, unsure of Dick’s reference.

  “Don’t play dumb, Dane. You know you’re not supposed to give anybody anything until I see it.”

  “Dirk and Tiny needed more names and fast. I said I had to run them by you first but you were out and they couldn’t wait.”

  “Yeah, right, okay,” Dick relented. “I saw ‘em. They’re pretty good names. Sit down. I have to give you your first month evaluation. You’ve done everything we’ve asked of you and well. There’s only one area where you’ve let me down. What about the pineapple cheesecake?”

  “I…They don’t have it…I mean, if I look around New York for a cheesecake, I may have to come in late. Or call in sick.”

  “No, no, that’s okay,” Dick said. “Go back to work.”

  18. ACTING OUT

  Dane’s reward for completing ten pieces in a week was to receive an eleventh. Maurice promised it would be easy but the dark, faxed pages were cluttered with illegible comments and deletions. Sections were crossed out with instructions such as “See A,” or “Use ventilator copy.” Meanwhile, the deadline for the Nipel’s guidelines guidebook rolled toward Dane. Dane had no idea what the book should look like or how long it had to be but he assumed Barbara was writing it because he was too busy to think otherwise and the job folder was on her desk. Although Dane wanted to trust Barbara to “own” Nipel’s guidelines guidebook, the “manager” in him worried that she was not keeping up with her payments.

  “By the way, how is that guidelines guide book going?” he asked.

  “What?” she answered.

  “You know: the Floccacin guidelines guidebook. You’ve had it for awhile.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes. That’s what Dick said.”