Nigel was furious with the clients.
“Sally, make sure the client tests all three concepts.”
“Nigel, it’s impossible.”
“Work your guile. Nothing short of our award-winning reputation depends on it.”
Nigel urged Sally to write the client a letter to remind them how well pepperoni foot tested.
“When their advertising bombs, the agency should cover itself against fallout!” he declared.
Dane was beaming at the success of Dancers but Ron was troubled by the Nigel’s hostility toward the New York team.
Undaunted by their setback, the Toronto office poured more resources into Pepperoni foot. The top brass at Georgian Shield invited the clients to a dinner party in the Toronto Skydome. They wined, dined and lavished perks on them, but the clients were impervious to their seduction. They wanted the old dancers with the perforated foot.
Dane believed the popularity of his and Ron’s concept proved his usefulness to his Canadian employers. Was he not hired because he knew how to create for American tastes? He also believed the concept competition was over and won, despite signals that the Toronto office hated his dancers on principle.
He had underestimated the ego of Georgian Shield. If the winning concept was made in America by Americans, how could Georgian Shield justify their invasion of the American market by claiming they were more creative than their American counterparts? They viewed the Grovil clients as obtuse for preferring an inferior American concept and repudiated Dane’s idea as an insult to their authority and aesthetics.
To a casual observer, this was a popularity contest between a big, ugly, injured foot and two old dancers with a cutout foot in which victory meant no more than ads placed in magazines targeting physicians and diabetics. But nothing less was at stake for Nigel, Sally and the Georgian Shield team than Canada’s manifest destiny to infiltrate and dominate American advertising. They would never concede defeat.
16. BIG PEPPERONI FOOT IN YOUR FACE
The Grovil war dragged on. According to rumors, Nigel and Sally finally convinced the Grovil clients, after extravagant backstage maneuvers, to submit Toronto’s Pepperoni foot—with a smaller, more tasteful, pebble-sized pepperoni ulcer—and the preferred American Dancers to quantitative testing—the ultimate mano-a-mano of concept research.
The stalemate required a cease-fire, so Nigel and Sally called for a web-chat sit-down with the New York creative team.
Sally waved at Dane and Ron. She wore a tight satin top which left little to the erotically susceptible imagination. With every movement she made in her chair, Dane had the impression that he was watching a private conversation between two breasts behind a curtain.
“Hello, there, guys,” Nigel began. “First let me say, ‘Good work.’”
“Thanks,” Dane and Ron answered glumly.
“Yes,” Nigel said. “It hasn’t been easy. This client is not who we thought they were.”
“They’re morons!” Sally blurted.
“So, guys,” Hogbine continued. “We’re going to quantitative testing with these two ads…Now which one do you think works better?”
“Dancers,” Dane said.
“Dane, are you choosing it because it’s your own work?” Nigel asked. “We’re too professional to let our egos get in the way.”
“No, I’m totally impartial,” Dane exaggerated. “Dancers appeals to our target audience. They’re lovable, old people—not obese, donuteating idiots. Dancing is aspirational. Why use expensive goop on your feet if all you do is lie in bed and watch reruns—just cut off the dead dog and be done with it, right?”
“Dane, do you know what you’re saying?” Sally asked as she shivered, making her breasts jiggle and sway.
Dane suspected Sally of trying to distract him with seductive motion. She expected him to have an erection, lose his concentration, concede the point and run to the men’s room to masturbate. Not this time! Dane Bacchus was a professional.
“We recommended the foot ad,” Nigel said. “We think it has FSC, First Strike Capability.”
“That’s a cold war term!” Dane replied. “Who are you? John Foster Dull Ass?”
“Quite right,” Nigel replied. “It’s our homage to America’s golden age—the 1950s.”
Ron squirmed. His mentor, the upscale retail store executive, had advised Ron that if he was ever caught in heavy fire between a colleague and a superior, he should always side with the superior.
“Nigel, Sally: both are great concepts. We can make them both work,” Ron pleaded.
Nigel nodded with paternal satisfaction and turned sternly to Dane.
“You disagree, Dane. So let us explain why we think the foot works better.”
Nigel thrust the large presentation board against the camera and jabbed the large festering sore with his long finger.
“This is foot-in-the-face advertising. The foot is so real, you can smell it. The viewer sees foot, identifies with foot and seeks medical attention for foot. It’s an icon, indelibly stamped in the audience’s collective bipedal brain. That’s branding. That’s how we do it at Georgian Shield.”
Nigel withdrew the foot. Now Sally strutted to the easel and held the Dancers concept aloft.
“This concept is off strategy,” she said, “It’s soft, not urgent. Old folks slow dancing: where’s the sizzle? Their cold, flaccid bodies don’t even touch!”
“And here’s another thing,” Nigel jumped from his seat, wagging his forefinger. “The perforated line around the foot gives pause. But we don’t want doctors to pause. No, no. We want them to slather Grovil on feet!”
In case they did not understand his point, Nigel scooped a gob of Vaseline from a jar and rubbed it all over the foot image on the presentation board.
“Guys?” Sally asked. “Are you writing this down?”
Dane pointed to his forehead. “It’s all going in here.”
“I hope you’ll keep it there, Dane,” Nigel said. “We can’t confuse clients with choices.”
“They always choose wrong,” Sally said.
“And we can’t give them second rate,” Nigel added.
“Maybe they like our ad because it’s good,” Dane suggested.
“That’s a comforting misperception,” Nigel shook his head. “This client is like an abused child. They like bad advertising because that’s all they’ve ever known. They hired us to break the vicious circle.”
After the meeting, Dane went into Ron’s office.
“How could you do that to me?”
“Do what?”
“You caved. You told them both concepts could work. What happened to unity? To partners-for-life? If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang apart.”
“We shouldn’t be fighting. We’re all on the same team. They pay our salaries. We should work with them,” Ron pleaded.
“If getting along is what you aspire to, you’re dead,” Dane said.
“No, Dane. That’s how to stay alive,” Ron countered. “They like us. They praised us. They want us to be on their team. But if you fight them, they won’t listen to anything you say.”
“They won’t even listen to the client so you think they’ll listen to us?”
Ron went silent and stared at the monitor, preparing his summation.
“Look Dane. I want do great work and make a name, but this situation is making me sick,” Ron said. “Last weekend, Ilona and I went up to Connecticut for an ionizing detox. The water turned black in thirty seconds. I’m toxic. The therapist said it’s stress. If we keep fighting I’ll be dead.”
17. THE MOTHER OF ALL RESEARCH
Quantitative testing went forward.
The objective was to learn what people thought of an ad while they flipped through a magazine. The test measured several indicators: if they stopped on the ad, for how long, how much they recalled, if they understood the message and were compelled by it.
While quantitative testing seemed more scientific than qualitative, its met
hodology was arcane and so technologically sophisticated that it defied outside observation and quality controls to verify the accuracy of its results. When Dane raised this point, he was asked to observe the operation first hand.
He woke up at 3:30 one morning. A waiting livery car drove him to an office park in the Princeton corridor of New Jersey, where an unmarked van with dark windows took him the rest of the way to a warehouse facility in a cornfield. Dane had a déjà vu. It looked like the same facility where, as a university instructor, he graded essays for standardized tests.
Sally and the psychologist, Dr. Vaughn Foozner, were waiting for Dane.
“This is not a research facility. It’s a reality simulator,” Foozner said. He was bald, bearded, wore a diamond stud in one ear and was a hybrid of Blackbeard and Rasputin in a lab coat. “We simulate the milieu where magazines are read.”
“It’s so exciting,” Sally said.
The reality simulator was like a movie set. Subjects were observed in a space modeled after a public restroom. Participants were issued a magazine slimmer than the newsstand variety and led to stalls with doors equipped with hidden webcams. Seated on chairs simulating toilet seats, the subjects leafed through the publications. Pages were coated with sensors that recorded the interval between each turn of page. The ad whose page was open for the longest cumulative time would be judged “more impactful.”
“Are they really using the toilet?” Dane asked.
“The commode simulates a favorite reading place,” Dr. Foozner said. “If they need actual relief, we give them a bathroom pass.”
Throughout the morning, patients with diabetes filed into the reality simulator with their magazines and were escorted to stalls. Some balked at the scenario. One man asked, “Do I have to…perform?”
“No, just read,” Dr. Foozner said.
“Where’s my cup?” another man asked belligerently. “No cup, no urine sample.”
“No urine sample is necessary. Just read,” Dr. Foozner said.
“But I don’t have to go,” a woman brayed.
“That’s fine. We don’t want you to go. This isn’t a real bathroom.”
“So why is it here?”
“We want you to read the way you normally do.”
“But I never read in the toilet,” the woman insisted with increasing agitation.
“Pretend you do!” Dr. Foozner said.
It was slow going that morning.
After lunch, Dane noticed that the new research subjects looked stiff and pasty.
“Are these people okay?” Dane asked. “They look sick.”
Sally laughed. The psychologist grinned.
“They’re not sick,” Dr. Foozner said.
“They’re read dummies. Robots,” Sally said through her giggles.
“I prefer to call them virtuo-sapiens,” Dr. Foozner said. “They’re the latest innovation in advertising research psychology. We’ve programmed them to behave like normal American consumers. They’re culturally coded to detect verbal and visual hot spots in ads and to allocate their interest accordingly.”
“We like bacon and eggs,” one virtuo-sapien said to the other in the research room.
“Have you seen the latest Hard Copy?” replied the other.
“The cold weather gives me morning stiffness,” the other replied.
“You have divine hair.”
“I’m worth it.”
They reminded Dane of an installation Dane once saw at the Whitney Biennial—two Styrofoam heads protruding from a barrel of Styrofoam peanuts conversed in perpetual non-sequiturs. Dane was impressed by Dr. Foozner’s cultural literacy, but appalled that he used an art concept for scientific testing.
“How can machines simulate human emotions?” Dane asked.
“They do it all the time,” said Dr. Foozner. “We have a very small statistical margin of error.”
“The client adores this process,” Sally piped in. “You saw how slow research was with humans, ay? They’re too stupid. These read dummies never waste time and they know exactly what they think.”
Test numbers came in two weeks later; a half year after Dane and Ron faxed the first thirty concepts to Nigel. Pepperoni foot scored a 70, while Dancers scored a 64. Dane was disappointed. Rather than an indisputable victory, the outcome was a statistical dead heat, within the margin of error. Still, Dane had reason to be sanguine. The inconclusive result meant the client could choose Dancers, which had been their favorite all along.
The Grovil clients visited the Georgian Shield New York office for a meeting. It was clearly important because it was catered by a midtown deli.
Sally, Nigel, Dane and Ron sat across from the clients.
“We’re going with the foot,” the marketing director announced.
“That is a wise choice,” Nigel said.
The clients explained their decision. What ultimately swayed them was a different set of numbers than test scores—production costs. They thanked Ron for researching the comparative figures for turning Dancers and Pepperoni foot into ads. According to Ron’s estimate, a close-up photograph of a foot would cost $40,000 and require minimal casting and talent fees, modest production values, a small amount of make up and no wardrobe. Meanwhile, a photograph of two dancers would cost $60,000 and involve time and expense for casting, wardrobe, props, make-up and more intricate lighting.
Normally, $20,000 was not nearly enough to influence an important branding decision by a Fortune 500 corporation with a global presence and an immaculate image. But Sally and the new Grovil product manager had gone through a significant portion of the advertising budget by scheduling and canceling research meetings all over the country in order to have sex trysts in 4-star hotels. They needed to cut corners somewhere and the launch ad concept was convenient.
After the meeting, Dane looked for Ron so they could vent together about their defeat. Dane was able to express his antagonisms openly to his partner because Ron was such a brownnoser that he adapted to anyone, even Dane. But Ron could not be found.
As Dane passed a conference room he heard Nigel talking behind a closed door. “Well done, Ron. I won’t forget this.”
“No problem, Nigel,” Ron replied. “I always thought the foot was a great idea.”
Dane was dismayed. He had believed he was making progress in liberating Ron from his inner wimp. Unfortunately, sucking-up as a coping behavior, done repeatedly for years, was too much for Ron to overcome under duress. His groveling had risen—or fallen—to the level of betrayal, leaving Dane isolated and alone against his overseers.
Case 6-D
GOING ROGUE ON THE TENTH FLOOR
18. DANE MEETS “THE OTHER GUY” OR WINTON REVISITED
Now that the Grovil campaign was settled, the New York office was due for a hiatus of peace and analgesic monotony. Still, there were changes afoot.
One Monday morning, Dane found a frowsy woman with a large belly wandering about the office in slippers. She held a tumbler of Diet Pepsi by the neck. Her wide eyes and hayride hair made her resemble a comic-strip heroine looking for her mommy. She was looking for a straw instead.
Dane guided her to the kitchenette, a few feet away.
“Are you a client?” he asked facetiously.
“No, I’m a freelance writer. Hi, I’m Dotty.”
Dottie Wacker extended her hand with the plastic container dangling from it and Dane shook her Pepsi.
“You’ll be seeing a lot of me,” Dottie said. “Nigel said I could work from home but I had to get out of there. A woman on my floor wants to kill me. Her boyfriend’s always flirting. It’s not my fault he thinks I’m hot.”
Dane was sure she was joking and almost laughed—but she wasn’t, so he didn’t.
“I would have started last week,” Dottie went on, “but I had to go to Staten Island twice last week to see my dentist. Boy, that was no fun with the ferry and a bus! I know, you’re thinking, ‘Why doesn’t she fix her teeth locally?’ My Staten Island dentist ne
eds me. He looks forward to my check-ups and cleanings. And now that I have a root canal, we’re practically married!”
Dottie Wacker’s mysterious appearance did not need clarification. She was Nigel’s “gift” to Dane for his unwillingness to fondle Pepperoni foot. She would be assigned to projects Dane could have worked on in his downtime and take his billable hours.
The new freelancer presented another danger, as well. Dottie had worked at Mentos before Dane arrived. She was the “crazy lady” copywriter whose legend Mentos people recounted around the water cooler. Dane wondered if Dottie knew of his notoriety—and would spread it around New York.
As it turned out, Dottie had no time for his Mentos stories. She had an anthology of her own.
“They promised they’d make me creative director,” Dottie whined. “They had so much work for me that they put me up in a motel for a month. I was like a little mole, working night and day. I never went out. When the project was done they said it was the best slide kit completed in less than two weeks that they ever saw!
“So when I finally got back to New York, my goldfish and plants had died while I was gone. I gave the bill to Mentos and they said they’d pay it. Fine! So I was a little reverse-commuter again. One morning I got off the train and stepped on somebody’s discarded sandwich. Suddenly I felt the ground go squishy under me. The sandwich must have been full of mayonnaise. I slipped on it and fell right on my back. So I picked myself up and left the station when a dog ran up to me and peed on my new pumps. That was it! The cosmos was sending me a message in bold caps: GO HOME! How could I create in such circumstances? I’d be worried sick all day what would happen next! So I took the next train to New York and hid under the covers. Mentos didn’t understand. They were such users.”
“Insensitive cretins,” Dane agreed.
“Plus—they were always renovating. The construction workers were animals. They made sexual noises and comments. I get a lot of that. Men think I’m hot. It was a nightmare. They squeezed balloons obscenely. And then…They filled condoms with Elmer’s glue…and cut the tips so they dripped…and dangled them outside my office window!”
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