by Bill Whiting
“Sounds a bit dangerous to me, with pissed passengers all over the place,” Miller then said, “and anyway, it wouldn’t be allowed by the businessmen’s wives and partners. They’d all be at the airports making sure they got on a proper flight. And apart from that, it would be made illegal overnight by the International Aviation Authority. And even if we put all our money in, we’d be about one thousand five hundred million short of what’s needed.”
“Okay, good points,” King said. “Maybe we should save the idea until we’ve made more money from our next venture.”
“I think all that time you spent making up stories for the Chronicle has spun you into a mad fantasy world,” Rachel responded, “and you need to spin out of it quickly.”
Miller then replaced King’s flip chart with his own, placed it on the easel and turned to look at his partners.
“This idea is so simple, it’s brilliant,” he said. “Once you see it, it’s obvious; and yet it takes an advertising genius to think of it. All I have is one picture to show you: because one picture says it all.”
Miller pulled back the flip chart cover to reveal a photograph of a baby with the words ‘Your Brand’ scripted in blue on its forehead.
“See! Geddit! Hello… are you there?” Miller asked his puzzled-looking audience.
King and Rachel sat in silence.
“It’s obvious… come on!” Miller pleaded.
“What?” Rachel eventually asked. “It’s a baby with ‘Your Brand’ written on it. So what’s the point?”
“Advertising is the point,” Miller answered, “and not just advertising: just the greatest form of advertising ever invented.”
“I think you’d better explain it a lot more,” King said. “Nothing obvious there to me… or Rachel.”
“Okay,” Miller answered, “here goes…
“You’ve seen advertising on TV screens, in newspapers, on buildings, vans, truck sides… and on that new-fangled internet thing. But what gets looked at more than anything else on earth? It’s people. We set up an agency which specialises in offering people money to get their bodies tattooed with advertising and brand names.
“We’d have a rate card. Torsos in cold climates would generally be the lowest rate, because they often aren’t visible. But women’s legs – often on show – would earn more. And obviously, there’d be more for tattoos on foreheads and faces. The entire surface of a bald head would be the second most pricey location. And the top rate would be for babies, with a seventy-five-year life expectancy. Imagine how many times a person would be seen by other people in seventy-five years!
“People’s bodies offer the best advertising medium the world has ever known. But we could do cats, dogs, horses as well. Can you see it – wouldn’t pet food slogans be terrific tattooed on dogs?
“Think of the creative possibilities. Women with very attractive tits, which are always being ogled, could rent their cleavages for bra ads. Or even better, put beer ads on them, because it would be mostly blokes who would be looking at their tits. And then men could have their cocks tattooed with condom names. Arses could have toilet tissue branding. The potential for the idea is just endless.
“So, come on – what do you think?”
After a few seconds, Rachel was the first to respond. “So that’s your vision of the world, is it? You see a world where people and babies are covered in advertising, like racing cars?”
“No, don’t be facetious, Rachel,” Miller said. “We would offer premium rates for what we’d call ‘solus’ or ‘single-branded’ people, because they’d obviously have more impact than people with lots of ads. And anyway, we’d have to avoid message conflicts; say, for example, somebody with a tobacco ad on one arm and a health product on the other.’
“We could also offer package deals to tattoo entire families. Maximum impact that. Imagine them all walking up the High Street with Coca-Cola foreheads – even cute little baby!
“And of course, clever educated people could get tattooed with upmarket brands, such as designer labels. And the poor people could have the names of loan companies. Good-looking, healthy people could carry famous vitamin brands; and even the disabled could be tattooed with the names of mobility devices or special hearing aids. Come on – what do you think?”
“I presume then,” Rachel answered, “that in Miller’s wonderful new world, the sick and the ugly would be even more deprived than they are now.”
“Jamie,” Miller chipped in, “you don’t think it’s all a touch grotesque… you know… a little surreal?”
“Absolutely not, just the opposite,” Miller answered. “People would rush for it in their millions. Some might go for it just for the money, but think of all those people nowadays who are craving for personal identity. Having a branded body is just one step on from having a branded shirt, dress or trainers. The brand says, ‘This is who I am’.
“Give a woman a Burberry chest, a bloke a Calvin Klein arm or a kid a Nike leg, and they’d stand for something. Without them, they are anonymous. Why pay a huge price for top branded clothes when you can get the brand tattooed on your arm and get paid for it? The biggest void in the world today is identity. Everybody’s desperate to belong, to fit, to be part of something. If they don’t feel part of the world’s collective consciousness they don’t feel conscious at all, just non-entity outsiders. Nowadays the philosophers would say, ‘I am not seen, therefore I am not’. If people can’t be a bona-fide brand themselves – like famous celebrity brands – they want to be at least part of such a brand.
“People used to bugger off to India to see mystics to find themselves; not now. Nirvana is being seen on TV, or knowing someone who’s been on TV, or even being in a million-strong crowd at an event that’s being shown on TV. Come on, you must see it surely?”
“Okay,” King finally answered. “It’s maybe worth thinking about. What do you think, Rachel?”
“Well… maybe there’s something in there somewhere,” Rachel said. “In fact, without quite knowing it, my idea has a similar thread. It’s a bit less complicated though.”
“Right,” Miller said. “Well, let’s hear Rachel’s idea and we’ll take stock after that. Up you get, Rachel.”
Rachel stood up and put her flip chart in place, looking slightly ill at ease. “I’ve got the bones of an idea,” she said, “but I’ll need you two to help me flesh it out.”
She flipped the cover over to reveal her encapsulated concept, which read:
COMPU-CHUMS – the internet club
for friends and family
“Now,” Rachel began, “I reckon this internet thing will really take off in the future, and not just in business. More and more people will have computers at home, even kids. Anyway, my idea is that we set up an internet site which people can join and chat to their friends and family; or just send photos or messages about their weddings, or holidays, or evenings out, or whatever. It won’t cost them anything so they’ll love it. It’s very quick and they won’t face all the costs and delays which the post involves. I think people will be on it all the time, and it might make them feel special too. They’ll have their writing and their pictures sort of published; they’ll be a bit like newspaper columnists.
“We’ll have to get a computer expert in though to do it. We don’t know enough about all that technology stuff. Well, what do you think?”
“Rubbish,” King said. “Even if it worked, how would you make money? The post office makes money by charging for stamps. Your internet club can’t be free and I don’t think people will pay for it. It’ll never take off.”
“We can put advertising on the site and charge for that,” Rachel answered. “That’s the beauty of it.”
“I can’t see advertisers falling for that in a million years,” Miller joined in. “I mean how would they know anyone had seen their advert? It’s not like printed newspapers; they can s
ee their ads printed for real and they know the circulation and readership of the publications. Same with TV and radio: they can see and hear their ads and know how many people are looking and listening. It might happen in a thousand years, but we haven’t got a thousand years. It’s a sure-fire no-goer I’m afraid, Rachel.”
“And another thing,” King said, “how do you know what will appear on it? People might say awful or libellous things. You could get complete nutters and nasty people sending messages just to get attention. You’d need a whole lot of people checking every email before it’s put on the site.”
Rachel sighed. “Oh well,” she said, “it was just an idea. I just thought friends and family would love it – you know, it would help bring them together. It would be a nice community thing. It would build relationships and people would love that.”
“I think that’s a women thing,” King said. “You women think relationships make the world go round and love chatting. But women aren’t very good on computers, are they? Nope. I just can’t see it.”
“Well, that’s it,” Miller said, “we aren’t agreed on anything. Three bum ideas between us. How the hell do we get rich?”
“Maybe we’re being too ambitious,” Rachel said. “We should just open a nice shop or something. We should get more down to earth. You two are always shooting for the moon.”
They all sat in silence, looking down and looking down.
Then Miller stood up and said, “Hey, now that’s a great idea, Rachel. We shoot for the moon.”
SEVENTEEN
Four weeks and three days later, the three partners signed a legal agreement to buy the ownership of Costhorpe Brewery for £300,000.
The brewery was small and only marginally profitable, and had only one product: a beer with the curious brand name ‘Moony-Bru’. The name had been registered in 1967 by Thomas Whiteley, who tasted his first home brew in Costhorpe on the evening of a full moon, and called it his lunar brew. A few years later he decided to produce the beer commercially under the name Moony-Bru, and registered the brand name.
It was distributed to pubs and restaurants in three counties and enjoyed modest sales, some from inquisitive tourists anxious to try such a novel-sounding brew. As a business, however, it was scarcely worth the price Miller, King and Rachel had offered Whiteley for it. But after six long hours Miller had persuaded his partners that the brand name itself was a ‘golden egg’. So much so that the team also spent another £110,000 to register the name in America, Europe and Asia.
Very little time, however, was spent brewing and distributing beer. A great deal of time was spent attempting to plant a false, but nonetheless interesting, rumour to newspapers across the world.
It was a publication in Japan which first took the bait. Translated, the story was essentially printed as follows:
GIANT LASER TO PROJECT
MOONY-BRU NAME ON MOON
Shock plan will provoke global controversy
We understand that a consortium of American and Japanese companies, which are believed to be partners in the purchase of the British beer brand called Moony-Bru, plans to employ a huge and advanced laser machine to project the brand name over the entire surface of the moon.
Moony-Bru was sold to three entrepreneurs earlier this year. They are understood to have won the backing and investment of two powerful American and Japanese technology corporations to develop and fund the unique planetary advertising scheme.
Within nine months, the night sky, as seen by seven billion people on earth, could no longer feature the moonscape so familiar to mankind for millions of years. Instead, a bright yellow sphere will be visible – with the Moony-Bru name written across it in bold red letters.
It is said that this will be the ‘ultimate advertisement’ and will create, literally overnight, the world’s most famous brand name.
An investment of 13 billion US dollars is rumoured to have been made to develop the immensely powerful laser, which will be stationed in a distant orbit around the moon. The solid state ‘argon fluoride’ laser will emit an intense microwave light pulse. It will be powerful enough to cut through titanium – and sufficient to obliterate the moon’s natural reflected solar light and replace it with an even-brighter Moony-Bru logo. There will no longer be moon phases – simply a full moon continuously.
Moreover, it’s said that the moon will be faintly visible even during daytime. It means the Moony-Bru name will not wax and wane – and only cloudy skies on earth will obscure it from view.
The plan is certain to attract controversy and outrage. However, it’s said there is no jurisdiction on earth which controls advertising activity on the lunar surface – and we can confirm that no such laws exist.
The article was illustrated with numerous illustrations of laser technology: excited atoms, pumped electrons, light photons and ‘high-definition quantum-stimulated emissions’. Also included was an artist’s picture of a family staring up at the Moony-Bru logo, with one of two little children pointing and asking, “Is Moony-Bru the name of the man in the moon, Daddy?”
Before leaving Spain, both Miller’s partners had initially told him that the idea was plain ridiculous and wouldn’t survive scrutiny from any eleven-year-old physics pupil. But Miller eventually convinced them that, whilst the story was surrealistically far-fetched, it would prove to be too good a scare story to be ignored by the media.
“There’s no way the fact that the whole thing is banal in the extreme, will stop the media from covering it,” Miller told them. “We’ve already proved that when it comes to reader interest a thumping good lie beats a tedious truth every time. And there’s great controversy in this one so it will be a massive runner. Of course the serious papers will rubbish it, but the tabloids aren’t going to kill a golden goose story like this. They’ll love it.
“The moon might be a barren and lifeless thing travelling round the earth with such perpetual monotony that, for most people, most of the time, it’s much less interesting than a grand slam tennis final. It’s too familiar to be fascinating. But when you change something that’s very, very familiar in a nasty way, it has the opposite effect – in the same way that big toes suddenly become very interesting when they’re frostbitten.”
Miller was right.
Whilst serious newspapers either ignored the story or rubbished it in a few deeply buried paragraphs, popular papers in many parts of the world had a field day with headlines ranging from ‘Monsters Mug the Moon’ to ‘Stop the Moony-Bru Lunatics’. They sensed that readers would become quickly absorbed and dismayed by the concept – and even better, frightened. As Miller was aware, journalists knew that nothing sells better than fear.
And as the story gathered pace, people who would normally not look at the moon suddenly began to stare at it. To their mind, a clear moon, freely available since the beginning of mankind, now most likely held scarcity value.
Sales of telescopes also began to rise noticeably; and the broadcasting of moon songs on radio channels, including an adaptation of an old romantic song, which was now commonly called, ‘By the light of the Moony-Bru moon’. One advertising executive interviewed on radio in Brazil was castigated for suggesting, albeit jokingly, that the technology could be well used for cheese advertisements too. “The moon’s not just made of cheese, it’s made of…!” he said.
Miller, King and Rachel retreated to a small hotel in the countryside, to remain incognito as the media hunted them down. But as the story gathered pace, experts appeared on TV and in the press to explain that the story must be false: it simply wasn’t possible to obliterate the moon with a laser, and it wasn’t happening.
However, that didn’t stop poets, songwriters and assorted romanticists appearing to eulogise ‘the earth’s companion’ and bemoan its prospective loss to craven commercialism. Psychologists also discussed the merits of legendary ideas about the lunar hold on the mind of mankind: issues
from ‘lunacy’ to ‘being moonstruck’.
It also emerged that more babies are born under a full moon than at any other time, and that in times past women would menstruate during the new moon and ovulate during the full moon. Could the cycle still be affected by the phases of the moon? Worries also soon spread about non-human life. What would happen to migrating birds and other creatures navigating by the moon? Would salmon find their spawning rivers? Pigeon fanciers were particularly livid and organised protests outside Parliament in London.
And in many parts of the world a whole myriad of religious sects and outright cranks became active. Some claimed the moon and the sun were husband and wife. It was claimed that the wife (the moon) had been dominated by the man (the brighter sun) and that they had fallen out: until God stopped them fighting by ordering the sun to shine only by day and the moon only by night.
In China and Japan people worried about the ‘lunar rabbit’ which was said to affect mortality. Elsewhere, people worried the moon might take revenge by destroying life on earth, whilst others thought their dead ancestors lived on the moon and their peace would be shattered.
Particular worries emerged that the Moony-Bru laser would end the darker phases of the moon, leaving the whole sphere lit up. They said, only in the darker phases do humans learn the real truths of existence, and are inspired to make sacrifices for future generations and express the best of themselves in love, compassion and service.
Politicians were inevitably deluged with protests calling for action. And although they were well aware that fears were groundless, alarmed voters had to be dealt with nonetheless. In America, one politician appeared on TV and, asked about the case, he said, “It’s absolute garbage. It’s a hoax – a joke. There’s nothing for people to worry about. The media coverage given to this is irresponsible and has gotten out of hand.”
But the interviewer told him that some eminent physicists had said, though the cost would be huge, the technical feasibility of such a project in the future couldn’t be entirely ruled out. “Are you saying the experts are wrong and that you can rule it out for all time?” he asked.