Truth in Advertising Page 0,30
my future. This office. This is what I’ve been working for. Though the chances of me ever getting here are comically slim. The simple truth is that there are far more talented people all around me. They possess a drive and passion for advertising that I lack. It’s not that I don’t work hard. I do. I enjoy work, enjoy accomplishing something, solving a problem, completing a thing. It’s just that, for me, lately (and more and more often) there is always another voice competing with my own internal monologue. One that questions and laughs a lot and makes comical grimacing faces at the work, the gravitas, the inanity of it. Take Glen and Barry’s idea, for example. I like it. It’s something I couldn’t come up with. It’s exactly the kind of thing—done right—that will garner five million hits on YouTube in a two-week span. It’s the kind of idea I used to get very excited about. But then the voice creeps in and says, “Psst. Hey, pal. Are you out of your fucking mind? That’s the dumbest idea since the Chia Pet.” Cynicism is very dangerous in advertising. You must be a believer. If you stray, if you start questioning its worth and validity, its credibility, you are in for a very long day.
This voice is not present, I am sure of it, in the heads of the other creatives who’ve achieved far more than I have. Take the team that just launched the “What’s the Question Because the Answer Is Soup” campaign for Campbell’s. The client called it “breathtaking.” I happen to know that each team member received a bonus and an expensive, handmade Italian bicycle. When I talk with them, when I run into them in the hallway or the cafeteria or at a company event, they speak with great intensity about their work, an intensity and intelligence I admire, as well as their wardrobes and hair. I feel inferior to them and their awards, their quiet cool. Inevitably they ask about my work in voices of thinly veiled condescension. “Missed you at Cannes this year,” they say, referring to the French city where the premiere annual advertising award show takes place. I often have a remarkably cutting comeback, such as, “Oh, yeah? Well . . . that’s because I wasn’t there.”
There are bookshelves in Martin’s office holding an impressive array of books, some on advertising, some on writing, and several volumes of the OED, which look to be quite old. Also a collection by Philip Larkin and three by Seamus Heaney. Mostly there are awards, dozens and dozens of awards, oddly shaped things, blocks of Lucite, gold-colored pencils, a winged lady, Greek-inspired surely, holding a globe overhead. Clios, Effies, Andys, Chuckies, Chippies. (I made up the last two.) The Clio is the big one. The name comes by way of Greek mythology, which seems right to me, as the essence of what we do is create and foster myth.
Martin is on his iPad. Emma brings in tea.
“Fin. Have a seat. Just finishing something up. Help yourself,” he adds, nodding to the pot of tea. It is a ritual of his, each afternoon around four. He has a large pot of tea and a tray of scones brought in from Tea & Sympathy in the Village.
It has crossed my mind that I may be here to learn the news of my impending (and much sought after) promotion to creative director. Considering the bloodbath of the past year (three rounds of layoffs) and the continued grim economic news, I can’t imagine this chat is about a bonus.
Emma leaves and Martin turns to face me. “Christmas has come early, Fin.”
I smile my fake smile. “Really?”
“Indeed.”
My palms begin to tingle and perspire. I feel my promotion/bonus/life-changing career moment coming, and I believe that I am an exceptional predictor of the future (though empirical data disproves this).
“I’ve just received a call from Brad,” Martin says.
Brad is the CMO of Snugglies, a division of General Corp., makers of baby diapers, adult diapers, soap, shampoo, cereal, candy, car tires, jet engines, diesel locomotives, and guidance systems for Tomahawk missiles.
Maybe Brad called Martin about me. Brad saw—helped Martin see—my worth, my uniqueness, my way not merely with words (“Does your diaper do this?”), but with people, how I inspire them, how, if I died tomorrow, the line for the wake would wrap around the block, the Times would publish the obit, I would be remembered. I mattered. Which is when Terry Gross begins