Truth in Advertising (2 page)

We launched the campaign in 2007. The initial focus group testing results had been very good. But the economic downturn found a far different attitude toward extremely rich, unusually beautiful, oddly thin mothers who, according to groups in a number of cities around the country, “probably had twenty-four-hour-a-day help” (Chicago) and “sure as hell ain't using the drive-through window at McDonald's to shut the little bastards up” (Houston). Gwyneth is our last super-mom in the campaign.

“Breast milk,” Raphael begins.

“Maybe let's move on,” Gwyneth says, the radiant smile somehow still in place. She appears to have no pores on her face.

“Also clothing,” he continues. “You have to ask yourself this question—what diaper will you place on his precious bottom?”

One senses a collective “Give-me-a-fucking-break” coming from the assemblage. But then one notices the five clients. They are mesmerized. They're buying it. Which is both good and bad, as they now think Raphael (who, it turns out, is named Richard Dinklage. That's right, Dick Dinklage) is a genius.

He slowly, dramatically, raises a diaper.

“Will it be any old diaper, or will it be . . . a Snugglie?”

Pam elbows me and whispers, “Say something. Now. We are
way
behind schedule.”

I say, “I think what . . .” I realize I can't say his fake name, so I simply gesture to him instead. “I think what the director is saying is that this is one of those nothing little moments that actually mean a lot to a parent, when you're changing your baby and they're smiling and there's that connection. The whole idea is that nothing is more important than being a mother.”

Gwyneth speaks to me and smiles, and I instantly understand why some people are stars. “Cool. That's great. I like that. Are we starting now? Because I'd love to use the ladies' room.”

The crowd disperses. Pam, Ian, and I walk to the craft services table for coffee.

Craft services is the odd name given to the food service area on a shoot. It's not, as first-time-to-a-shoot clients and neophyte creatives often mistake it, a place to buy handmade knitwear and driftwood art.

Pam says, “She is so much better looking than a regular person. She's like a different species. I look like ass next to her. And, in case you haven't noticed, the client's pissed.”

I say, “Why? They looked happy to me.”

Pam says, “They say we're not following the storyboard. And the purple liquid thing. They want blue.”

Ian says, “Where the hell is Alan? Where's Jill?”

Alan and Jill are our colleagues. They are account executives and their responsibility is to shepherd the client, act as liaison between client and agency, help devise a strategy, understand the client's business as well as the client, understand the creative's job, smooth the process. It is an important and powerful job. The relationship between client and agency rests upon it. Both Alan and Jill attended graduate business schools of the Ivy League persuasion. Currently, they're on the neighboring soundstage, trying to sneak in to watch the filming of an episode of
Law & Order
.

Ian says, “It's really like he has no idea what he's doing, like he's in film school.”

Pam says, “He's one of the hottest commercial directors in the world.”

Ian says, “He keeps using the word
profanity
. Only he's using it wrong.”

I say, “I noticed that. He thinks it means
spacious
.”

Ian says, “I heard him say to the set designer that he wanted the baby's room to be more profanity.”

Pam says, “He makes $30,000 a day.”

Ian looks at his iPhone. “He's tweeting about the shoot.”

Pam says, “Who?”

Ian holds up his phone, shows Raphael's Twitter account. “Cecil B. DeMille.”

Pam says, “Please tell me he didn't tweet about her vagina.”

I say, “Tweet about her vagina sounds wrong to me. Do you tweet?”

Pam says, “What do I look like, Kim fucking Kardashian?”

I say, “I don't tweet. Should I tweet? Maybe I should be tweeting, be more of a tweeting presence in the digital world.”

Ian says, “What would you tweet about?”

I say, “Thoughts. Ideas. I have ideas about things that I think people would like to hear and follow. I think I'd have a lot of followers. Like Jesus.”

Pam says, “Tweet this, Facebook that, LinkedIn my ass. C'mon. I mean, what the fuck?”

I say, “There are times when you don't strike me as someone named Pam.”

Ian says, “Clients want it, though. It's magic to them. Gotta be on Facebook. Gotta tweet about the new campaign. Go viral. Big phrase these days. Go viral. This spot will have its own Facebook page.”

I say, “And the world will be a better place for it.”

At last count the three of us have made twenty-three commercials together over seven years.

Ian says, “God bless that clever Mark Zuckerberg.” He looks down at his phone. “Raphael just tweeted again saying people should go to his Facebook page to see new photos of him with Gwyneth.” He looks up at me. “By the way, Merry Christmas, Tiny Fin.”

Christmas is three days away.

Pam says, “Seriously, though, where the fuck are Alan and Jill?”

We make our way back to video village, that place on every TV commercial shoot where the client and agency sit and watch the action on a monitor.

I see Jan, our senior client, and know immediately by the large smile on her face that there is a problem. Diapers are to Jan a kind of religious calling.

Before we move on, a word about Snugglies. Snugglies and Stay-Ups and Nite-Nites and Tadpoles (for swimming). We are the agency of record for the largest manufacturer of diapers in the world.
Snugglies babies are happy babies
. I know that because I wrote that line. You will never see an unhappy baby in one of our commercials. Other companies show unhappy babies. This is a mistake.

“Jan,” I say. “It's going well, don't you think?”

Jan says, “I do, Fin. Really well.”

I say, “Raphael.”

Jan says, “He's brilliant. He gets the brand. He gets the brief.”

Her colleagues nod and smile like lunatics.

One says, “Has he read the manifesto?”

I say, “I'm . . . I'm not sure. But I doubt it.”

Her colleagues are suddenly chirping like birds.

“He
has
to read the manifesto,” says one. “How is that possible?” says another. Yet a third makes odd noises and contorted facial expressions, as if she just found out that her favorite woman wasn't given a rose on
The Bachelor
.

Jan remains calm. “Let's get him a copy. Immerse him in the brand. Perhaps Gwyneth would like to look at it as well.”

I'm sure the Academy Award winner would love nothing more than to review the Snugglies manifesto.

And what
is
a manifesto, you might ask?

You may have a vague notion from history class that a manifesto once referred to the soul of a revolution: blood, sweat, and tears on paper, codifying women's rights, civil rights, human rights, economic justice, religious freedom. Today, it's about diapers. Or cars. Or
refrigerators. Or gas grills. Or dental floss. In advertising, a manifesto is something that sums up a brand, one page, maybe two hundred words. Name the product and my people will write the manifesto for it. Superlative claims, a badly skewed world view, sentences like, “Because let's be honest—what's more important at the end of your day than your family . . . and their enjoyment of grilled meats?”

The Snugglies manifesto is particularly awful. I know. I wrote it.

I lie and say, “We'll get copies to Raphael and Gwyneth. Otherwise, though, I think we're in a good place with the spot.”

Jan says, “It's real, honest, artful.”

Ian says, “It's what we wanted.”

Everyone smiles and nods. This is very good. We're about to turn and go when Jan says, “Except . . . is it
too
artful, Fin?”

•   •   •

There are two kinds of creative people in advertising. Those who think they're smarter than the client and those who are successful. To say that the client is unreasonable is to say that death is unreasonable. Death
is
. Deal with it. Deal with it by making the client (death) your friend. Respect them, despite what they say. Advertising is a language and they do not speak that language. We say things like “It's original” or “It's a big idea.” Wrong. Picasso's style of painting was original. Penicillin was a big idea. They call us
creative
. Baloney. The inventor of the corkscrew was creative. The irony of advertising—a communications business—is that we treat words with little respect, often devaluing their meaning. The
all-new
Ford Taurus. Really? Five wheels this time?
Great for any occasion
. I saw these words on a large sign in front of a national chain of cupcake shops.
Any
occasion? Doctor: “Mr. Dolan, the test results are back and I'm afraid you have an inoperable brain tumor. Cupcake?”

I do not think I am smarter than the client. Instead, I simply try to put myself in their sensible shoes, when, say, the long process that is the making of a commercial begins. Watch their furrowed brows and puzzled expressions as they listen to us present ideas. Watch as they sneak a peek at a colleague to see if they understand what the hell we are talking about.
Were we working from the same brief?!
they wonder.
Watch as they listen to the agency reference movies and shots in movies that they, themselves, have never seen nor in some cases even
heard
of (“We'll shoot it like that great tracking shot in
The Bicycle Thief
.”). Song and band references that might as well be in Farsi.

Inside, the client screams,
What does any of this have to do with our
tooth
paste?
Outside, they nod, slowly, letting their own insecurities build.
I never wanted to be in marketing for a toothpaste/diaper/paper towel/soda manufacturer
, they think for the eleven millionth time.
A frat buddy/sorority sister/parole officer suggested the job, after a long, pride-deadening search in other fields, a bit lost at age twenty-eight, wondering what to do with my life. I wanted to be a poet/a drummer/a porn star/a machinist.

Give me your tired, your poor, your great teeming masses of middle managers who are unable to move the process forward or make a decision! The Carols and Maries and Trents and Tracys and Carls! Give me your resentful and angry, your worried and deeply frightened, your petrified of the next round of layoffs, of those insufferable human resources women with their easy detachment and heartless smiles.
You're eligible for Cobra and the family plan is just $1800 a month.
The afterlife for HR people is a
Clockwork Orange
–like reel of everyone they've ever fired, playing over and over and over.

This is life in advertising and marketing and public relations today, largely superfluous service-sector jobs in the great economic crisis where homes are worth less than we paid for them, job security no longer exists, college tuition is $40 million, and the future is a thing that parents sit up nights trembling about. Fulfilled by your job? Who the fuck cares.
Have
a job? Then do whatever you can to hang on to it. This is business today. This is
America
today. A land of fear. Fear of things that cannot be proven with focus-group testing. Fear of layoffs and large mortgages, education costs and penniless retirements, fear of terrorists and planes that fly too low.

•   •   •

Jan is staring at me, waiting for an answer. As is her team. What was the question?

“How do you mean, Jan?” I say.

Jan says, “Is this the brand?”

I say, “I think it is. I think it's very much the brand. Ian?”

I write the copy. Ian does the pictures. He's much smarter than I am and a champion talker.

Ian says, “Emotion. The mother-child bond. Life. This is the DNA of your brand.”

If you can speak like this with a straight face, you can make a very good living in advertising.

Jan says, “Agreed.”

Her colleagues nod. It's as if they're wired to Jan. Almost all are texting, talking on wireless headsets, tapping an iPad. Unless you are connected you are not alive. Earlier I heard one of the clients in the toilet on a conference call, his voice strained at times from peristaltic exertion.

Jan says again, “But is this
too
artsy for our brand?”

I say, “I'm hearing you say you think it might be too artsy.”

Jan says, “I think that's what I'm saying, yes.”

I say, “How so?”

Jan says, “The camera is moving around quite a bit. I'm not seeing the product.”

I say, “Well, we're trying to focus on Gwyneth and the baby, but, as we discussed in the pre-production meeting, we wanted hip, cool, and edgy along with the brand attributes of safe, homespun, and conservative.”

Jan says, “Agreed. But Gwyneth and the baby aren't the product, Fin. The product is a Snugglie, the finest diaper in the world.” You wait for the punch line but it never comes. People speak like this.

I say, “Absolutely. No question. But the baby is
wearing
the diaper.”

Jan sighs deeply. It is a signal to one of her drones. In this case, Cindy, a bubbly twenty-eight-year-old Jan wannabe. Cindy says, “As infants grow and become more active, our job is to create a diapering experience that fits their lives . . . and the lives of their moms. We aspire to do nothing less than let them be the best babies they can be. Largely dry and free of diaper rash. Though legally we can't guarantee this.”