Authors: Sarah Pekkanen
“I knew you wouldn’t eat, so I got extra. And you’re getting a headache again, aren’t you?” she asked.
“It’s not so bad,” I lied, holding out my hand for the Advil and hoping Donna wouldn’t notice I’d bitten off all my fingernails. Again.
When Donna finally shut my door, I sank into my big leather chair and took another long, grateful sip of coffee. The early-morning sunlight streamed in through the windows behind me, glinting off the golden Clio Award on my desk. I ran a finger over it for luck, just like I did on every presentation day.
Then I stroked it a second time. Because this wasn’t an ordinary presentation day. So much more was riding on today than winning another multimillion-dollar account. If I nailed my pitch and added Gloss Cosmetics to our roster of clients . . . I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t finish the thought; I didn’t want to jinx myself.
I leapt up and walked across the room to look at my pictures of my babies, another one of my superstitious rituals on big days. One of my walls was covered with simple but expensive black frames, each showcasing a different magazine ad: a dad in a red apron barbecuing hot dogs; a preppy couple sinking their bare toes into their new carpet; a young executive reclining in her first-class airline seat.
Blissfully
reclining.
I smiled, remembering that campaign. It had taken me two weeks and three focus groups to decide on the word
blissful
instead of
peaceful.
Yet my whole campaign was almost torpedoed at the last minute because the model I’d chosen had the exact same hairstyle as the airline owner’s ex-wife, who’d convinced him that true love didn’t require a prenup. If I hadn’t spotted a five-dollar tub of hair gel in the makeup artist’s case and begged the client for thirty more seconds, our agency would’ve lost a $2 million account on account of a chin-length bob. Clients were notoriously fickle, and the rule of thumb was, the richer the client, the crazier.
The one I was meeting today owned half of Manhattan.
I grabbed the mock-up of the magazine ad my creative team had put together for Gloss and scanned it for the millionth time, searching for nonexistent flaws. I’d spent three solid weeks agonizing over every detail of this campaign, which I’d get maybe ten minutes to present in our conference room in— I looked at my watch and my heart skipped a beat.
Unlike other ad shops, it was the culture of my agency to blur the division between the creative work and the business side of our accounts. If you wanted to succeed at Richards, Dunne & Krantz, you had to be able to do both. Of course, that also meant all the responsibility for this presentation was mine alone.
The worst part, the part that gnawed at my stomach and jolted me awake at 3:00
A.M
. on nights when I managed to fall asleep, was that all my work, all those marathon stale-pizza weekend sessions and midnight conference calls, might be for nothing. If the owner of Gloss rejected my ads—if something as simple as the perfume I was wearing or a splashy adjective in my copy rubbed him the wrong way—hundreds of thousands of dollars in commission for our agency would slip through my fingers like smoke. Once a Japanese tycoon who owned a chain of luxury hotels sat through a brilliant, two-months-in-the-making campaign presentation our agency’s president had personally overseen—I’m talking about the kind of creative vision that would’ve won awards, the kinds of commercials everyone would’ve buzzed about—and dismissed it with a grunt, which his assistant cheerfully translated as “He doesn’t like blue.” That was it; no chance to tweak the color of the ad copy, just a group of stunned advertising execs with the now-useless skill of saying,
“Konnichi-wa!”
being herded like sheep to the exit.
I gulped another Advil from the secret stash inside my desk drawer, the one Donna didn’t know about, and massaged the knot in my neck with one hand while I stared at the mock-up ad my team had created for Gloss.
After Gloss Cosmetics had approached our agency last month, hinting that they might jump from their current agency, our agency’s president—a forty-two-year-old marketing genius named Mason, who always wore red Converse sneakers, even with his tuxedo—called our top five creative teams into his office.
“Gloss wants to kick some Cover Girl ass,” Mason had said, swigging from a bottle of Lipton iced tea (they were a client) and tapping his Bic pen (ditto) against the top of his oak conference table. Mason was so loyal to our clients that he once walked out of a four-star restaurant because the chef wouldn’t substitute Kraft ranch for champagne-truffle dressing.
“Gloss’s strategy is accessible glamour,” Mason had continued. “Forget the Park Avenue princesses; we’re going after schoolteachers and factory girls and receptionists.” His eyes had roved around the table so he could impale each of us with his stare, and I swear he hadn’t blinked for close to two minutes. Mason reminded me of an alien, with his bald, lightbulb-shaped head and hooded eyes, and when he went into his blinkless trances I was convinced he was downloading data from his mother ship. My assistant, Donna, was certain he just needed a little more vitamin C; she kept badgering him to go after the Minute Maid account.
“What was the recall score of Gloss’s last commercial?” someone at the other end of the table had asked. It was Slutty Cheryl, boobs spilling out of her tight white shirt as she stretched to reach a Lipton from the stack in the middle of the conference table.
“Can I get that for you?” Matt, our assistant art director, had offered in a voice that sounded innocent if you didn’t know him well.
Matt was my best friend at the office. My only real friend, actually; this place made a sadists’ convention seem cozy and nurturing.
“I can reach it,” Cheryl had said bravely, tossing back her long chestnut hair and straining away as Matt shot me a wink. You’d think that after a few hundred meetings she’d have figured out an easier way to wet her whistle, but there she was, week after week, doing her best imitation of a Hooters girl angling for a tip. By the purest of coincidences, she always got thirsty right when she asked a question, so all eyes were on her.
“Cover Girl’s last commercial, the one with Queen Latifah, hit a thirty recall, and Gloss’s latest scored a twelve,” Mason had said without consulting any notes. He had a photographic memory, which was one reason why our clients put up with the sneakers.
I could see why Gloss was testing the waters at other agencies. Twelve wasn’t good.
The recall score is one of the most effective tools in advertising’s arsenal. It basically tells what percentage of people who watched your commercial actually remembered it. Cheryl, who’s a creative director like me, once oversaw a dog food commercial that scored a forty-one. She ordered dozens of balloons emblazoned with “Forty-One” and blanketed the office with them. Subtlety, like loose-fitting turtlenecks, isn’t in her repertoire. And I swear I’m not just saying that because I’ve never scored higher than a forty (but just for the record, I’ve hit that number three times. It’s an agency record).
“I want five creative teams on this,” Mason had said. “Have the campaigns ready for me three weeks from today. The best two will present to Gloss.”
As everyone stood up to leave, Mason had walked over to me while Cheryl took her time gathering her things and pretended not to eavesdrop.
“I need this account,” he’d said, his pale blue eyes latching onto mine.
“Is the budget that big?” I’d asked.
“No, they’re cheap fucks,” he’d said cheerfully. “Name the last three clients we signed.”
“Home health care plans, orthopedic mattresses, and adult protection pads,” I’d rattled off.
“Diapers,” he’d corrected. “Ugly trend. We’re becoming the incontinent old farts’ agency. We need the eighteen to thirty-five demographic. Get me this account, Lindsey.” His voice had dropped, and Cheryl had stopped shuffling papers. She and I had both leaned in closer to Mason.
“I don’t have to tell you what it would do for you,” Mason had said. “Think about the timing. We’re presenting to Gloss right around the time of the vote. You bring in this one on top of everything else you’ve done . . .” His voice had trailed off.
I knew what Mason was implying. It wasn’t a secret that our agency was about to decide on a new VP creative director. The VP title meant a salary hike and all the sweet side dishes that went along with it: a six-figure bonus, a fat 401(k) plan, and car service to the airport. It meant I’d be able to buy my sunny little one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, which was about to go co-op. It meant first-class flights and obscene expense accounts.
It meant success, the only thing that had really ever mattered to me.
“I’m on it,” I’d said, scurrying out of the office and diving into the world of Gloss Cosmetics.
Now I was surfacing for the first time in three weeks.
I gulped more coffee and finished scanning my ad. Something as simple as a typo could mean professional death for me, but our ad was clean. This ad was my 3:00
A.M
. baby, born from the unholy alliance of too much caffeine, an entire bag of potato chips (but eaten in small handfuls, with the bag primly sealed up and put back in my pantry between handfuls), and my old reliable bedmate insomnia. Gloss wanted to steal a chunk of Cover Girl’s market, but they didn’t want to pay for celebrity models like Halle Berry and Keri Russell. I was giving them the best of both worlds.
Mason loved it; now I just needed to perfect my pitch to the owner and CEO of Gloss. I glanced at my watch again. Ninety-six minutes until their limo was due to pull up in front of our building. I’d be downstairs in seventy-six, waiting to greet them.
I pressed the intercom button. “Donna? Have the caterers arrived yet?”
“Don’t you think I would’ve told you if they hadn’t?” she snapped. She hates it when I second-guess her. “They bought red Concord grapes, though.”
“Shit!” I leapt up so quickly I knocked my coffee to the floor. I grabbed a handful of napkins from my top drawer and swabbed it up. “I’ll run out to the deli right now—”
“Relax,” Donna said. “I already did. Green seedless grapes are in our freezer. They’ll be ready in plenty of time.”
Red grapes instead of green. It’s the simple things that can annihilate a career.
“Thank you,” I breathed as my heart slowed its violent thudding. I reached for one more Advil and promised myself with all the sincerity of a street junkie that it would be my last hit. At least until lunchtime.
I couldn’t be too prepared. Cheryl and I had won the two chances to present our Gloss campaigns, and she was a wild card. Many of her campaigns were uninspired, but when she nailed it, she was spectacular. I was dying to sneak a peek at her storyboard, but I knew she was guarding it like a hostage. As I was mine.
Cheryl was thirty-three, four years older than me, and she worked hard. But I worked harder. I lived, breathed, and slept my job. Seriously; if I weren’t so chastened by Donna’s disapproving huffs when she noticed the imprint of my head on my couch cushion, I’d barely have any reason to go home at night. Even though I’d lived in New York for seven years—ever since Richards, Dunne & Krantz came recruiting at my grad school at Northwestern and made me an offer—I’d only made one real friend in the city: Matt. My job didn’t leave time for anyone or anything else.
“Lindsey?” Donna’s head poked into my office. “It’s your mom on the phone. She said she’s at the hospital.”
I snatched up the phone. Could something have happened to Dad? I knew retiring from the federal government wouldn’t be good for him; he’d immediately begun waging a vicious gardening war with our next-door neighbor, Mr. Simpson. When I was home for Thanksgiving—two years ago; last year I’d missed the holiday because I had to throw together a last-minute campaign for a resort in Saint Lucia that was suffering a reservations lull—I’d had to physically stop Dad from climbing a ladder and sawing off all the branches of Simpson’s trees at the exact point where they crossed over our property line.
“Oh, honey, you’ll never believe it.” Mom sighed deeply. “I bought a subscription to
O
magazine last month, remember?”
“Ye-es,” I lied, wondering how this story could possibly end in a mad rush to the hospital to reattach Dad’s forearm.
“So I bought the November issue and filled out the subscription card that comes inside,” Mom said, settling in for a cozy chat. “You know those little cards that are always falling out of magazines and making a mess on the floor? I don’t know why they have to put so many of them in. I guess they think if you see enough of them you’ll just go ahead and subscribe to the magazine.”