Ad Asylum

Ad Asylum

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

I'm watching my poor cell phone. I think it's become schizophrenic. I've programmed it with so many different ringtones for so many different things that it's lost its identity. One tone for my clients, one for my boss, one for my work friends, another for my creative director. Then there's the buzz for when I get e-mails, another buzz for text messages, and of course another one for incoming Tweets. Sometimes three different incoming transmissions hit at once, and the poor thing just kind of has a seizure. The most pathetic thing is when it's on vibrate and I've put it down on a table or something-it sort of flails around like a bug on its back on a hot sidewalk. I think it may actually be trying to kill itself. I swear it's trying to get to the edge so it can jump off and put itself out of its misery.

I'm sitting inside my cubicle watching my phone's attempted suicide so I don't stare too hard at Rachel. I hate it when she catches me staring. She's off-limits. She has rules. But she's practically sitting on my lap at my desk and opening the files from the flash drive she just inserted into my computer. It's Sunday afternoon and the place is deserted, otherwise we wouldn't dare look at what she's about to show me right here in my cubicle. They're the initial ideas for the upcomingLeary pitch, which is completely hush-hush.

She opens the files and clicks around to show me the concepts. I'm dumbstruck by how bad they are.

"These are horrible! I mean they really, truly, god-awfully suck! Please tell me you're kidding. You're kidding, right? I'm getting punk'd, right?"

Rachel just shakes her head. "I know. I'm embarrassed to be working on this."

It is now, right here and now, that the conspiracy is formed. Our own secret plan to save the venerable thirty-year-old agency that provides us with meager paychecks, emotional abuse, and fourteen-hour days. No words are exchanged, but we both know. We aren't going down without a fight.

Let me back up.

Our employer, Halliday and Vine, is in the midst of a major pitch for the mother lode of accounts-one of the biggest pitches likely to come up in what has been a dismal year. We're talking over $150 million in global billings. More importantly, it is our chance to redeem ourselves after losing two big pitches in the last quarter, not to mention an airline client that went bankrupt and a banking client where the CEO and CFO were both recently indicted.

But this is all common knowledge. What is less known is that two other large accounts are teetering on the brink. Duke Owen Pollard, our master at IMH, the holding company in Paris, is ready to unleash the hounds of hell upon us should we screw this one up.

And it is clearly ours to lose. Our CEO and half namesake, Jack Halliday, went to college with Mitchell Leary, the philandering founder of House of Leary, the multibillion-dollar eight-hundred-pound gorilla of the fashion world. When Mitchell sneezes, underfed models around the world catch cold. Boutiques on Rodeo Drive and factories in China hold their breath. And the bitchy editrex of the fashion magazines scramble to provide $200 handkerchiefs.

House of Leary has decided after decades with the same agency that it is time to take a "fresh look." Everything is of course all air kissy kissy and "You're welcome to join the review," but the writing is on the wall for the incumbent agency. (Their office furniture is already for sale on eBay.) Sales are sliding and the once-impregnable brands of H of L are beginning to seem old and shabby against the popping-up-like-Whac-A-Mole designs of hip-hop artists, rappers, tattooed convicts, and American Idol winners.

And the reputation of Halliday & Vine, until recently that is, has been that of brilliantly unconventional, creative approaches. So this pitch should have fallen right into our sweet spot. But that was before the untimely disappearance of Peter Vine, the other half of our letterhead, who delved deep into his own psychosis to create ads that truly stunned and amazed. He went off his medication, and suffice it to say that his dramatic and very public demise was not a pretty scene. He's been missing ever since.

We all figured that our current chief creative officer, Drew Reed, must have graphic video tapes of both Jack Halliday and Duke Owen in order to keep his job. Saying he is a dullard is an insult to dullards. But he defines the agency political operative. He can send you to agency purgatory with a single look, e-mail, text message, IM, or Tweet. He cares more about power than creative. And he is an absolute master at leaving others holding the bag - he has fall guys all lined up for his scapegoats. Worst of all, he has one of those little sorta-goatee things hanging under his lip, and he always dresses in black and talks with a fake British accent.

Which brings me back to what Rachel has just risked life and limb to show me-the initial creative concepts for the pitch. I truly hope that this is a joke, but the look on her face tells me it isn't.

We're down on my floor because it's too dangerous for me up on the creative floors, even on a Sunday. It's basically open season on account people up there. We're the enemy, plain and simple, despite all the efforts at integrated teams and information sharing. The silos are worse than ever, even after years and years of trying to break them down.

And now, on top of the age-old tensions between the Account, Creative, and Media departments, each agency has piled on Interactive, Experiential, Mobile, and something called Social Networks, each with a team of "experts" vying for client budget dollars, awards, prestige, power, resources, and hair gel.

Yup, we're just one big, happy family.

And that brings me to yours truly, Ryan Simmons. I'm the account exec, or AE, on the world's second-largest dandruff shampoo account. An AE is the lowest of the low-worm food, pond scum, tooth fuzz, absolute dog crap. And best of all, we do all the work and take all the shit. The only ones who treat us worse than our clients are our own colleagues. I spend the bulk of my day lying to my client, begging my fellow agency "teammates" for the stuff they owe me, and being yelled at by the media people and ridiculed by the creatives.

And I fought to get this job. I was one of ten interns who worked here for free for two summers during college only to find out that only two of us would be hired upon graduation. At a sub-sub survival salary. I have three roommates, 2,587 if you count the roaches and mice. My subway commute to the outer reaches of Brooklyn takes me an hour each way.

I started in research. Spent two years trying to make sense of focus groups and consumer research reports so that our creative gods can base their ideas on actual consumer data. I'm not sure they even read it. The better ones do, but most of them get their ideas when they're drunk out of their minds or naked in the shower.

The fun part is then watching them fall in love with their ideas regardless of their merit. Better yet is when they die on a sword to defend them. This of course gives them an excuse for at least a week of pouting and hissy fits, not to mention an inability to get any other work done.

Which means that I'm coming up with yet more excuses for my client as to why their storyboards for yet another exciting dandruff shampoo commercial are late.

But back to the pitch ideas. My BFF Rachel has shared the ideas with me because I'm the only one out of nine hundred employees that she likes and trusts. As a peon graphic designer, it was totally random that she got onto the pitch team. She had been on the aforementioned banking account, and instead of getting fired, she was put on the new business team, as she can keep her mouth shut and do much of the scut work required.

Rachel closes the files on my desktop and takes out the flash drive.

"Let's go get drunk."

* * *

Rachel lives in the complete opposite direction from me, way uptown on the West Side, so we go around the corner to the agency's favorite watering hole, affectionately called Ar, as the B in Old Towne Bar has been broken for as long as we've been coming here. The Old Towne Bar is a fairly typical midtown bar-pub thing. The menu is the same as bar-pub things everywhere. The smell is somewhere between frat house, grease, and cigarette smoke that still lingers although smoking in bars was banned years ago.

To those of us who work at H&V, Ar is as much a part of H&V as Halliday and Vine themselves. It's the place where agency victories are toasted and losses drowned. It's the first stop for those who get laid off-a pink slip is worth a free drink-and the lunch spot of choice to welcome new employees. Glance around the walls and you'll see the entire history of H&V's most famous campaigns in framed pictures dating back thirty years.

Jimmy, the bartender, sees us coming in. I give him a slight nod to acknowledge that we'll both have the usual, and we head toward the far end of the long wooden bar to our favorite stools. Jimmy is combination hippie, Vietnam vet, and biker-leather or denim vest, ponytail, varying facial hair, and a few tattoos just visible on his arms when he wears a T-shirt.

It's somewhat empty at six o'clock on a Sunday night. We check to make sure that no one from H&V is around. All clear. Jimmy deftly places a margarita in front of Rachel and a perfectly poured draft Stella in front of me. Rachel starts right in.

"Drew is such an absolute dickweed."

I sorta grunt, as I'm watching Rachel lick some of the salt off the rim of her margarita glass. Her tongue is somewhat of a sight to behold.

Perhaps I should explain Rachel. She's very hard to put into a box, especially as all of the descriptive boxes have disappeared by this early part of the twenty-first century. First off, by any standard measure, she's hot. She's twenty-five to my twenty-six. Her hair changes often in color, style, and length. Right now it's short, maybe sorta retro punk, kinda deep reddish brownish. Her body has caused pileups, and she dresses to tease, but in a way that is never slutty or too obvious. I don't know how she does it. Even other women tend to like her, lust after her, or both. But it's impossible to dislike her.

The only thing I don't like about her is that she has a rule: she doesn't date guys she works with, period.

She's also wicked talented, but to date that's been completely lost on Drew and the other powers that be in the illustrious creative department at H&V. She can draw and conceptualize like you wouldn't believe. Graduated top honors from Parsons and has a killer book. Hopefully one day she'll graduate from doing layouts and type treatments, but for now she understands that she has to do her time like the rest of us peons.

"You realize that if we don't win this account, we're going down."

"You mean we can't survive on dandruff? I happen to be doing a phenomenal job. Just ask my client. She loves me."

"That's great, Ry, but it's only three million in billings."

"Yes, but imagine what the world would be like without it."

"Okay. Your life has meaning. Can we move on?"

"Sure. But only after I tell you another bitch story."

"If you must."

My client, the Flake-Off dandruff shampoo brand manager, is known simply as "the bitch." I didn't even start it. It was started by the creative director on the account five years ago and passed down like a sacred heirloom. By now she probably even knows about it. She probably likes it.

My biggest mistake was finally giving her my IM screen name. I'd managed to avoid it for months, but she persisted. And yes, I'm aware that I can make myself invisible - I'm not an idiot. But if the client wants you on IM, you have to be on IM. And you can't be hiding.

If she makes me follow her on Twitter, I will kill myself.

So now she just randomly IMs me to curse me out. Flaming e-mails no longer satisfy her need for verbal violence.

And how lucky am I that they're based in NYC so I can run over there all the time. She takes pleasure in calling meetings giving me thirty minutes notice when it's pouring, sleeting, or 95° and humid. And when she knows I don't have whatever deliverable it is she's screaming about, just so she can watch me squirm and make up lies.

She's about thirty-one, and I swear she's probably never gotten laid. She's not ugly; she could actually be attractive if she didn't wear those stupid brand manager costumes. She never got the memo that said casual dress was okay.

It's more like she has zero sensuality. You must know what I'm talking about. There are women who might not be objectively beautiful, but they're so sexy. It's how they move, it's how they smell, it's how they talk, it's how they dress. You want to jump into bed with them for the weekend and never come out.

And not only does she verbally abuse me, she comes on to me at least once a month. Forces me to have dinner with her. I've even had to travel with her to make store visits or attend focus groups, which then leads to having to fight her off late at night in the hotel bar. I've told her I'm gay. I've told her I have a girlfriend. I've told her I have a 250-pound black boyfriend. I've told her I'm impotent. I've told her I have herpes. I've told her I'm married. I've told her I have mother issues. I make her drink until she falls asleep, and then we both pretend it never happened and she starts abusing me again.

Yes, it's a wonderful life.

"She IM'd me yesterday all excited that she met some guy on eDating. Ninety-six percent compatibility."

Rachel spits out the sip of margarita she just took and almost chokes to death as she laughs hysterically.

"Pictures," she manages to blurt out. "We must have pictures."

I start laughing as well, and we both just let it go for a bit. It feels so good to just laugh out loud together like two idiots. When it finally runs its course, Jimmy arrives unbeckoned with round two, and we get back to the business at hand.

"So you really think Drew is a dickweed?"

She almost loses it again but manages to continue.

"It's amazing. He has five of our best creative teams working on this, and this is the best crap they can come up with. And all of them are too afraid to tell him that the ideas suck."

"You're not."

"Are you kidding? I can't even get near him. I actually went to his office and spoke with his assistant. When I tried to get on his calendar, all she did was laugh. She actually laughed at me and said, 'Drew doesn't meet with your kind.'"

"You could stalk him and try to speak to him."

"I tried that too. I nailed him coming out of the men's room. He looked at me and said, 'Who are you?' I told him. He looked at me with disdain, said nothing, and walked away."

"So much for the open door policy so eloquently discussed at the last agency town hall meeting."

"They're gonna blow it. Our last chance, and they're gonna blow it big-time."

"Is Chas on the pitch team?"

"Of course. Drew and Chas are attached at the hip."

I wince. Chas is the ass wipe of a creative director who works on my account. We're not exactly what I would call friends.

"We have to come up with something better."

"Thanks for that brilliant insight."

"And we have to take down Drew and Chas at the same time."

She looks at me and flashes a devilish smile.

Chapter Two

An ad agency on the brink exudes a tension that is palpable the moment you enter the building. You can smell it. You can feel it. You can even see it-the tight faces of those who think they're about to get fired, the scurrying about by those who are desperately trying to look busy when they have absolutely nothing to do.

And elsewhere, there's the excitement of those select individuals who are on the pitch team. They are like a crazed band of zealots who are both energized and terrified at the same time. The rest of us view them with envy, as at least they have a mission. Win or lose, they at least know which way is up.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Ad Asylum by Dan Wald Copyright © 2009 by Dan Wald. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---