Wheels (14 page)

Almost certainly a client was in there listening, and would make a
decision about the jingle-aye or nay, involving vast expenditures-based
on hunch, prejudice, or even whether he felt good or breakfast had given
him dyspepsia. Of course, the lyric was awful, probably because the client
preferred it to be banal, being afraid-as most were -of anything more
imaginative. But the music had an ear-catching lilt; recorded with full
orchestra and chorus, a large part of the nation might be humming the
little tune a month or two from now. Barbara wondered what Brisk was. A
drink? A new detergent? It could be either, or something more outlandish.
The OJL agency had hundreds of clients in diverse businesses, though the
auto company account which Barbara worked on was among its most important
and lucrative. As auto company men were fond of reminding agency
people, the car advertising budget alone exceeded a hundred million dollars
annually.

Outside Conference Room I a red MEETING IN PROGRESS sign was still
flashing. Clients loved the flashing signs for the aura of importance they
created.
Barbara went in quietly and slipped into her chair halfway down the long
table. There were seven others in the dignified, rosewood-paneled room
with Georgian furnishings. At the table's head was Keith Yates-Brown,
graying and urbanely genial, the agency management supervisor whose
mission was to keep relations between the auto company and the Osborne J.
Lewis agency friction free. To the right of Yates-Brown was the auto
company advertising manager from Detroit, J. 13. Underwood ("Call me J.P.,
please"), youngish, recently promoted and not entirely at ease yet with
the top-rank agency crowd. Facing Underwood was bald and brilliant Teddy
Osch, OJL creative director and a man who spewed ideas the way a fountain
disgorges water. Osch, unflappable, schoolynasterish, had outlasted many
of his colleagues and was a veteran of past, successful car campaigns.
The others comprised J. P. Underwood's assistant, also from Detroit, two
other agency men -one creative, one executive-and Barbara, who was the
only woman present, except for a secretary who at the moment was refilling
coffee cups.
Their subject of discussicn was the Orion. Since yesterday afternoon they
had been reviewing advertising ideas which the agency had developed so
far. The OJL group at the meeting had taken turns in presentations to the
client-represented by Underwood and his assistant.
"We've saved one sequence until last, J.P
.”

Yates-Brown was speaking
directly though informally to the auto company advertising manager.
"We thought you'd find them original, even interesting perhaps
.”

As always,
Yates-Brown managed an appropriate mix of authority and deference, even
though everyone present knew that an advertising manager had little real
decision power and was off the mainstream of auto company high command.
J. P. Underwood said, more brusquely than necessary, "Let's see it
.”

One of the other agency men placed a series of cards on an easel. On each
card a tissue sheet was fixed, the tissue having a sketched layout, in
preliminary stage. Each layout, as Barbara knew, represented hours, and
sometimes long nights of thought and labor.
Today's and yesterday's procedure was normal in the early stages of any
new car campaign and the tissue sheets were called a "rustle pile
.”

"Barbara," Yates-Brown said, "will you skipper this trip
.”

She nodded.
'What we have in mind, J.P.," Barbara told Underwood with a glance to his
assistant, "is to show the Orion as it will be in everyday use. The first
layout, as you see, is an Orion leaving a car wash
.”

All eyes were on the sketch. It was imaginative and well executed. It
showed the forward portion of the car emerging from a wash tunnel like a
butterfly from a chrysalis. A young woman was waiting to drive the gar
away. Photographed in color, whether still or on film, the scene would be
arresting.
J. P. Underwood gave no reaction, not an eyelid flicker. Barbara nodded
for the next tissue.
"Some of us have felt for a long time that women's use of cars has been
underemphasized in advertising. Most advertising, as we know, has been
directed at men
.”

She could have added, but didn't, that her own assignment for the past two
years had been to push hard for women's point of view. There were days,
however, after reading the masculine
oriented advertising (the trade called
it "muscle copy") which continued to appear, when Barbara was convinced
that she had failed totally.
Now she commented, "We believe that women are going to use the Orion a
great deal
.”

The sketch on the easel was a supermarket parking lot. The artist's
composition was excellent-the storefront in background, an Orion
prominently forward with other cars around it. A woman shopper was loading
groceries into the Orion's back seat.
"T'hose other cars," the auto company ad manager said. "Would they be ours
or competitors'
.”

Yates-Brown answered quickly, "I'd say ours, J.P.11
.There should be some competitive cars, J.P.," Barbara said. "Otherwise
the whole thing would be unreal
.”

"Can't say I like the groceries
.”

The remark was from Underwood's
assistant. "Clutters everything up. Takes the eye away from the car. And
if we did use that background it should be Vaselined
.”

Barbara felt like sighing dispiritedly. Vaseline smeared around a camera
lens when photographing cars was a photographer's trick which had become
a chch6; it made background misty, leaving the car itself sharply defined.
Though auto companies persisted in using it, many advertising people
thought the device as dated as the Twist. Barbara said mildly, "We're
attempting to show actual use
.”

"All the same," Keith Yates-Brown injected, "that was a good point. Let's
make a note of it
.”

"The next layout," Barbara said, "is an Orion in the rain-a real downpour
would be good, we think. Again, a woman driver, looking as if she's going
home from the office. We'd photograph after dark to get best reflections
from a wet street .11
"Be hard not to get the car dirty," J. P. Underwood observed.
"The whole idea is to get it a little dirty," Barbara told him.
"Again-reality. Color film could make it great
.”

The assistant ad manager from Detroit said softly, "I can't see the brass
going for it
.”

J. P. Underwood was silent.
There were a dozen more. Barbara went through each, briefly but
conscientiously, knowing how much effort and devotion the younger agency
staff members had put into every one. That was the way it always went. The
creative oldsters like Teddy Osch
held back and-as they put it-l
et the
kids exhaust themselves," knowing from experience that the early work,
however good it was, would always be rejected.
It was rejected now. Underwood's manner made that clear, and everyone in
the room shared the knowledge, as they had shared it yesterday, before
this session started. In her early days at the agency Barbara had been
naive enough to inquire why it always happened that way. Why were so much
effort and quality-frequently excellent quality-utterly wasted?
Afterward, some facts of life about auto advertising had been quietly
explained. It was put to her: If the ad program burgeoned quickly, instead
of painfully slowly-far slower than advertising for most other
products-then how would all the auto people in Detroit involved with it
justify their
jobs, the endless meetings over months, fat expense accounts,
the out-of-town junkets? Furthermore, if an auto company chose to burden
itself with that kind of inflated cost, it was not the agency's business
to suggest otherwise, far less to go crusading. The agency did handsomely
out of the arrangement; besides, there was always approval in the end. The
advertising process for each model year started in October or November.
By May-June, decisions had to be firm so that the agency could do its job;
therefore, auto company people began making up their minds because they
could read a calendar too. This was also the time that the Detroit high
brass came into the picture, and they made final decisions about
advertising, whether talented in that particular direction or not.
What bothered Barbara most-and others too, she discovered later-was the
appalling waste of time, talent, people, money, the exercise in
nothingness. And, from talking with people in other agencies, she knew
that the same process was true of all Big Three companies. It was as if
the auto industry, normally so time-and-motion conscious and critical
of bureaucracy outside, had created its own fat-waxing bureaucracy
within.
She had once asked: Did any of the original ideas, the really good
ones, ever get reinstated? The answer was: No, because you can't accept
in June what you rejected last November. It would be embarrassing to
auto company people. That kind of thing could easily cost a man-perhaps
a good friend to the agency-his job.
"Thank you, Barbara
.”

Keith Yates-Brown had smoothly taken charge.
"Well, J.P., we realize we still have a long way to go
.”

The management
supervisor's smile was warm and genial, his tone just the right degree
apologetic.
"You sure do," J. P. Underwood said. He pushed his chair back from the
table.
Barbara asked him, "Was there nothing you liked? Absolutely nothing at
all
.”

Yates-Brown swung his head toward her sharply and she knew she was out
of line. Clients were not supposed to be harassed that way, but
Underwood's brusque superiority had needled her. She thought, even now,
of some of the talented youngsters in the agency whose imaginative work,
as well as her own, had just gone down the drain. Maybe what had been
produced so far wasn't the ultimate answer to Orion needs, but neither
did it rate a graceless dismissal.
"Now
, Barbara," Yates-Brown said, "no one mentioned not liking
anything
.”

The agency supervisor was still suave and charming, but she
sensed steel beneath his words. If he wanted to, Yates
-
Brown, essentially
a salesman who hardly ever had an original idea himself, could squash
creative people in the agency beneath his elegant alligator shoes. He
went on, "However, we'd be less than professional if we failed to agree
that we have not yet caught the true Orion spirit. It's a wonderful
spirit, J.P. You've given us one of the great cars of history to work
with
.”

He made it sound as if the ad manager had designed the Orion
singlehanded.
Barbara felt slightly sick. She caught Teddy Osch's eye. Barely
perceptibly, the creative director shook his head.
"I'll say this," J. P. Underwood volunteered. His tone was friendlier.
For several years previously he had been merely a junior at this table;
perhaps the newness of his job, his own insecurity, had made him curt
a moment earlier. "I think we've just seen one of the finest rustle
piles we ever had
.”

There was a pained silence through the room. Even Keith Yates-Brown
betrayed a flicker of shocked surprise. Clumsily, illogically, the com
pany ad man had stomped on their agreed pretense, revealing the
elaborate charade for what it was. On the one hand-automatic dismissal
of
everything submitted; an instant later, fulsome praise. But nothing would
be changed. Barbara was an old enough hand to know that.
So was Keith Yates-Brown. He recovered quickly.
"That's gene
rous of you, J.P. Damn generous!
I speak for us all on the
agency side when I tell you we're grateful for your encouragement and
assure you that next time around we'll be even more effective
.”