'The past went that-a-way. We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future.' Marshall McLuhan
SELLING ANNE FRANK
Stefano Boscutti
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Stefano Boscutti
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This is a work of fiction. While many of the characters portrayed here have counterparts in the life and times of the advertising industry, the characterizations and incidents presented are totally the products of the author's imagination.
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ISBN 978-0-9807125-1-3
SELLING ANNE FRANK
SIMON GOLD gleams on the cover of 'AdVogue' magazine.
GOLD STANDARD SNAGS 'POST NEW YORK TIMES,' sings the headline.
I don't even look at the pointers to other stories inside. Why bother.
The man of the moment in the agency of the moment wins the account of the moment. You never thought the 'New York Post' and the 'New York Times' would merge? 'Post New York Times.' Stranger things have happened.
Simon and I had been partners for, what? Almost twenty years before it all imploded.
The day Nielsen filed for bankruptcy was the day everything changed. When seven of the world's largest private equity firms can't save you, you're history. Agency networks collapsed like houses of cards. One tumbling down on top of the other. It was fun to watch if you were on the outside.
We should have seen it coming. It's a question of mass, critical mass. What happens when you fulfill a market? When you reach maximum penetration? When you can't find another customer with a penny of credit to their name?
Sure the signs were there. The big brands white labeling products, line extending to the point of no return, grass roots consumer movements.
The Nielsen crash was inevitable. You live by the numbers, you die by the numbers.
The agency I started with Simon was swept up along with everyone else. Just as well the government stepped in when they did. The Federal Emergency Advertising Act stemmed the flow. When Congress passed the Advertising Reform Bill, money started to flow back into the business.
New advertising agencies started to sprout everywhere. Suddenly creative directors were running the show. Creative directors like me became chief executive officers. Senior management became peppered with senior copywriters.
Established agencies regrouped along ethnic lines, like when all the old Jews from Ogilvy & Mather started Ogilvey.
Old creative agencies with any name value morphed into their next iteration. Droga27. Adlandia. Chiat Night. Johnson + Kennedy.
The English rolled into town like they owned the place. The Bill Evans Agency. All very dapper, and oh so terribly English. They built a Tudor village inside their offices with a little pub with a little menu and terrible food. The Man Who Sold The World won a terrific number of awards. Brand Butler (We Serve Our Clients) offered valets to clients.
You wouldn't think clients would fall for a ploy like that. But they did.
Even the Russians got in on the act. Peskof & Co. kicked off a scandal when they were retained by the White House while they still had the Kremlin on their books.
New creative shops started to shake things up. Bring Me The Head Of Rupert Murdoch. Saatchi & Saatchi Are Dead. The Client's Wrong.
Simon called his new agency The Gold Standard. I know, it's trying a little too hard. But that's Simon for you. He had a complete working bar with uniformed staff in the foyer. No one had to go anywhere for drinks.
Simon had his look down. The blue blazer, the tortoise-shell glasses, the askance. He'd been perfecting it all his life. Now it's paying dividends. Most of his people are cast from the College Green at Dartmouth, along Nassau Street in Princeton. He has become what he wished he had been in his younger days. He has become his own advertisement.
The Gold Standard was like his own private club. All dark timber and warm light and hushed secrets.
My new agency was more black and white. More me.
Me? I'm Simon Ross. The first half of what was Simon & Simon.
And this? This is my new corner office. We're on the forty-first floor. Some days you see clouds slip past the windows.
No, it's not the largest corner office you've ever seen. There's not even an executive bathroom. I don't really go for that sort of thing. I don't think it's good for morale.
It's been three months now. I toyed with calling it Simon, except people wouldn't know which Simon the name referred to. Simon Says was a possibility, but it doesn't say much for the team. Simon Ross and The Supremes was too sparkly.
I'm not a sparkly man. Look at my office. The only thing that shines is the wall of One Show awards. Row after row of polished awards. All shaped like the tip of a newly sharpened pencil.
Count them. There's one hundred and thirty-seven of them. Every one of them platinum. Every one engraved with my name.
Probably the most famous is the America United campaign from when Simon and I were still together. It was to launch the merger of American Airlines and United Airlines. It was the first airline commercial not to show a plane. Guggenheim shot it, laid in the closing bars of the national anthem. You didn't even need a slogan.
People cried. When was the last time you cried when watching an airline commercial?
Dignity in advertising. I always like that.
I like understated. Black Prada suit, white Prada shirt, striped Prada tie. Perfect fit straight off the rack. White hair swept back. Black Prada glasses. You can see I like Prada. It's not for show, though. I have the labels and logos professionally removed.
Can you believe that in this day and age they still insist on labels and logos.
I see you're looking at the letter on my desk. It's a resignation letter from one of the creative teams. Yes, it's on the new letterhead.
And yes, the new agency name is Heroine.
Can I come in?
You already have, Jon.
JON WENDELL is the senior account planner. We no longer have account executives -- they're all planners now. Jon spent a year in Milan. Caramel suits, diamond blue shirts with French cuffs. Soft hand-made loafers without socks, whatever the weather.
Jon can charm the clients out of the trees.
Time you started winning some new awards, don't you think?
Where would I put them, Jon?
There's a space just over there.
Jon is all smiles.
Friedrich van Marxveldt from the Anne Frank-Fonds in Switzerland is in town for a day and wants to meet with us, meet with you.
I smile back.
Now why would he want to meet with me?
Because he's looking for a new agency.
But he's Simon Gold's client.
He's not happy. Why else would he want you to call him?
Jon, I'm not going to call him. I don't call clients. That's your job.
I've already written the report. This is perfect for us. Well-established base market ready to leverage. It's already sold more than thirty million copies. In more than sixty languages.
I don't get a word in.
It's a relaunch. Take it out of its historical demographic, make it accessible to more people.
But the whole Jewish thing?
Simon Wiesenthal said Anne Frank's diary raised more awareness for the Jewish cause than anything. You going to argue with Simon Wiesenthal?
I'm not going to argue with anyone, Jon.
Eleanor Roosevelt said it's the wisest and most moving commentary on war she ever read. John F. Kennedy said of all who have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling. Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg said Anne Frank's voice speaks for six million. It's all in my report.
Did you ever see the play?
Jon shakes his head.
It won a Pulitzer Prize. I think the film version won an Academy Award.
Why not a One Show?
It's a good story. A young Jew hiding from the Nazis in Holland becomes a universal symbol of hope. A red, white and beige plaid-covered autograph book given to her as a birthday present becomes the diary in which she will chronicle her life from 1942 to 1944. Through the darkest hours.
Simon, it's a great product. Friedrich lands in about an hour. He'll spend the afternoon with Gold. Then he wants to meet you. Then he's flying out.
I'm not doing a campaign in half a day.
Why not?
I don't have my creative director.
You're kidding me, right?
Have you seen Philip?
You can do this with your eyes closed. It's Nazis. Everyone despises Nazis. It practically writes itself.
I pull out a fresh pencil from the clutch on my desk. Plantation-grown FSC-certified cedar, clean lead, never used. I hand it to Jon.
Be my guest.
You know how they say anyone can be creative. It's not true. It's not even remotely true. The account supervisors, the account managers, the account executives, the account directors can't do what we do. That's why they hate us.
Jon is scratching something on the back of his business card.
That's got to be the world's smallest ad, Jon.
He hands me the card.
It's Friedrich's number. Call him.
I check my watch as Jon leaves. I could ask Jacqueline Renwick what she thinks. She's the other senior planner. But I know what she'll say. She'll warn me that it's ridiculous to try and take the account off Gold. If we lose, we lose. If we win, he steals the creative team and we lose. It's a lose-lose situation.
Simon, got you something you're going to want to see.
Doesn't anybody knock anymore.
You had the door to your office removed, remember. Open door policy, you said. You want me to get maintenance to put it back.
JOHNNY WAYLAND is our fixer. Every agency has one.
Johnny favors faded blue jeans topped with shirt and blazer. Casually formal. He's older than all of us. He's been around. He's been up and down and everywhere in between. When he was a cokehead no one would hire him.
We call him Johnny Armani so as not to confuse him with the other Jon.
He's holding a thumb drive.
It's a copy of their new campaign.
How did you get that?
Had to kill a man. Had to drown him in his own blood.
He's joking. He's always joking. He's the only man I know who wears Old Spice After Shave. He decants it into original bottles. Says the scent keeps him real. Keeps him down to earth.
Johnny Armani plugs the thumb drive into the wall, and the copyright notice flashes up and fades away to the new spot Simon Gold will present to the client later today. It's one of Gold's three-second specials. Nazi soldiers tearing through the hidden annex, one finds a worn notebook, starts reading, begins crying. Move to the cover to show it's Anne Frank's diary. Rise over the top as tear rolls down face.