Bantam Books by Arthur Hailey 8 страница

it had gone as high as the chairman of the board. I do know the legal

department is settling all claims quietly, as soon as they come in.

They've figured there'll be a few phony ones, but better to pay if

there's a chance of keeping the whole thing under wraps."

"Mink wraps?"

The studio head said dourly, "Spare me the lousy jokes. You'll get all

this through channels, but I thought you and a few others should know

right away because of the Orion."

"Thanks." Brett nodded thoughtfully. It was true-changes would have to

be made in Orion plans, though the particular area was not his re-

sponsibility. He was grateful, however, for another reason.

Within the next few days, he now decided, he must change either his car

or the seats in his present one. Brett's car had Metallic Willow fabric

and, coincidentally, he planned a birthday gift of mink next month which

he had no wish to see spoiled. The mink, which undoubtedly would be worn

in his car, was for Barbara.

Barbara Zaleski.

chapter six

"Dad," Barbara said, "I'll be staying over in New York for a day or two.

I thought I'd let you know."

In the background, through the telephone, she could hear an overlay of

factory noise. Barbara had had to wait several minutes while the oper-

ator located Matt Zaleski in the plant; now, presumably, he had taken

the call somewhere close to the assembly line.

Her father asked, "Why?"

"Why what?"

"WhN, do you have to stay?"

She ~aid lightly, "Oh, the usual kind of thing. Client problems at the

agency. Some meetings about next year's advertising; they need me here

for them." Barbara was being patient. She really shouldn't have to

explain, as if she were still a child requiring permission to be out

late. If she decided to stay a week, a month, or forever in New York,

that was it.

"Couldn't you come home nights, then go back in the morning?"

"No, Dad, I couldn't."

Barbara hoped this wasn't going to develop into another argument in

which it would be necessary to point out that she was twenty-nine, a

legal adult who had voted in two presidential elections, and had a

responsible job which she was good at. The job, incidentally, made her

financially free so that she could set up a separate establishment any

time she wanted, except that she lived with her father, knowing he was

lonely after her mother's death, and not wanting to make things worse

for him.

"When will you be home then?"

"By the weekend for sure. You can live with- 88-wheels

out me till then. And take care of your ulcer. By the way, how is it?"

"I'd forgotten it. Too many other things to think about. We had some

trouble in the plant this morning."

He sounded strained, she thought. The auto industry had that effect on

everybody close to it, including herself. Whether you worked in a plant,

in an advertising agency, or on design, like Brett, the anxieties and

pressures got to you in the end. The same kind of compulsion told

Barbara Zaleski at this moment that she had to get off the telephone and

back into the client meeting. She had slipped out a few minutes ago, the

men assuming, no doubt, that she had left to do whatever women did in

washrooms, and instinctively Barbara put a hand to her hair-chestnut

brown and luxuriant, like her Polish mother's; it also grew annoyingly

fast so she had to spend more time than she liked in beauty salons. She

patted her hair into place; it would have to do. Her fingers encountered

the dark glasses which she had pushed upward above her forehead hours

ago, reminding her that she had heard someone recently deride dark

glasses in hair as the hallmark of the girl executive. Well, why not?

She left the glasses where they were.

"Dad," Barbara said, "I haven't much time. Would you do something for

me?"

"What's that?"

"Call Brett. Tell him I'm sorry I can't make our date tonight, and if

he wants to call me later I'll be at the Drake Hotel."

"I'm not sure I can..."

"Of course you can! Brett's at the Design Center, as you know perfectly

well, so all you have to do is pick up an inside phone and dial. I'm not

asking you to like him; I know you don't, and you've made that clear

plenty of times to both of

wheels--89

us. All I'm asking is that you pass a message. You may not even have to

speak to him."

She had been unable to keep the impatience out of her voice, so now they

were having an argument after all, one more added to many others.

"All right," Matt grumbled. "I'll do it. But keep your shirt on."

"You keep yours on, too. Goodbye, Dad. Take care, and I'll see you at

the weekend."

Barbara thanked the secretary whose phone she had been using and slid

her full, long-limbed body from the desk where she had perched.

Barbara's figure, which she was aware that men admired, was another

legacy from her mother who had managed to convey a strong sexuality-

characteristically Slavic, so some said-until the last few months before

she died.

Barbara was on the twenty-first floor of the Third Avenue building which

was New York headquarters of the Osborne J. Lewis Company-or more

familiarly, OJL-one of the world's halfdozen largest advertising

agencies, with a staff of two thousand, more or less, on three

skyscraper floors. If she had wanted to, instead of phoning Detroit from

where she had, Barbara could have used an office in the jam-packed,

creative rabbit warren one floor down, where a few windowless,

cupboard-size offices were kept available for outof-town staffers like

herself while working temporarily in New York. But it had seemed simpler

to stay up here, where this morning's meeting was being held. This floor

was client country. It was also where account executives and senior

agency officers had their lavishly decorated and broadloomed office

suites, with original Uzannes, Wyeths, or Picassos on the walls as well

as built-in bars-the latter remaining hidden or activated according to

a client's known and carefully re-

90-wheels

membered preferences. Even secretaries here enjoyed better working

conditions than some of the best creative talent down below. In a way,

Barbara sometimes thought, the agency resembled a Roman galley ship,

though at least those below had their martini lunches, went home at

nights, and-if senior enough-were sometimes allowed topside,

She walked quickly down a corridor. In the austere Detroit offices of

OJL, where Barbara worked mostly, her heels would have "tip-tapped," but

here, deep carpeting deadened their sound. Passing a door partially

open, she could hear a piano and a girl singer's voice:

"One more happy user Has joined the millions who Say Brisk!-please

bring it briskly; It satisftes me too."

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

wheels-91

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.

92-wheels

"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."

wheels-93

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 masculineoriented 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."

94-wheels

"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-'Iet 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 theirjobs, the endless meetings over months, fat expense accounts,

the out-of-town junkets? Furthermore, if an auto company chose to burden

wheels-95

itself with that kind of inflated cost, it was not the agency's business

to suggest otherwise, f ar 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?"

96--wheels

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, YatesBrown, 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

wheels-97

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 generous of you, J.P. Damn generousl 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." The

management supervisor was standing now; the others followed his example.

He turned to Osch. "Isn't that so, Teddy?"

The creative chief nodded with a wry smile. "We do our best."

As the meeting broke up, Yates-Brown and Underwood preceded the others

to the door.

Underwood asked, "Did somebody get on the ball about theater tickets?"

Barbara, close behind, had heard the ad manager ask earlier for a block

of six seats to a Neil Simon comedy f or which tickets, even through

scalpers, were almost impossible to get.

The agency supervisor guffawed genially. "Did you ever doubt me?" He

draped an arm companionably around the other's shoulders. "Sure we have

them, J.P. You picked the toughest ticket in town, but for you we pulled

every string. They're being sent to our lunch table at the Waldorf, Is

that okay?"

"That's okay."

Yates-Brown lowered his voice. "And let me know where your party would

like dinner. We'll take care of the reservation."

And the bill, and all tips, Barbara thought. As for the theater tickets,

she imagined Yates-Brown must have paid fifty dollars a seat, but the

agency would recoup that, along with other expenses, a thousandfold

through Orion advertising.

98-wheels

On some occasions when clients were taken to lunch by agency executives,

people from creative side were invited along. Today, for reasons of his

own, Yates-Brown had decided against this. Barbara was relieved.

While the agency executive-J. P. Underwood group was no doubt heading

for the Waldorf, she walked, with Teddy Osch and Nigel Knox, the other

creative staffer who had been at the client meeting, a few blocks uptown

on Third Avenue. Their destination was Joe & Rose, an obscure but

first-rate bistro, populated at lunchtime by advertising people from big

agencies in the neighborhood. Nigel Knox, who was an effeminate young

man, normally grated on Barbara, but since his work and ideas had been

rejected too, she regarded him more sympathetically than usual.

Teddy Osch led the way, under a faded red awning, into the restaurant's

unpretentious interior. En route, no one had said more than a word or

two. Now, on being shown to a table in a small rear room reserved for

habitu6s, Osch silently raised three fingers. Moments later three

martinis in chilled glasses were placed before them.

"I'm not going to do anything stupid like cry," Barbara said, "and I

won't get drunk because you always feel so awful after. But if you both

don't mind, I intend to get moderately loaded." She downed the martini.

"I'd like another, please."

Osch beckoned a waiter. "Make it three."

"Teddy," Barbara said, "how the hell do you stand it?"

Osch passed a hand pensively across his baldness. "ne first twenty years

are hardest. After that, when you've seen a dozen J. P. Underwoods come

and go..."

Nigel Knox exploded as if he had been bottling up a protest. "He's a

beastly person. I tried to like him, but I couldn't possibly."

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