|
NEW AUTHORS SHOWCASE
|
|
6M P3 |
|
'Fast Forward Subliminality' By Richard Hodgson |
|
Synopsis
A once successful advertising agency, desperate for work, launches a campaign for a new lager despite knowing it’s crap. They sell the brewery the idea of ‘fast-forward-subliminality’ – quick shots in ads supposedly becoming subliminal at fast forward speeds. The campaign’s run by Harvey Pratt, a creative with a complex about his name, and his sidekick Guy Banks, a former stud recently married to Claire, who everyone thinks weird. She’s been forced off the smallholding she and her father rented, by his apparent suicide. She’s convinced he was murdered by a property speculator for the land. At a mad meeting Banks is panicked into dreaming up ‘As I’m Me’ as the slogan for the ad. He doesn’t know why such a puerile phrase came to him, it turns out to be subliminally connected with Claire’s recent purchase of an ancient Skoda 120 joke-mobile, though she can’t drive. Pratt gives a talk on advertising at a public school, illustrated with an example of how to con a bank. This fascinates Julian Previs, who wants to bankrupt his stepfather. The beer flops and the advert gets banned for using subliminal advertising. Banks gets sacked, the ad becomes a cult, the slogan ‘As I’m Me’ becomes a catch phrase and the beer starts selling well. A combination of all this and Claire’s weirdness, the Skoda and the bankruptcy/suicide of the speculator (Julian’s stepfather) contrive to get her smallholding back.
Introducing the Brewer…
The brewer was not drunk. It wasn’t easy these days. He’d followed his usual practice of washing down a substantial lunch with getting on for half a gallon of company bitter, but remained stubbornly sober. As the lunch and the beer mixed and mulched inside his vast, overbearing stomach, those few enzymes still slumming it in there sighed, shrugged their shoulders and got to work. Some immensely complex reactions took place in the ensuing molecular melee, but produced nothing he considered worth having; just the copious gases which gurgled and glugged their way towards one or the other of his orifices. Harvey and Guy had taken to betting on which orifice would sound off first at a post-lunch meeting; whether he’d lean to his right or his left to scratch his arse, whether he’d pick his nose, and so on. It was something, anything, to moderate the horror and lighten the immense burden of seeming to like him for two solid hours.
His present sobriety was, the brewer liked to think, the price you pay for being a thorough-going company man. All those years of demonstrating company loyalty at lunchtime and working late into the night researching and testing the product, had long since given him a resistance to alcohol on a par with Saudi Arabian customs and excise. These days, getting much beyond half-cut meant planning a careful and brutal assault on his immune system, hitting it hard and fast with an armoury of assorted spirits. Even then it would fight back bravely and only surrender him to oblivion after an intake capable of killing a less dedicated executive. This really annoyed the brewer who considered it his absolute right to get drunk, preferably without recourse to his own pocket. Which had been his main reason for joining a small, woody, Manchester brewery in the first place and remaining loyal enough for long enough to have reached his present exalted position as head of marketing.
His ambition was to be head-hunted by some small Scottish distillery, preferably one producing a really good quality single malt; but most recruitment consultants felt he was likely to be thwarted by the innate Scottish prejudice against obese, bullet-headed, plodding brewery executives from Manchester. As this ambition faded into fantasy, he discontented himself with another one. He wanted to appear on television. Nothing much; the sort of thing Hitchcock used to do in his films. A silhouette here, a man just missing a bus there, and it was him. The man in charge. Not, he thought, too much to ask for, but every time he’d suggested the idea he’d been thwarted by the innate advertising industry prejudice against obese, bullet-headed, plodding brewery executives appearing in commercials. He’d long countered this with his own fearsome prejudice against greedy, smarmy, sauntering advertising executives, the whole bastard lot of them. They were all the same; why change from one bunch of dilettantes to another? Besides which, a visit to Maddocks Madeley was a fairly reliable way of getting at least mildly pissed, and his wh– girlfriend lived not too far away.
His objective for this afternoon was simple enough. He was going to tell the various creeps, oddballs and shirt-lifters who handled his advertising that Gold Spot special export strength Pilsner Lager was worth a better campaign than the apology they’d designed. What it needed was a suave, esoteric, stylish ad, designed both to appeal to the upper echelons of the lager consuming public, and to enable him to be filmed silhouetted through a door or just missing a bus. He couldn’t quite work out how this dual purpose was to be accomplished in the one advert, nature having denied him the imagination to design anything much, let alone anything esoteric. That was the shirt-lifter’s job, and as far as he was concerned nature had more than made up for her oversight by seeing to it that he was a Yorkshireman born and bred, complete with the stubbornness and belligerence for which Yorkshire bred alc– executives are renowned. This was his trump card; his whole negotiating strategy was built around it, and he was damn well going to play it this afternoon. He would Yorkshire them into submission; refusing to countenance any hairy-fairy ‘concepts’ they’d no doubt try to palm him off with, and dropping less than subtle hints about taking his custom elsewhere if they couldn’t come up with the goods. Failing this, he’d get clodhoppingly pissed at their expense.
As his taxi meandered its way towards the shambolic, sham-gothic pile that was Maddocks Madeley, it was overtaken by a large BMW containing the very creeps and oddballs who were about to suffer his negotiating skills at first hand. The occupants of neither vehicle noticed the other; the brewer rarely noticed anything much of the world around him, while Harvey and Guy were heading back rather too hastily from a hasty lunch. Guy had – foolishly in Harvey’s view – agreed to a 2.30 meeting, leaving them only ninety minutes’ eating time, quite inadequate to fortify them for arguably the most important and difficult sales pitch of the year so far, and they were both now feeling a disconcerting combination of queasy and uneasy. Guy because he’d spotted a small caterpillar in his Roquefort salad and was wondering how many he hadn’t spotted. The waiter had rebuffed his complaint with the assurance that the caterpillar was still alive: living proof, literally, of how very fresh the salad was today. And every day. Sir. Harvey’s quease and unease were partly because he hated having to bolt a good meal in such a short time, mostly because he always felt nauseous at the prospect of a meeting with the brewer. A delicate meeting such as this one promised to be felt quite capable of bringing on the major symptoms of e-coli 0157, death included. “This had better work.” he said, morosely. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t.” replied Guy, queasily. “You don’t sound at all sure.” “I’m not. You wouldn’t be if you’d just eaten a caterpillar.” “Is everything ready for him in the demo room?” “It was alive you know. Quite possibly they were alive. There’s no guarantee there was just the one.” “Then you’ll just have to get used to the taste of mothballs. Meanwhile, I repeat the question.” “Videos, charts, booze. That’s usually everything.” “You know what you’re going to say?” “Near enough. What about you?” “No problem. Just don’t let him have the actual bottle until he’s convinced and signed.” “You think I’m stupid?” “I think you’re married.” “I think you’re divorced. I think I’m very happily married.” “Don’t count on it lasting.” “Don’t count on it ending.” “A tenner says he belches first.” “You still owe me from last time.” “I don’t think so. I distinctly recall him farting first.” “And your bet was for a burp.” “Not last time.” “It was.” “A tenner says it wasn’t.” “This had better work. ‘Fast forward subliminality’ my arse.” “Trust me. I’m an ad-man.” “Trust me. I’m an axe-murderer.”
|