Joel crossed through the space carrying his computer bag. He didn’t notice the silence; he had the Halloway pitch on his mind. He was thinking through the strongly worded response he would send if they didn’t win the project. How he would shame them for not understanding their consumer, or at least not understanding him.

The office didn’t care about feelings or friendships. It didn’t care about the pursuit of creative ideas or the hours spent toiling over singular lines of copy. Today, no hard drives hummed from the edit bay, no sexist jokes were told from the media buying team, and no Georgia was in her cubicle singing the same hook with the wrong words over and over again. Joel plugged his laptop into his cubicle and watched his second screen light up. Email loaded, but it was mostly cold outreach messages from other desperate men in other desperate offices trying to drum up work.

He typed ‘Georgia’ into the search bar, refreshing his memory from her slides they had discussed the night before. He expected a refreshed deck with new imagery that matched the retro-futurism direction he had given her.

“It’s simple,” he had said to her harshly, “futuristic elements, but with housewives who had perfect ringlets. That’s how Swiffer can recruit the new generation of consumers.” The visuals were meant to be ironic but also picked up on a traditional household micro-trend that Marie had flagged.

Instead of a beautifully polished deck from Georgia, her most recent message was a link to a cheap frame shop from last week, and a joke about making million-dollar ideas look like they belonged on a bus shelter. Joel lifted himself up from his chair and leaned over the fabric-and-particleboard wall into her space.

Empty. That was really the best way to describe it. Like she was never there. Like her tiny little cube had reset to rental. The thrift store sweater she found in the men’s section at Goodwill was gone. The tiny blue Post-its where she had drawn his late-night likeness, gone. The dent of her body in the chair that had given her back problems, gone. The cube, the desk, the furniture had all forgotten her.

Joel tried her name out loud anyway. “Georgia?” The empty cube did not respond.

A sad parade drifted by. Pam from HR held a stack of manila envelopes to her chest and an unopened box of Kleenex tissues that looked like a prop. There was a pale watercolor flower image printed on the box, part of Kleenex’s ‘soothing sick noses’ campaign. Behind her, an Account Manager carried her belongings in a cardboard box and held back tears. He wanted to tell her it would definitely get better, but he knew he was stealing that tagline from somewhere, and she might notice the hollow sentiment. Two creatives he didn’t know very well came past holding their coats. He watched them pass, but they didn’t look down at him.

The slack channel for #wins was quiet.

---

Joel stood in front of the bathroom mirror’s cold honesty and splashed his face with even colder water. He watched his cheeks turn red. He couldn’t think of a moment-worthy line to say out loud to himself.

The stall door swung open, and Eli appeared. It startled Joel, who believed that he was alone in the bathroom. There also wasn’t any flush, which Joel wouldn’t realize until later. Eli looked abnormally disheveled, even against the backdrop of their current circumstance. Eli looked Joel up and down as he mimed washing his hands, but only used water.

“Everything alright there, buddy?”

Joel wondered if Eli ever washed his hands. After a beat of silence, Joel shifted his mouth into the expression men use when they want to cry, but know society isn’t cool with it.

“Georgia’s gone,” Joel blurted out. The words just sat there for a second. “Four years. Intern to designer to art director.” A person they both knew and worked with for years was gone, but they could only describe her by her job title and termination date.

Eli hopped up and took a seat on the counter, perched on the edge of the faux marble. His sneakers tapped the glossy, white cabinets with little rhythmic taps. He wore his new white, cotton socks with the yellow stripe. They actually fit the stark whiteness of the room quite well, and the little stripe was a nice case for tenderness in that moment. It was a simple pop of comforting color.

“Thirty people,” Eli said, and let the number sit between them. “That’s how many people they handed pink slips this morning.”

Suddenly, their phones vibrated, buzzing on the counter, demanding each of their attention. Two jarring buzzes, at nearly the same time, knocked on the counter. The message had no punctuation, which is how they knew it was bad news.

‘Gordon wants to see you in his office’

It was a Pam special, an HR woman who knew how to always keep it neutral, but when you get a message with no indication of tone, your mind always goes to the worst-case scenario. Joel assumed the message should read like the shocked face emoji with the big eyes. Or did that one get reworked in iOS 8?

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

North & Main was founded in 1987 by two admen who believed that advertising was like show business, but for people who were afraid of Los Angeles and felt superior to people who lived there. They had long since retired to separate islands, and the agency now belonged to a firm out of Greenwich.

There were four voices on the call, and when Gordon really focused in, he could reliably identify two of them. He didn’t ask any questions or ask anyone to state their names; that was set dressing on a call where the fewer questions asked, the better.

“We’ve been looking at the run rate, and we don’t like what we see.”

Gordon wrote the words “run rate” down on the notebook in front of him.

“The truck thing obviously didn’t land, said the second voice. She wasn’t asking him about the pitch or the meeting; she was making it clear that news of a failed pitch moved very quickly.

“We’re still in conversation with Halloway,” Gordon pushed. And that still was technically true. They hadn’t said ‘no’ outright, but that pitch was definitely an abject failure.

“The new business pipeline just doesn’t work with the current cost structure,” the first voice said. “Headcount is our lever.”

Levers, shapes, structures; if the FBI had wiretapped the line, they would have no idea this call was about actual human people and their actual human jobs.

“How much of a reduction are you recommending,” asked Gordon.

“Half.”

Gordon wrote 50% down on his paper, thinking to himself that a percentage felt more abstract and less severe. His current staff was sixty-one humans, and doing the math on that, and giving himself the optimistic +1, he wrote down thirty.

“Gordon?”

“Yes, understood,” Gordon responded.

CLICK. And just like that, the call was over. Gordon peeked out over his monitor, through the glass walls of his office. The office floor had emptied out hours ago.

Gordon walked through the rows of empty cubicles. The Sonos played an algorithmically optimized playlist for an audience of empty chairs. It was fairly upbeat, so the mix must have been called something like “Just One More Hour, Don’t Die on Us.”

He didn’t ask Pam to send him the org chart; she would ask why, and her face did a weird, judgmental twist when Gordon made tough choices that she didn’t agree with. He didn’t want her opinion. For a woman trained in the dark arts of HR, she carried a lot of baggage and hard opinions on things. He walked back to his desk, flipped through files, and found it himself. It took around 40 minutes.

Then he built a spreadsheet with dainty little columns labeled with names, titles, salaries, and projects. He added a fifth column he labeled “transitions.” After twenty-six years in advertising, he was a bit disappointed in himself that he couldn’t come up with a better, clearer descriptive word that would ultimately mark who would stay and who would go.

He started by listing everyone’s name, their title, and their department. It was like he was taking inventory on a factory floor, making sure all the machines were accounted for. He was, in a way, aware that his next step was to decide which parts of the assembly line could be removed without production fully shutting down.

The first department was easy: Media Buying. The other teams would make the pieces of content; media buying would buy the placement. The commercial spot at the Super Bowl, the Meta ad spend, the bus shelter in Secaucus. They delivered a tangible output that was clear and trackable; that means they got to stay. ROI, return on investment. Now that’s a term that sounds good in a quarterly meeting.

The account team lost all their middle managers. The juniors were cheap and hopeful, and the seniors knew where everything was. Easy. The people in the middle were just forwarding emails back and forth anyway, right?

The edit team went from five editors to two. Same volume of work; they would have to make it work.

Production, he decided, would not be a “flex team.” One of those corporate terms that meant there was no production team at all; they now existed only as a spreadsheet of freelancers who wouldn’t require health insurance and would only be contracted after creative was locked in with clients.

Joel stayed; Gordon felt that was the obvious choice. Clients had asked for him by name, and that meant he was in some way a product that the agency could sell.

Eli also stayed; this was less of a slam dunk for Gordon, but ultimately a ‘yes.’ His copywriting was strong, and he delivered on a level that wasn’t embarrassing to read aloud in meetings.

Marie stayed because she could understand metrics in a way Joel never could. She could also act normal in front of clients in a way Joel never could.

Then there was Georgia, who sat under Joel on the creative team. Gordon wasn’t sure he needed more than one full-time art director, and that person definitely wasn’t Georgia. The only reason to keep her was to keep Joel from coming completely undone, but Joel had delivered some of his best work during the darkest times of his life. The same day his divorce was finalized, Joel won the agency 7.5 million in creative work with Apple. It was unprecedented, and it was beautiful. Gordon pretended not to see Joel crying out front by the dumpsters at the end of the day.

Gordon worked through the remainder of his list, and at 11:40 emailed Pam.

Pam -- I’ll need 30 separation packets prepared for Friday morning. Standard terms. We can book conference room B in 15-minute increments to handle the deliveries.

Pam would bring her own Kleenex, stopping by Duane Reade first thing in the morning before she came into the office. She knew that crying at work was very much out of fashion, but who knew what the day would bring. Maybe some of these stoic admen would cry, or scream, or punch her right in the nose. Who knew what the day would bring.

Part 8

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Joel’s suit had been disassembled to the base, with just a button-down left on top with the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. It was just the right amount of harried for a creative director out for drinks after a long day. He knew he was playing a part in a city where everyone was pretending to be something, especially in places like this. Everyone in this bar was saying they were a “creative director,” but he was actually one; he was the real deal. He took a sip from his short glass.

“Joel!?” A voice shouted his name from the other side of the bar.

It was Evan, and just the sight of him started to create a small tension headache behind Joel’s forehead. Evan wore a black t-shirt that was tight even for New York standards. He told everyone he never wore the same shirt twice, that he didn’t go to the cleaners; he just threw them away, couldn’t stand the feeling of washed Japanese cotton on the back of his neck. The same was true with his jeans. He never washed them, just put them in the freezer, or to be more specific, his housekeeper Linda put them in the freezer every evening, and he would remove a pair every morning.

Evan moved through the room like there was a camera just out of sight, over somewhere in the back corner. He was always performing for a reality show that had yet to be greenlit. He slapped Joel on the back in a way that said hello while also claiming his personal space. It was to feel domineering; that message was clear. It stunned Joel for a second, that same kind of feeling like when you accidentally run into a glass door because it’s too clean. Your head feels like it’s buzzing, and that feeling doesn’t go away for a few days.

“No way,” Evan exclaimed, like the universe had brought them together and not a Google search for ‘hot nyc bars.’

“I was just telling someone about you.”

“Really,” Joel tried his best not to sound shocked. He forced a smile. “How have you been, man?”

“Busy.” Evan quickly responded. That was his full-time brand. Not being busy but talking to everyone about how busy he was. He plopped into the chair next to Joel.

“Did you hear about our Gucci balaclava controversy?” We ended up doing a soft pivot on the original campaign. We created this micro-site where you could anonymously submit a personal confession. People will admit anything if you give them a micro-site to do it on. It ended up being a treasure trove of personal data, and nobody really paid attention to the brand’s apology on Instagram stories. It was over in 24 hours. You can’t ask for a better outcome.”

Joel nodded.

This is how Evan spoke all the time. He was always pitching himself and his work. This was also how Evan told time, by campaign. It had been 36 campaigns since the last time Evan and Joel had spoken in a non-professional setting.

“We ended up building an in-house studio for brand social content. Everyone wants to go viral, respond to whatever is trending that day. You should come by and see it.” Evan glanced down at Joel’s rumpled button-down, then back up at his tired eyes.

“How’s North?

Joel considered lying; it would have been easier. “We just pitched Halloway.”

“Ah. Very -- Midwestern.” Evan meant it as an insult. He reached forward and stole a tiny peanut from the bowl in front of them. He looked around, like he was making sure more than just Joel could hear him.

“We’re doing the social launch for this new algae-based toothpaste. Algeneron,” he said. “Don’t laugh, they raised thirty million in round A.”

Joel didn’t laugh; he didn’t find any of this funny. “You know -- I was actually just headed out when you caught me,” he said because he couldn’t take any more of whatever this weird pissing contest was.

“Well -- then, I guess we’ll have to grab a proper dinner soon to catch up,” Evan smiled.

They did a weird friend handshake-hug hybrid that had been negotiated over a decade of working in the same industry, but only ever interacting when it was absolutely necessary. Joel watched as Evan moved back into the crowd, grinning as he pushed through throngs of people. The jukebox at the back started a song from everyone’s favorite Maroon 5, and Joel decided that was his cue to get the hell out. He downed the rest of his drink.

On the walk home, the East Village did every stereotype it could think of. There was steam rising from manholes, a guy selling roses to couples who needed to prove they had a magical night, and bars spilling out with drunk, overworked professionals. Joel passed a fancy home decor store, some indie shop with a bunch of modern-looking mirrors in the front window. He saw himself multiplied a thousand times. The version at the end looked like he had slept; it was him a million universes away. The version in the middle looked like he had not. The original version also made it look like he had not.

Joel’s building lobby was quiet, and at midnight-ish he stepped into his hallway. The inside of his apartment was dark. He tried the light switch, but the interior lights didn’t flick on. He tried them again. Nothing.

He set his keys in a small bowl by the door. The bowl was etched with the words PARIS, TEXAS, but he did not, in fact, buy that bowl in Texas. It was purchased for its aesthetic; that was its main value proposition. Joel’s ex-wife had found it at an antique shop and bought it for him. One of the few things that remained in the apartment that still had her memory. He had to keep the bowl; it fit the aesthetic. His whole apartment was curated to have an effortless cool that felt like someone had lived a full life between the walls; he just wasn’t the one who had done the living. He crossed through the living room; he didn’t have a TV, and into the kitchen. He dug through the junk drawer past the old prescription bottles and every size of tape but couldn’t find a flashlight.

After giving up on light, he felt for the cabinets, reached in and grabbed an “I Heart NY” mug and filled it with sink water. He downed the cupful in one go; someone in college would definitely consider it chugging. The mug left an odd metallic aftertaste in his mouth, almost definitely lead.

His floor-to-ceiling windows let some of the city light outside leak into the dark apartment. He had these thin, gauzy curtains that provided absolutely no privacy. If he was going to walk around in the altogether, his neighbors would be getting a free show. In the dark, the apartment softened into a safe place, softened his face, and for the first time today made him feel a foreign sense of calm. Then, he saw it. Sitting on the kitchen counter was a math test with a big 98% circled at the top. Lyla’s long division and PEMDAS lined up in neat rows under each question.

Joel smiled to himself, walked to the fridge, found a promotional Taco Bell magnet, and pinned up the paper between an old birthday invite and a field trip permission form for the Metropolitan Museum of Art that he had failed to sign. The magnet said ‘Live Más,’ a motto he did, in fact, not live by.

“Dad?” He could hear Lyla’s voice from her room, checking to make sure a killer hadn’t entered.

Joel cracked open her door. “Hey Lyla.” Joel returned. His voice was soft. “The power’s out.”

“I know! I’m pretending to camp.” He could hear her smiling sass, even in the dark. She was good at making the best of things, and quite frankly, the lights being shut off by the city was a fun way to unexpectedly change her evening routine.

Joel pushed her door open wider with two fingers. Her room was decorated like a page from Pottery Barn Teen; she had the full bed, dresser, and side table set in matching, modern wood. Flanking that were the quintessential tween design items: clothes in piles, stacks of books climbing the walls, a soccer ball resting against the dresser.

Lyla sat in crisscross-applesauce position on the bed under her fluffy blanket; the missing flashlight was propped under her chin. She gripped the ‘Catcher in the Rye’ like a crab between her thumb and fingers. She was almost to the end, and in that moment, Joel felt like Holden Caulfield, ‘damn near bawling, he felt so damn happy,’ but the feeling passed quickly.

“Did your pitch go good?” she asked kindly.

“Yeah, it went.” Joel sat down on the edge of her bed.

She looked at him, eyebrows lifted. The flashlight changed his face, added years in the harsh, pointed shadows.

“Mom says sometimes a ‘no’ is a good thing; it can be a relief.”

“Your mom is very good at sayings.” He put a hand on the blanket and felt the shape of her soccer shin guards she had tucked away at the foot of the bed for safekeeping.

“I saw your math test on the counter. Pretty impressive.”

“I know,” she said. “I told Max, and he said I should major in math. That Stanford would be calling my any day now.” She rolled her eyes at the thought of an adult’s hollow compliment.

“Max is trying his best,” Joel countered.

Lyla nodded back. Joel got up.

“I’m going to bed. You too?”

“In a while. Night, dad.”

“Good night.”

Part 7

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

The super allowed his labradoodle to roam free, and that was probably where the first scent was coming from. Eli stepped into the building’s mirrored elevator. The stylish box made it clear how tired he really looked, but it also allowed him the opportunity to check the fit of his pants in a 360-degree view. He was unsure about this more high-waisted cut, but the mirrors convinced him it was a great choice. He pushed his thumb to the 7 and watched the aesthetic white light circle the button.

On Eli’s floor, the hallway was fully carpeted with this matted brown, puce carpeting. It wasn’t half bad paired with the dark green walls, and it helped highlight the framed prints of dogs hung every few feet, but the whole environment was proof that no interior designer had ever been hired or consulted at any point. The rumor around the building was that the dogs in the photos were all Instagram-famous, and each of them had over 150k followers, but nobody had actually taken the time to corroborate that theory at this point. Quite frankly, the building’s decor was a great conversation starter for Eli and Luke’s parties. Somebody always wanted to talk about it.

Their brass doorknob looked the same as always, but Eli paused for a moment before he shoved in his key. He had that look on his face, a deep sigh that only exists when you know you’re already in trouble. He knew he was late for something, but he couldn’t remember what. He braced himself, turned the key, and entered very, very slowly.

The curated apartment that he and Luke called home looked like a page out of one of those home-design-coffee-table books or one of those awkward Architectural Digest YouTube Interviews. A blur of simple and quirky, where there might actually be a whole bowl of limes sitting on their polished raw wood table. There were two matching chairs and a row of skinny candles that had been placed there a few hours earlier for ambiance. The table also had this delicate linen runner that had been ironed flat and perfect. There were two plates and place settings, each with a folded napkin tied with a cute cotton string. That damn little string jolted Eli’s memory. Tonight was their second anniversary, the cotton anniversary. Eli had mocked the tradition the week prior when they were riding the Uptown 6 train.

Paper was year one, cotton was year two, leather was year three, which would give them the opportunity to cosplay as Old West cowboys. It was perfect because it was a role-play Eli wanted to try but was too afraid to bring up. Luke wasn’t really into it but was willing to try.

The whole apartment smelled like rosemary. The Spotify playlist had started over from the top. The candles had been burning for hours, nearly burned to their bases. A roasting pan sat on the stove, with a little aluminum foil tent. A shiny little tent of shame.

Luke was sitting on the couch scrolling on his phone. He was wearing a white shirt tucked into acid wash denim. His hair was styled, and he had definitely spent time making it look perfect. He didn’t acknowledge Eli’s arrival.

Eli clicked the door shut and latched the locks. He sat his bag down by the coffee table, the one Luke had purchased in Rhode Island and had to have shipped into Manhattan. It was a huge pain, but it did go really nicely with their white carpeting. Eli didn’t say anything, but he really, really needed to say something. He defaulted to the easiest option:

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re two hours late,” Luke responded quickly. His voice sounded more sad than harsh.

“The Halloway pitch went long, and then I got stuck at the office doing a debrief with Joel, and we --” he should have spent some time rehearsing the excuse in the hallway before he stepped into the apartment. It was all sounding very dumb and flimsy at this point, the same way you hear someone trying to open a pack of Skittles during the quiet part in a movie.

“Right,” Luke responded flatly.

Eli moved toward the kitchen and lifted the foil. The steaks Luke had roasted in the oven looked like sad, congealed blobs; the green beans were floppy; the potatoes didn’t look half bad.

“I can reheat,” Eli offered. He noticed the notes taped to the microwave. Oven at 375. Steak should be soft to the touch (for medium). Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.

“I was setting the table,” Luke looked back at him, “and I thought -- should I do cotton napkins? Like, ya know, a fun joke.”

“They look good,” Eli responded, because they did. It was the kind of thing Eli would never think of.

Luke got up from the couch and leaned on the kitchen island. He did his best to make Eli feel the weight of his lateness.

“I sat down at 7:17. I blew out the first set of candles at 8:00 because I was worried they would melt onto the runner. I lit them again at 9:10, which I now realize was absurd. I texted you at 9:20. You responded at 9:50 with a thumbs up.” He cocked his head. “Might as well have been a fuck you.”

“I shoulda called,” Eli said. “I don’t even think we won it -- the Halloway project.

Luke stared back at him with a deep anger, a deep sadness, a deep confusion. He didn’t care about Halloway, their trucks, or any piece of creative collateral that did or did not get approved.

“Darn.”

He didn’t care if electric vehicles had brand personalities or cohesive mood boards or active social media management that would write a clever quip on @Wendy’s latest post.

“I made a playlist,” Luke said. “It’s songs from the last two years. The first night we met at that dumb bar in Gramercy Park, some of the songs we listened to on that road trip upstate with your niece, that dumb song from the Titanic move.”

“Celine Dion?”

Luke pulled out one of the chairs at the dining table; he looked especially handsome in this light. He looked up at Eli like something had finally clicked.

“I know your job is very important,” he said with every bit of sarcasm he could muster, “but I left work early. I went to Trader Joe’s, I trimmed the green beans like Julia Child.”

Eli sat down across from him. He wanted to make the point that today’s pitch was a make-or-break for his career. He wanted to make the point that responding to a post from @Wendy’s would, in fact, have an impact on overall Instagram engagement. Instead, he said:

“You’re right.”

After a quick stint in the microwave, the steaks made it to the table. They ate a few bites each and laughed about how tough they were. The room was stiff, but the situation was a bit funny. That awkward kind of funny when you’re with someone you like, but don’t know what to say.

“What did you get for cotton?” Luke asked after a moment.

“Pillowcases,” Eli said. “I ordered good ones from that company that keeps getting their ads defaced in the subway. They’re Danish.” He nodded his head towards the bedroom. “I’ll put ‘em on after dinner.”

Luke smiled. “I got you socks.” He stood and walked to the coffee table, opened the middle drawer, and pulled out a small box wrapped in that brown paper that old-fashioned packages have.

They were fluffy white with cute little yellow stripes at the top. Eli felt something in his chest. Longing? No, that couldn’t be it. Maybe it was real regret.

“I really am sorry,” he said.

Luke nodded. “I know. Just -- before nine next time.”

They moved to the couch. Luke dropped his feet into Eli’s lap. They watched one of those shows where people date each other with no intention of finding love but were more in the market for internet fame. Eli felt his whole body relax, his shoulders finally falling. This was nice; this was calm. He didn’t think about how Halloway would probably call tomorrow and officially pass. He didn’t think about how his job seemed to require the part of him that had cost them dinner. He definitely didn’t think about that damn cliff’s edge.

Part 6

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Photo Credit: Ehud Neuhaus

The Halloway team sat in a row of almost matching suits. Chris, a man whose light blue tie had sat in on all his HR conversations. Martin, who seemed like he didn’t want to be there. Arnold, whose too-strict posture made it clear that he’d be the first to not get it. Then, two assistants on either end writing down every word that was said.

Across from them, sat Joel in his own pressed dark blue suit. Eli, in a slightly cheaper-looking dark blue suit, and Marie in a black skirt suit that she would regret the moment she stepped into the room. Gordon was at the head of the table, playing his best managing director.

On the screen: a person at a cliff’s edge. You know the one.

“Halloway, as all you gentlemen are well aware, sells quality vehicles,” Joel began. It sounded really hollow in a room where this would never be disputed fact. They were wasting time and already losing their audience.

“When we ask consumers to buy into electric,” Eli said, joining Joel at the front, “we know we’re asking them to take a leap into the unknown.”

CLICK. Their slide deck progressed, revealing the Dynamo with its chrome details and cute electric bolt flounces.

“EV purchases are accelerating among men thirty-five to fifty,” Eli said, and the slide produced a graph that was real in the same way unicorns or Santa are real.

“Which opens a lane for Halloway to enter as the calm, cool big brother,” Joel added. He didn’t glance back at the cliff like he did last night; he could feel the cliff looking at him.

“How do we sell the excitement of electric to a consumer who doesn’t trust advertising? Doesn’t really trust anybody?” Eli asked. He gestured an open palm toward the screen like that old guy in Jurassic Park.

Another CLICK. A video this time of a road curling through the mountains with yellow leaves falling gracefully, and a gray-haired driver. Georgia’s wrinkles had been abandoned for stock footage of a real old man, which was probably a good call.

“We acknowledge their fear,” Eli said, “and invite them to jump anyway.”

The team paused for dramatic effect. It was awkward.

CLICK. Text faded in: #TakeTheJump.

“This is more than a campaign; it’s a rallying cry.” Marie moved forward. “It’s inspiration for every day. We create a narrative where Halloway isn’t just a truck, but a friend among friends.”

“Who wouldn’t want their truck to be their best friend?” Joel improv-ed that last question, but he probably should have held it back.

CLICK. A ‘thank you’ slide appeared in the very quiet room. The odd silence was out of politeness, hopefully. Arnold looked confused. It was very on brand.

“I’m not sure I get it,” Martin stated plainly. “Is it a marketing campaign about suicide?”

That’s when it was over. Whatever they responded with from this point wouldn’t matter. The Halloway team would eventually rise from their chairs, murmuring of a follow-up call, but everyone knew the pleasantries were hollow. If they didn’t grab a cookie on the way out, it was always a bad sign, and all of those damn cookies were untouched.

Part 4

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Photo Credit: Billy Pasco

Joel, the creative director, wore a ripped NYU sweatshirt over pinstripe dress pants, the uniform of a man who believed in dressing the part, but only until 5 pm. His pomade was failing. His hair looked like the fins on those orcas who murder their trainers in captivity. He stood in front of the projector, really overdoing the hand motions, repeating a sentence that he had already fallen in love with hours earlier:

“Søren Kierkegaard said, ‘when you stand on the edge of a cliff, you’re not anxious you might fall, you’re anxious you could jump.’” Joel nodded to himself; he loved how it felt edgy enough to feel jarring but set up the creative in a way that felt relevant.

“I’m gonna just draw a thick line in the sand here. We absolutely cannot open with that.” Eli, the copywriter, responded plainly, without looking up from the document he had open on his computer. He had that agency thing about him, where he had layered black over black, over black and paired that with never having set foot in the sun. His t-shirt was from some obscure designer, but only a keen eye would know that, which was really the whole point.

Marie, the strategist, had gone past tired all the way to overly positive. About everything. She rolled back in her chair.

“I think I’m following,” she murmured to nobody in particular. “It’s like, I dunno, Thelma and Louise, except for old men and trucks.”

“That’s the consumer, I guess. Men, trucks, the American dream, but somehow without any guns. Oh, and the damn thing is electric,” sighed Eli.

Georgia, the art director and Joel’s right hand, sat across the table. Her laptop blasted her face with blue light, the kind that interrupts your circadian rhythm, but makes your skin look beautiful and glowy. She was twenty and new enough to still be amazed by Joel’s ideas. On her screen, she worked diligently on a stock image, penciling in individual crow’s feet on the image of a man who had to be 18 or 19. The Photoshop job had a particularly uncanny-valley-like quality, where the smile lines were a few millimeters off the mark.

Eli leaned over to inspect Georgia’s work. “I mean...” he searched for the right critical, but not too harsh words, “...it’s not ideal looking.”

“We’re working with what we have,” Joel quickly barked back. That was Joel’s motto. For every deck, every pitch. It actually made him quite good at his job. Nothing was precious; everything was temporary; there was always a new project, a new client, a new creative ask to crack. Joel leaned over Georgia’s shoulder, forced a small smile, then motioned in the air to show her.

“Look where they would naturally form.” he tried his best to force crow’s feet to show up on his face. “If the med spa two doors down didn’t have a two-for-one deal on Botox, you could see what I mean.”

Joel turned back to the slide projected on the wall. It was currently rivaling the quality level of a fifth grader’s state bird report. They hadn’t committed to purchasing the stock image, so it was plastered with squiggly lines to prevent theft. A scenic cliff’s edge with a tiny dot of a man at the top, the horizon big and comically vast.

Joel started to pace the room. “Halloway sells quality vehicles that help get the job done.” He said it out loud to himself, rehearsing the lines, not at all delivering them naturally.

Eli joined him, and the pair looped around the room rehearsing bizarre choreography that would hopefully not make the final cut.

“Electric vehicles have started gaining traction among men thirty-five to fifty,” Eli recited, “so there’s a real opportunity for Halloway in this space.”

The slide switched, and suddenly the Halloway Dynamo Lightning Electric Truck beamed from the wall, positioned like a prize you could pick from the Price is Right showcase.

“I wouldn’t buy one,” Joel scoffed.

“Neither would I,” shrugged Eli.

Part 3

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Photo Credit: Sean Driscoll

“Chaos in every can,” Joel had pitched the client, and Gordon could feel himself nodding along. The suggestion of danger was important for their fratty college kid demographic, and he knew the concept needed to be locked down that afternoon if they had any chance of invoicing by the end of the week and seeing the profit hit the P&L by the end of the month. The clients wrote down Joel’s tagline in their little black, moleskin notebooks. They always do, and it always had to be moleskin, embossed on the front with their company logo.

This night was different. Gordon stood on the wrong side of the glass. His gray-haired pompadour flapped violently in the wind; his wrinkles fought his Botox as he braced himself. The city, fifteen stories below him, buzzed as it always did, even after a train delay when someone decides to end it all. But that’s not why he was here.

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

The banging was like thunder, echoing far away, then suddenly here without time to count between strikes. The firm pounds of knuckles banging on hollow metal. Someone should really oil that stairwell door, Gordon thought for a moment. Nobody ever would.

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

Gordon looked back, and they were there, and there was nowhere left to go.

The insane woman across the street, who only spoke to her three cats Mindy, Margaret, and Melinda, watched the whole thing play out. Gordon’s perfectly polished Santoni dropping into the night. His shins, his knees, his hips, his chest, his head. A series of vanishing body parts disappearing into the darkness, swallowing him like a food critic taking one big, expensive bite at the newest, hippest restaurant.

Gordon didn’t scream. He had learned the advanced art of suppressed emotions at boarding school 37 years earlier. He could take any level of client criticism at any volume and would never crack. It was a skill worthy of a resume bullet point or at least a LinkedIn recommendation.

Down on the ground, the lookie-loos had already started to gather. The Halloway was a boxy, older model that was parked in a perfect position to catch him. The truck’s cab had collapsed in, creating a perfect, clean, person-shaped indentation. The windshield shattered under the weight but held together at the corner where someone at the manufacturing plant had placed the sticker “Built in Marion.”

Gordon had done the last thing he would be paid to do; at least he made an impression.

Part 2

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.

Laundry had snaked its way to every part of the floor. Shirts thrown into probably-worn, maybe-worn, and definitely-worn piles. Socks that had no hope of ever being pairs again. Suits filled with every wrinkle in the known universe.

Her bedsheets were twisted into ropes, there were decorative pillows on the floor, and fun-size Milky Way wrappers dotted her dark comforter like little stars.

She tossed her tote bag to the floor in the middle of the chaos. The shoulders of her blazer slid off. Trousers unhooked, unzipped, the sudden cold of the room dusting her legs.

She stood in front her small ornate mirror that didn’t match anything else in the room. The gold frame gave her a little confession booth to share her sins. She had added the gold paint using a spray can and the dumpsters out front as a work surface. The landlord asked if she was the one who left the paint marks.

“Definitely not,” she told him.

She pressed a thumb under one eye, then the other, making the mascara smudge even smudge-ier. Not like she’d been crying, more like she was auditioning for some low-budget horror film where the ghost of pre-war studio apartments hadn’t slept in weeks.

On the windowsill, between the dying succulent and a stack of unopened mail, Marie kept her altar. She wasn’t religious or anything crazy like that, but she did collect little pieces of proof that she’d existed, in this moment, in this city. Proof that she was real.

A little matchbook from the bar two doors down. A plastic cup that had once held a tea light and now held bobby pins and a pen cap. One tall prayer candle in a glass sleeve, the kind you can buy at any bodega in New York on the bottom shelf next to the cat food. There was a MetroCard, the first one she got when she arrived in New York City. It was good luck, probably. And a takeout menu from a Chinese place she had never been, but planned to someday order from.

She would occasionally light the prayer candle. She loved how it looked against the backdrop of the lights in the building across the street. The Virgin Mary glued to the front cried a single tear. It looked a bit performative, but she was certain it came from a place of real sorrow.

She didn’t light it every day. That would imply routine and stability, or that she was a person with a five-year plan. She was, but if she thought too hard about the future and all the things she needed to do, it all became a little too much. More than anything, she lit it to nudge the universe in the right direction.

FLLLLLICK. The wick took a second to catch. A small flame trying to be brave in a city built to bully small things. Marie watched the light catch the glass, as it created a small, beautiful glow in her studio apartment. The room hadn’t changed, her day hadn’t changed, but the flame existed, and that was something.

Across the room, in the kitchen, the fridge buzzed. Inside, milk slowly aged into chunks, peaches grew themselves stylish green sweaters, and the jam just sorta sat there. Behind all of it, a large, lidded rectangle. The casserole. The thing brought by a well-meaning neighbor last week, after the fire alarm incident had woken her up at 4:30 am. The neighbor said she was cooking pierogies, but Marie suspected that might be code for meth.

She carefully slid the casserole out of the fridge, thunked it onto the counter, and popped the lid. One big, coagulated mass, with some elbow macaroni added for additional girth.

She forced open the drawer; a landlord special paint job ensured it always stuck, especially in the summer, grabbed a spoon, one of the large serving kind, and took a first, massive bite. It was ice cold, but kinda good. The second bite was mostly salt, in a definitely good way.

She slid down the cabinet until she was on the floor, knees up, casserole wedged between them. It looked like she was doing one of those old-fashioned exercises where you squeeze a hoop between your knees. The spoon clinked across the glass bottom as she consumed her power dinner.

In the wall to her left, filtered conversation came in and out like the Coney Island tide. The building didn’t believe in privacy. The walls were thin, and if you were going to have a fight with your wife, it was going to be everyone’s problem. Marie actually preferred it this way. Having other people’s lives as white noise meant hers could be static.

After consuming the casserole in the fashion of a slumped-over goblin, she dropped the spoon into the empty dish and crossed back over to the bed. En route, she flicked off the kitchen light, letting the space enlarge itself by the glow of a single candle.

She fell sideways onto the bed. Her phone, face down on the nightstand, buzzed to get her attention. She gave in easily and unlocked the screen with code 1234. A password someone would only dare use on their luggage.

Thumb, swipe, the little red cartoon flame opened with its subtle flicker animation. Tinder popped open, personal sales pitches immediately presenting themselves.

A man with a fish. You know the pose.

A man standing in front of the sign for Zion National Park. She had hung off the chains at Angel’s Landing, and it wasn’t a fond memory.

A man in a suit with a tie so red he could be a congressman. He checked both “Christian” and “conservative” on his profile.

Left, right, left. Muscle memory remembered her dating preferences without her. Anybody she paused on had the same face, all expressed in different places. Different universes. A baseball cap and a toddler, a freshly killed elk, a gym mirror selfie. Bios did their elevator pitches with varying degrees of grammar.

“Six four is it matters.” (It kinda mattered.)

“Looking for my partner in crime.” (Okay, Clyde.)

“No drama.” (Sure, Jan.)

Marie had always known that she didn’t really like Tinder, but she did like the feeling of choice at your fingertips. It felt like control. If she swiped enough, she could trick the rational part of her brain into thinking she had found real, human connection. It was so simple!

A siren a few streets over wailed for a while, then settled as the cops hopped out to harass a homeless man. Marie adjusted her pillows to start her true wind-down process for the night She tried a few positions, then surrendered to something that felt only slightly uncomfortable. She used a second pillow to rest her phone and scrolling arm.

Left, left, right. Him.

Joel’s face appeared on her screen. It wasn’t a professional LinkedIn headshot; it was a weird casual image in Central Park shot from a low angle, probably by his daughter. Gross. His profile was a mix of photos in band t-shirts, un-shavenness, and soft weekend light. The whole thing was jarring and a not-so-subtle attempt to make him look 10 years younger.

Hard pass. Left swipe. This had to be the end of it for tonight.

She had rules for situations like this, which meant that she held a collection of strong beliefs about herself. The stories she told herself about the kind of person she was. One of them was about not being the kind of woman who slept with someone at work. Another was about being the kind who refused loneliness and dressed up even if there was nowhere to go. The third was about not being predictable, not even to herself. The rules worked best when they weren’t tested.

Her phone lay there now, face down, still buzzing for attention. Twice. A third time. Apps needing inputs now. A human, a robot pretending to be a human, a robot pretending its name is Steve from Verizon. She didn’t check.

In the wall, the conversation next door heated up: “WHO THE FUCK IS JESSICA!?” Then resolved itself. Must have been a family friend, or an elderly coworker. The fridge made that weird reset sound, and somewhere in the building a toilet flush really made a show of it.

On the windowsill, the prayer candle threw a thin layer of light onto a stack of mail as if it were casting a blessing onto her overdue water bill. Marie let her hand rest on her stomach and felt the solid, heavy casserole. She rolled over and closed her eyes. When you stand on the edge of a cliff...

Part 5

If you’re new here, I write a monthly serialized novel called Everything is Advertising, about a burned-out Creative Director and his cynical team that accidentally create QAnon through a viral marketing campaign. If you like that kind of thing, you can start at Part One and catch up from there.

'Everything is Advertising' | Part 1

Every Monday, Below the Fold talks through the stories behind the brands.

Below the Fold.

Every Friday, The Business of Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.

The Business of Advertising.