The Halloway pitch was scheduled for the following morning at 9 am sharp. The boardroom had been cleaned, cleared, and decontaminated of all evidence that had collected during the previous night’s work. Someone had roped in a project manager to scrounge up some fancy water bottles and a plate of self-stable cookies from the storage closet. She’d set out the water bottles in a neat row and arranged the cookies on a plate. It was passable.
The Halloway team was seated together in a row on one side of the boardroom table. They wore almost identical suits, as if they’d coordinated. As if, like teen girls, they had chatted the night before to make sure the vibe was right. Chris, a man whose light blue tie had joined him for all his HR conversations. Martin, who seemed like he absolutely did not want to be there. Arnold, whose very straight posture made it very clear that he’d be the first to ‘just not really get it.’ Then two assistants flanking both ends, notating every word.
Across from them was North & Main. Joel, Eli, Marie, and managing director Gordon who had spoken to the home office in Greenwich that morning and made it clear that this one was already in the bag.
On the screen at the front of the room: a person at a cliff’s edge. You know the one.
Joel had ultimately decided to cut the Kierkegaard line. It had taken Eli until two in the morning to talk him out of it.
“Halloway sells quality vehicles,” Joel began instead. It sounded very insincere in a room where this would never be a disputed fact. They were already off to a bad start.
“When we ask consumers to buy into electric,” Eli said, “we know we’re asking them to take a leap into the unknown.”
CLICK. The deck advanced, revealing the Dynamo with its chrome details and cute electric bolt flourishes. It was actually quite a stunning piece of machinery when you photographed it in the right lighting with the right production value and set design.
“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.
“So — 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 with an open palm toward the screen like Richard Attenborough welcoming everyone to Jurassic Park.
Another CLICK. A video this time: a road curling through a mountainside, yellow leaves falling gracefully on a freshly rained-on remote highway, 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 of converting to electric,” Eli said, “and we invite them to take the jump anyway.”
The team paused for dramatic effect. It was awkward.
CLICK. Text faded in over the video: #TakeTheJump.
Marie leaned forward “This is more than a campaign. It’s a rallying cry, an invitation to step into the future, to step into Halloway’s innovation — it’s inspiration for this consumer to try something new.”
CLICK. Finally, the ‘thank you’ slide.
Nobody said anything. Joel had never been comfortable with silence. In his professional opinion, you always had to fill dead air, and in that moment, he made a half-second decision.
“Søren Kierkegaard once said,” Joel began.
Eli looked over at Marie. What could she do to stop him, what could either of them do?
Joel delivered the rest of it from memory. The cliff and the pondering and the jumping. He added a significant volume of hand motions to really drive the point home.
Arnold immediately looked confused. It was very on brand. “I’m not sure I get it,” he said. “Take the jump. Is it a marketing campaign about suicide?”
Both assistants wrote that down.
Quite frankly, that’s when it was officially over. Whatever they responded with from that point onward wouldn’t matter. The Halloway team would eventually rise from their chairs, murmuring something about a follow-up call, but everyone knew the pleasantries were hollow.
If they didn’t grab a cookie on their way out, it was always a bad sign, and all of those damn cookies were untouched.
EVERYTHING IS ADVERTISING follows 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.
Every Tuesday, Everything is Advertising shares lessons from over a decade working on the front lines of advertising.
If short stories and general musings are more your speed —
Onto part 4.