Every dog breeder and handler will tell you that in order for a dog to be sociable and successful it has to have a job within its pack or family. A dog needs reinforcement and feedback that the job is being done well, too. Back home my dog had two jobs: Protection (me, currently my parents), and defending my apartment against the vile tyranny of the mailman. The way Sophia saw it, any guy who came by six days out of the week and dropped foreign objects through a slot into the apartment couldn't be an ally. Maybe there was an advance team hidden between the Pennysaver and various bills. Maybe there were spies under foot. This was what my dog believed and so she faithfully performed her duties daily, and she did a good job of it. I'd let her know often that she was doing a good job.

Like Sophia, I too needed a job to regularly perform well, and I started finding my niche towards the end of April. Our Absolut account had been floundering for a few months until our creative director, a skinny, underfed Nepalese guy named Suleman, had a vision during one of his chain smoking session where he’d fill his office with clousds of smoke going through one Djarum after another.

“Flags! Flags people,” he yelled emerging from his office only slightly ahead of a giant cloud of acrid European-produced smoke. Everybody working on the floor stopped and looked towards the catwalk where Suleman stood.

He repeated it again. “Flags. Don’t any of you get it?” He manically scurried down the stairs and came at us with the quickened pace of a jungle cat, ready to pounce.

“Reed, what kind of vodka do you drink?” he demanded.

“The good kind,” I said with a sheepish smile.

“Okay, fine. And where is the good kind found?”

“Russia,” I replied. I quickly amended my answer with “sometimes Sweden.”

“Exactly! Everybody knows the best vodka comes from European countries, and the manufacturers are making a killing exploiting that fact in their advertising, signage, and bottling marks. Anything of questionable origin is put aside. And why? Because the consumer can’t be certain it came from Europe. Russia, Sweden whatever.”

Suleman was so excited he literally could not get the words out fast enough. He stopped and ran a hand through his hair, trying to calm himself. “For all lines, for all brands, we put a Swedish flag on the bottle. This brand has been around for so long that for all we know Absolut could be made in Milwaukee. It wasn’t part of the vodka new wave that Vox, Fris, Ketel One and Grey Goose were, so it’s our job to remind people that Absolut is old school vodka from the old country. It’s OG, baby. Fucking A I’m good!”

Suleman stamped his feet on the cement floor and started walking back to his office. “Lots to do, new boards, new mockups,” he said out loud to himself. Suddenly everybody knew what was at hand and got busy with their work.

Just before Suleman reached the top of the catwalk he looked down at me. “Becker, grab the rest of your ladykillers posse and come in here. We’ve got to talk brass tacks.”

My posse? What the hell was this about? I went and found the others and met Suleman upstairs.

“Close the door!” he told Martin, hinting that whatever he was about to say couldn’t leave the room. “Ten minutes ago I realized that our best use of the five of you is not collectively as we’ve been doing, but individually. We need to tap your separate powers and skills, not treat you like the borg from Deep Space 9.”

Suleman stood and flattened a wrinkle in his slacks. They looked like they’d been through a cheap dry cleaning job. It’s too bad – Alfani wool slacks usually can hold their own.

“Martin, you are going to remain the point guy for account PR – that won’t change. Les will slide over and handle all bar relations for the remainder of our testing. Gary will now be concentrating on art direction with David. The two of you can knock out where this needs to go in a short period of time.” Suleman sat at edge of his desk in front of me. “Reed, you are off doing all the gladhanding with bars around town. You'll be working with Margot on product placement and customer psychology.”

“Why me?” I asked. The rest of them looked at me and I swore I heard a faint gasp, as if the thought of even raising the question was sin enough.

“Because you can fucking read people’s fucking minds,” Suleman replied, pointing a short, stubby finger into my shoulder. Before I could ask how he knew that, he added, “Gloria Simms – you know, your old boss – told me that. She said you're a fucking mindreader. She said you knew what people wanted before they knew themselves. When the fuck were you gonna share that with me, hmm? That’s a valuable talent to have in this industry.” The guys looked at me, puzzled. I was just as puzzled, too.

Suleman looked at our bewildered faces for a moment before returning to his chair. “So let’s go guys, chop chop. Time is money. We need ideas, and we need new places to test. Les, if I see one bar on the rundown sheet we have already been at I’m coming headhunting. So let’s move and take this thing somewhere, even if we’re burning the midnight oil. Order take-out, I don’t care.”

Martin piped up on the way out. “I know a good noodle house.”

“Best idea you’ve come up with yet, Martin,” I responded.
____________________________________________________________________________________

I sat in Margot’s office looking at some of the photos on the walls, mostly pictures of her snapped with various actors and celebrities who have worked on ad campaigns for TWBA. A few more personal pictures of Margot with Corrine at various ages were hung closer to her desk.

“I have an idea,” Margot began, “Working off Suleman’s idea of the flag, we should additionally look at the impact of colored bottles in our signage as a way of reinforcing the different flavors – citron, raspberry, watermelon, etc. – visually.”

“I like it,” I said. We could mock up something very simple on Illustrator and pass it on to the art department.”

“We should also look at some kind of forced perspective on the type treatment. Have you ever seen the materials Foote Cone and Belding did for Skittles candies and Skechers shoes? It’s very graphics driven, very linear, and as a result the one thing they managed to do was get the brand lost in the pretty graphics. We should get a hold of their work and use it as an example of what not to do.”

“Indeed,” I replied. “I’ll get a production assistant to dig it up.”

Margot leaned over her desk and put her hand on my arm. “Look at us, a regular one-two punch!” She grinned and gave my arm a little shake. “You know, Corrine is going to be so jealous that I’m working with you now.” She laughed and sat back down.

“Yeah, you know your munchkin hasn’t been around lately, though now we’re working together that will end the moment you tell her.”

“Yep. I remember when my first case of puppy love,” said Margot.

“I don’t know if I want to hear this,” I said. “Was this before or after electricity?” I joked.

“Quiet you!” Margot replied, picking up one of her Clio awards and faking like she was going to hurl it at me. “I’ll spare you all the sappy details this time. Just do me a favor Reed, let her down easy. She’s still going to have to date men in the future.”

“Hey, maybe I can turn her into a Lesbian and then you won’t have to worry about any guys coming around,” I laughed.

“I don’t think that would make things any easier.”

Corrine appeared the next day after her school let out. “Hi Reed, what are you doing today?”

“Today I’m working with your mother on some layout out ideas and colors. We’re also trying to identify some sections of town where we could display billboards and other signage.”

“Cool, I guess.”

I laughed. “You didn’t even know what that meant, did you?”

Corrine started turning red. “No.”

“It’s okay. Come over here, I’ll show you.”

Corrine quickly came behind the desk and stood next to me. “You smell good,” she said. “How come you don’t have a girlfriend?” she asked.

“How come you don’t have a boyfriend?” I asked.

“All the boys in secondary school are jerks. Half of them are nerds.”

“Yeah, that’s what I hear,” I said. “You know half the boys my age are nerds too.”

“Really? When do they stop being nerds?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I didn’t really want to continue circling the outer edges of the crush she had on me so I changed the subject. “Okay, color recognition. Did you know that certain colors trigger certain emotions and memories in people, and advertisers exploit that in order to get you to buy what they are trying to sell?”

“Really?”

“You bet. Example - guys always respond to blue. Always. It’s calming and non-threatening. It’s a proven neutral zone one can use to suck a guy in. There’s something in a guy’s chemistry that allows for this with blue more than any other color. That’s the primary reason baby boys have bedrooms and nurseries draped in blue.”

“Huh,” Corrine replied.

“Now get this. Research shows more men drink vodka than women, but we are trying to get more and more women to drink vodka. Men drink booze that’s either clear or brown in color. Women are more visceral so the solution traditionally has been to suck them in through the use of colored liquor. That’s why lemon drops, Cosmos, and appletinis have been so popular and all the women drink them. Men don’t care about crazy colors the same way.”

“I thought women drink them because they taste like candy,” Corrine replied.

“No doubt, that’s what makes them a repeat customer...but you’ve got to suck them in the first time and that’s where colors play their part.” I reached down below my desk and felt around for a couple of bottles. “Here, indulge me and play a little game with me Corrine. I’ll show you that everything I need to tap into as an advertiser has already been programmed into you. Ready?”

“Uh, yeah I guess,” Corrine replied.

Margot walked back into the office. “Oh, hi you two.” She saw me feeling around under my desk. “What are you doing?”

“Watch this Margot, I’m going to prove your daughter is a robot.”

My fingers came upon the first bottle I was looking for. “Okay. Passion, taboo, lurid, forbidden, risk-taking. What color do you think those words refer to?”

Corrine sat there for a moment, not knowing what to say, too embarrassed to let out an incorrect answer.

“Think about passion fruit. It’s the same idea. What color is it?”

“Oh! Purple, or violet.”

“Voila.” I produced the first bottle, a 750 milliliter bottle of Absolut Currant, housed in a translucent violet bottle. Corrine smiled.

“Okay. Now let’s say I’m a guy, and I’ve already told you how guys drink clear or brown colored booze. Vodka is clear, so if I walk into a bar and want vodka, which bottle am I going to order?” Next to the violet-colored bottle I placed a clear bottle of Absolut with its trademark blue type face.

Corrine pointed at the clear bottle immediately.

“Why that one?”

“Because you said guys won’t pick the goofy colors.”

“And?”

“And there’s blue on the bottle,” she added.

“You got it! See, it’s not hard to decipher at all.” Corrine smiled at Margot and me. “A perfect test subject,” I said. “I could kiss you.”

Corrine perked up. “Really?”

“Let’s not overdo it,” interjected Margot.
____________________________________________________________________________________

Work continued the next few weeks at a frenzied pace. All departments were humming, and all tests and mock-ups came through with flying colors. Signage began to pay off around the city, and bar tests showed more and more people responding to the bottle color changes and key tweaks in the text layouts. Suleman’s flag idea was a smash, a subtle reminder that some people still know their geography.

Absolut bought off on nearly everything, impressed we had turned things around so fervently. For them only one thing remained: A spokesperson and a photo shoot.

The gauntlet had been thrown down months ago when Coca-Cola strong-armed their advertising partner McCann-Erickson into dreaming up a campaign for Bacardi enterprises, in which Coke owned a huge stake. The resulting campaign was a hit, combining b-list stars with Bacardi-inspired drinks in a pool party setting. A subsequent campaign featuring runway models for Bacardi’s “0 grams sugar” sell also garnered rave reviews. Absolut had a simple request: Re-tool the idea, but make it more glamorous, more “night-on-the-town” inspired. Suleman had already signed actress Emmy Rossum to appear in the ads that would be placed on billboards and magazines in both Canada and Europe. It was going to make the agency rich, he said.

I sat in Suleman’s office with Margot the day before the shoot was scheduled to go down. He paced in front of us, head down and hands stuffed deep into his pockets.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck! What the fuck! How could this have happened?” he yelled.

“I’m telling you this guy is in breach. We can go after him later, but it does nothing to help us now,” Margot replied.

“I know! But we can’t be without a fucking photographer the fucking day before the fucking shoot!” Suleman stopped in place for a moment, thinking deeply. Then he resumed walking. “Fuck!”

Margot suggested options but was continually shot down. She even suggested pushing the shoot date – a last resort – but Suleman said that wasn’t even going to work as Emmy had to be in London the following week for principal shooting on her next project. Postponing the shoot would throw everybody, Absolut and us, way off our projected timeline.

I thought about calling Doug at the Los Angeles office and soliciting a name or two. Doug was a production scout, surely he knew some photographers. But the more I thought about it, the less it seemed a good idea. Getting someone out here on such short notice would be hard to do. Then it hit me.

“I know who we can get,” I said. I knew it would be a long shot, but right now long shots were all that was available. I’d seen Carolyn three times since we met on Valentine’s Day, and I found out she was a pretty damn good photographer, though her area was nature and outdoor still life photography. I didn’t know if she’d do it, but it was worth a shot.

“Are you going to let me in on your fucking secret?” said Suleman.

“Her name is Carolyn Perrotta. She’s local.”

“I like her already,” interrupted Suleman. He sat down at his desk and pulled a Djarum from a half-empty pack. Margot motioned a no with her head but Suleman ignored her.

“There might be a snag though,” I cautioned.

“No, no snags. That’s not the shit we need to hear,” said Suleman between quick puffs.

“What I mean is she’s an outdoors nature photographer. Still life stuff. I don’t know how she’ll do with this. And I don’t know if she’s already busy.”

Suleman stood up. “Can you get in touch with her?” I nodded. “Then do it. Explain the kind of bind we are in and tell her she can have any of the photos for her portfolio, even before the proofs get in the hands of Absolut. If she wants a fee boost because it's last minute I don’t care. Just get her.”
____________________________________________________________________________________

“I don’t know Reed, I mean how would you even know if I can do the stuff you’re looking for?”

“Because you’ve told me before that you can. Why would somebody claim that which they are not?” I replied.

“Still, I don’t do well in small enclosed places. There will be diffusers and scrims all over the place. And make-up people. They always get in the way. They mess up my concentration.”

I paused, tapping my pen on the desk as I listened. I needed a Mont Blanc, but I never got past the $225 price tag. Maybe a Dunhill fountain pen, they went for $100 less.

“You sound like you are trying to talk yourself out of doing it,” I said. “Why?”

“Because maybe I’m not good enough, maybe I’ll make a total ass out of myself.”

“I bet you’ll do fine. Better than fine. They’re in a bind, you’d really be making a big impression on them. Maybe it could lead to more work down the line. And you’d probably be able to gouge them for three times your price, too.”

Carolyn paused. It sounded like she was emptying groceries and putting cans and boxes away. “I’d have to go buy a ton of film for tomorrow, and give everything – all lenses and both cameras – a top to bottom cleaning tonight.”

“Then do it,” I said. “You’re going to clean them anyway eventually. And expense the film, it’s a work write-off. I know you can do this Carolyn. I’ve seen your photos, you do good work.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. Who do I need to talk to?”

I put her in touch with Suleman and within minutes he came running to my desk.

“That’s my muthafucka! Give me some love!” he said, putting out one hand for a high-five and catching the Kangol falling off his head with the other. He sat down beside me.

“Is she good? You know what, doesn’t even matter. Nothing is going to be delayed and that’s most important.” He pulled a Djarum from his shirt pocket and offered me one. I never liked the dry woodsy taste of Euro cigarettes so I declined.

“How much longer are you here Reed?” Suleman asked.

“That’s sort of up to you. When’s this project officially over?”

“I project...” he counted on his fingers, “mid-May. By May 15th or 20th you’ll be back on a plane for L.A...unless you don’t want to go.”

“Oh? What do you have in mind?”

Suleman turned his chair towards me and shifted his position, pausing to blow smoke out the side of his mouth. “It’s no secret I like your work. You’re a positive person and that intuitive sense inside your dome makes you a hot commodity. What do you know about Coca-Cola?”

“McCann-Erickson’s account. What of it?”

“It was McCann-Erickson’s account. Coke wants to market some new drink called “Coke Zero,” a zero calorie drink aimed at teens and young adults. It’s supposed to be like Diet Coke without the diet taste. Anyway, McCann couldn’t come up with anything to tap into the youth market, so Coke fired them.” Suleman leaned in close. He smelled like dirt and lighter fluid. “We pitched them, Reed. And we got it.”

He leaned back and smiled. “Billboards, magazine, television and radio. The sucker goes live late June in the States and late August in the rest of North America. But it’s big, terribly fucking big. We’d have to get rid of all our other in-house accounts just to have the manpower for Coke. It would be great to cut your teeth on and an excellent way of building your reputation in this field.”

I sat there, stunned by the prospect of staying longer in a city I was all too eager to leave just months ago. “How long does the account run?” I asked.

Suleman scratched his chin. “Twelve months for sure, maybe as long as sixteen, but you know how it works around here – when the fuck is anything ever delivered on time? So realistically it’s more like eighteen months.”

I didn’t know where to begin. “How would I even do it?” I asked.

“Well, you’d first have to get a transfer, a permanent one. Gloria Simms is not going to pay for you to work for us. And you’d have to find a place to live because the L.A office will stop paying for that hotel of yours the minute we announce we’re done with Absolut. I also imagine you’d have to get some kind of immigrant card down the line. I don’t know how long you can legally be here without paying taxes and whatever. You’d have to do some research. But think about it. I think you be a great asset here. If you like this town and what we do at TWBA then let’s run with it.”

He got up and started walking back towards his office. “Oh yeah, make sure your photographer shows up tomorrow or we’re all going to be looking for new jobs.”