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CHAPTER 10
“Got an idea yet? How about now?”
-Advertising Creative Wit (example #425)
The art of procrastination, as defined by the late great philosopher/historian/ship-in-a-bottle-builder Costello Colbath is, “Offering one’s backside to the parade of time.” The world may be full of those who consider themselves procrastinators, but in the green valley of procrastination, it is advertising creative professionals (like Kyle and Virgil) who bring in the biggest, most bountiful cornucopia of delay. Give them three weeks to turn in ideas, it is a certainty that they’ll begin work at the two week, four day mark. You will walk the earth and not find people more dedicated to avoiding the task given to them (for which they signed up voluntarily to do) and to find all manner of banal subjects suddenly more fascinating than the client’s advertising needs. Need to create an ad campaign for a power drink? Take a sudden interest in whether or not your desk light dims a little when you turn on your laptop. Spend six hours figuring this out – coffee breaks included; then go to a movie. Maybe have lunch two hours away. Visit everyone in your agency. Attend meetings that don’t concern you. Talk with your creative partner about the following:
5. Great movie lines
6. Getting trashed
About this time, the Account Executive (Johnette) will ask if the Creative Team (still considered advertising professionals) could have the work ready to show the client sooner. The Creative Team will unleash the procrastination dogs of hell with self-righteous indignation at what little time they had to begin with. The Creative Team will then go directly to a neighborhood bar to bitch about the sweat shop conditions they must suffer under. It is only after a supposedly chance encounter with the Creative Director (Jackson, who’ll act as if he just remembered he had a creative team and that they were working on something) who’ll make a joke about the Creative Team lighting up the sky with brilliant incandescent ideas. The Creative Team will reply with typical blow job snark, retreat to a small room somewhere, try to figure out if their Creative Director thinks they’re hacks and begin to realize they’ve pissed away far too much time. Suddenly the Creative Team will take on the persona of George Clooney running through a crowded airport, carrying a wounded Ethiopian child that’s gotta get on that plane to safety.
Kyle and Virgil were somewhere between the catching a matinee (which in this case was a screening of “Soylent Green” – Kyle’s title selection - in the big theatre) and taking a nap. Their office space was fairly complete and well stocked with machinery and beer. Virgil put away the suds without telling Kyle that it had no effect on him. Why spoil the vibe? They had their desks facing each other in the center of the room. Feet up, opened beer, laptops at the ready.
First order of business: naming the hut.
After considered deliberation, HQ seemed to roll of the tongue easily and was in keeping with the thematics of the place. That settled, it was time to work.
“So what’s our nugget here?” Virgil asked.
“Middle class American families looking for a cheap vacation thrill,” Kyle said.
“Middle American’s pretty broad,” Virgil said. “Are they educated? Are they professionals? 2.8 kids?”
“You remember Jackson’s spiel, right? The WalMart of the tradewinds? Give us your moderate income, SUV driving, two weeks vacation a year family. We’re reeling in the NASCAR, red meat, with some disposable income.”
Virgil tossed back some white meat-looking substance.
“What are you eating?” Kyle asked.
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Is it human?”
“It’s not fuckin’ human.”
“What is it then?”
“Rats. I’m eating skinned rats. Want one?”
“Ask me in another couple beers.”
“Okay, so here’s a question,” Virgil said. “Why do we think they’d rather come to the Caribbean than Disney Orlando or the Grand Canyon?”
“Cuz they never been,” Kyle said. “They assumed it costs too much. They can’t find it on a map. Who the fuck skins the rats?”
“Otto. Otto the chef skins the rats,” Virgil said.
“Oh,” Kyle said. “Because the Caribbean sounds like traveling the world. It sounds like a foreign exotic destination they’d never get to experience. Did your folks ever go to Aruba?”
“Nah, National Parks,” Virgil said. “Vegas, Niagra Falls, shit like that. Yours?”
“They never went anywhere,” Kyle said. “Disneyland a few times. Busch Gardens.”
“What’s Busch Gardens?”
“A Budweiser plant with a steamboat tour. It’s fucked up. Don’t ask.”
“Okay, so it’s the Caribbean on the cheap,” Virgil said. “We need to tell them they have enough cash to get here and have a good time in the sun.”
“And it’s not Florida or your Aunt Dixie’s in Texarkana,” Kyle added.
Virgil tossed another rat bit into his mouth. Kyle absent mindedly snacked on a bag of wasabi green peas. They looked like two ad guys chewing their cud. Two ad guys trying to zero in on something that will resemble an idea and entertain themselves AND make the client happy. Two ad guys, who in the time honored tradition, were fighting back that familiar feeling that they were hacks, that they would never get close to solving this problem in a creative way and that it was a stupid way to spend what little time you had left on earth.
“Whaddya got?” Kyle asked.
“Bupkis,” Virgil answered.
“You think they have ‘Dawn of the Dead’ in the film library back at the hotel?” Kyle asked.
“Probably not,” answered Virgil.
“Night of the Living Dead?”
“Probably. Black and white classic.”
“Oooh, know what? Let’s go watch ‘The Omega Man’,” Kyle said.
“A little Chuck Heston to get the magic flowing?”
“Yeah.”
“Duder, we gotta bang this shit out,” Virgil said.
“Or what? We’ll get fired?” Kyle said. “C’mon, I’ll buy the rats.”
“Duder –“
“Johnette’s hot. What’s zombie sex like?
“It’s a lot like necrophilia. More chatter.”
“I thought you said I’d be swimming in poon? Did you lie about that too?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Fuckwipe.”
“Suckah.”
More chewing. More slurping. Kyle got out of his chair and grabbed his signature Buford Pusser axe handle and began to pace. The axe handle, a signature concepting session prop of Kyle’s, was pulled out of storage in Seattle. Kyle couldn’t remember when he started pacing and carrying a big stick, but it really did seem to help him think.
“This is the vacation they’ve dreamt about,” Kyle said. “This is the idea that they were doing okay in America. Y’know? No more compromise vacations. No more boring destinations that feel as if they could be home in ten minutes. Disappointing motel rooms. Crappy food. Indifferent customer service. This was an actual destination that didn’t require a preface of ‘you wouldn’t believe it.’”
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Virgil said, tapping quickly on his laptop. “There’s something kinda cool about ‘You wouldn’t believe it’.”
“Yeah, ‘You wouldn’t believe’ that it was possible for us to go somewhere that requires a passport. You wouldn’t believe that it was possible for us to stand in clear jade waters. To pass through something called ‘Customs’. To hear a language you never heard before.”
“You wouldn’t believe it was possible to hold foreign currency in your hand,” Virgil said as he wrote.
Kyle continued pacing, switching the axe handle from shoulder to shoulder.
“Beautifully shot, lush beach scenes featuring real out of shape, everyday people,” Kyle said. “No thongs. No speedos. No six packs or surgically enhanced tits. Cornfed blue collar with sunburns and sun bleached hair blowing in the breeze as they sip outrageously huge drinks with names like, ’12 Day Weekend’ and…”
“Work Eraser,” Virgil said.
“Work Eraser,” Kyle repeated.
“I like this direction,” Virgil said. “Feels like Roseanne meets Fantasy Island.”
One interesting aspect of a Creative Team is that like mining for gold, if you get one little nugget, you keep at it until the vein goes dead. Two more hours and four more directions (two that might have some merit) later, Kyle and Virgil found themselves in the theatre watching Charleton Heston talking to a mannequin.