Short Story: Superfreaky Memories
It took a long time for me to write a short story with advertising featured in one way or another. Probably because it can often be a grueling profession and the last thing I want to do when I’m off the clock is think about advertising. But the idea of Dreamverts™ seemed like one worth exploring. We’re already trying to put ads on the moon or faking it to win awards. How far away are we from ads invading our dreams?
"Superfreaky Memories,” is yet another example of Luna inspiring my writing side. And professional for that matter, as I once helped finagle Bob Dylan’s son Jesse into casting Britta Phillips in a Pizza Hut spot. The spot was what you’d expect for a retail pizza chain. Between takes, Jesse regaled us with stories about sitting on John Lennon’s knee as a child and thinking it wasn’t a big deal, because it was just “one of dad’s friends.”
We shot the spot in New Jersey in the height of summer in a house that was sweltering because the AC was loud and to run it would have ruined the spot. At least I had a hotel in the city. In those days I was staying at the Soho Grand for work so frequently it became my second home.
“Superfreaky Memories,” the song is essentially reminiscing about dark druggy days. Its tone is melancholy. Two lines jumped out when I first heard it: Now the years are rolling by and you don't get any wiser and the years are rolling on but you're going round and round.
That inspired the other part of the story involving a group of people looking for belonging and meaning. The rest came together thanks to my wife who is a computer geek and always the first reader of anything I write.
The Guardian wrote about the “horror” of Dreamverts™ four years after this story was written.
Superfreaky Memories
The room was packed with account executives, strategic planners, producers, interns, digital strategists, public relations execs, media buyers, UX designers, and clients. The art directors, copywriters and creative directors were not in attendance. They were watching a lecture with a celebrity who’d recently starred in an action film that bombed and had nothing whatsoever to do with advertising. Plenty of rubes in the room remained so I wasn’t worried.
I touched my computer. A slide appeared on the screen behind me showing a cheesy stock photo of a businessman with a toothy grin, throwing money into the air.
“What I’m about to say is controversial. Are you ready?” Not one person answered. “Here goes. As far as advertising goes, digital and social are bullshit media. You are wasting hundreds of millions every year. And if you stop lying to yourself and put your made up metrics down—if you do something rare in this industry and are one hundred percent honest—you’ll know that needle hasn’t moved at all.”
I clicked to the next slide. It showed an infographic from a study commissioned by an advertising trade association. Over the past five years, the amount of money agencies spent on digital and social media advertising increased twenty-five percent on a year-over-year basis. And yet the actual return on investment (calculated in terms of response, click-through, return on ad spend (ROAS) and actual sales conversion) was a flat line.
“Clients, you’re wasting money. Ad agencies, you’re hoping no one notices because you never got over the first dot com bubble burst and you desperately want that kind of money again. And you’re jealous of media because they’re making money hand over fist. But it’s all a pipe dream.”
I clicked through the slides depicting banner ads, a featured story, a social media site and mobile advertising. “It’s broken. Programmatic advertising? Bullshit. Multi-paneled carousel units? Bullshit. Mobile units? Bull. Shit. Am I clear?”
Two people got up and made their way to the exit.
“You fell for your own lies. And you’ve been walking around with your eyes closed, hoping no one would notice.” I clicked to a slide that showed someone behind the wheel of a car, eyes closed.
“You are asleep at the wheel. But luckily, while you were sleeping, I figured out a way to not only save the industry, but earn untold billions, with minimal effort.”
I clicked to another slide. It was black. There was one word written on it. A brilliant logo with a one-of-a-kind typeface, created by a Brazilian designer that cost me fifty thousand dollars and was worth every penny. The word in question was Dreamverts™.
“Since advertising began, we’ve tried to get the consumer’s attention where they spend the most time. All we’ve done is condition them to ignore us.”
I clicked to the next slide, showcasing three social posts that went viral. After a beat each one of them disappeared. “Even the few social media successes haven’t translated to anything beyond a momentary increase in chatter, or a temporary increase in traffic to the website or whatever. Objectively speaking, this has not translated into increased sales. People are spending time with the brands. What they aren’t doing is spending money.”
I looked around the room. All eyes were on me. Like any skeptical client, I’d win them over. I’d sell them the same way I sold a global campaign for that swimwear brand that turned it from a laughing stock in America into a juggernaut. With patience, humor, bravado, showmanship and if necessary, aggression. They were going to buy what I was selling. They had no choice.
Todd sat in Doctor Emily’s office, lanky legs crossed, hands folded, composed. The doctor always chatted with her patients after their exams, putting them at ease before they want back out in the world. It was one of the reasons The Sunrise Retirement Community won top honors year after year. Personal attention. Loving care. And of course, the best medical staff around.
As its name implied, Sunrise was cheery. Guests, as they were known, were vibrant, possessed all faculties, and were wealthy. Todd was no exception, having turned a small clothing store into a worldwide chain before selling it to a larger company for close to two hundred million dollars. Sunrise was less a retirement home and more an exclusive resort for people who refused to give in to old age.
“Your tests all look good, cholesterol’s low, blood pressure is great. Your weight’s held steady. Your full MRI shows nothing out of the ordinary.” Doctor Emily said. “Still taking those long walks?”
“Of course,” Todd said. “Only now that it’s summer, I take them at dawn rather than at midday. I can’t stand the heat.”
Doctor Emily nodded. “Just as well. Don’t want to worry about skin cancer. If there’s nothing else, I guess we’ll see you in a year.” Todd help up a hand when she stood.
“There is one thing,” he began.
“Oh?”
“Doctor Emily. I’m not one for flights of fancy. Nor am I a hypochondriac. I’m smart enough to know you can’t believe what you read online, especially when it comes to medical websites. I’ve always said the CDC should be more involved in regulating them. They prey on the vulnerable and uninformed alike.”
“Very true,” Doctor Emily said. “So what is eating you?”
“This is going to sound strange. But for the past two months I’ve been obsessed with two words. I’m fixating on them. Day and night. Is that a sign of anything bad?”
“Which words?”
He paused. “Oak pussy.”
Doctor Emily stifled a laugh.
“I don’t know if those words are supposed to go together or if they are unrelated. But the words ‘oak,’ and ‘pussy,’ are always in my head.”
Doctor Emily made a show of thinking hard. “Todd, everything checked out, including your brain. And I’ve never known a fixation of words to be a sign of anything except perhaps obsessive-compulsive disorder, which you certainly do not have. You could be tired, or stressed, but it could just as easily be nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She nodded. “In the same way that getting a song stuck in your head or suddenly noticing Audis every time you’re on the road is essentially nothing. Strange, perhaps, but insignificant.“
“I do hope you are right. I think you are. But I have to say it is annoying.”
Doctor Emily showed him to her door. “I can refer you to a therapist if it keeps up.”
“I’m not that far gone,” he joked.
I’d earned a reputation over the years of being a great creative director. Sure as hell had the boatload of awards to prove it. But ever since I started my own shop two years ago, people talked shit about me. What has he done since he went out on his own? Does he even have clients? It’s like they wanted me to fail. They had no idea how wrong they were.
A hand rose from the audience. I recognized the woman. She was an account director. I’m sure we’d worked together at one of the dozen agencies I’d been to before I started my own shop.
“Dreamverts™? Is that some kind of VR experience?”
“All in good time.” I was going to savor this moment. Why rush the mind fuck? “First I need to explain how I ended up here.”
The next slide featured the name of my agency. “I started Sidewinder two years ago with the humble idea of changing the ad industry as we know it. Throwing out all the traditional stuff, really giving it a rethink, starting with the people. I brought in folks who had all kinds of different backgrounds to be part of a think tank. They weren’t tasked with solving client problems, but the advertising industry’s problems as a whole.”
I clicked through some slides showing various charts and graphs. “I’ve already covered a lot of this. But it’s worth noting a lot of clients have gotten wise. A major cereal company just yanked a hundred million dollar ad spend from Facebook, because they came to the same realization I did. That digital ad spends are bullshit.”
“You already said that,” someone in the audience said.
“And I’ll keep saying it, too. Everyone seems to love the word ‘disruption,’ don’t they? Well I’m going to give you disruption that will make your brains melt.” I heard my own voice rising to zealot level. I coughed to clear it away.
“The idea of Dreamverts™ came to me about three years ago. It took this long to build the platform and get it right.”
The next slide showed a beautiful woman in bed, eyes closed, looking peaceful. “I kept thinking that spending money on digital and social was so pointless it was like trying to advertise to someone in their sleep. Then it hit me. Why not do exactly that?”
“Do what?” someone asked. I looked for source of the voice. It came from a producer I worked with when I lived in Toronto.
“Advertise to people while they slept. In-dream advertising.”
The room erupted in laughter.
“So funny,” I said. “Almost as funny as convincing your clients to spend an extra two hundred grand to film the behind-the-scenes of your spot for salad dressing. Not sure about you but I’ve never seen BTS with more than five thousand hits on YouTube unless you paid for the views. But I digress.”
The next slide featured two different gifs that looped an animation of brain activity. “The brain on the right depicts normal activity of someone browsing online. The brain on the left is when people are asleep. Note the most frenzied activity is when they are online, like Twitter or Amazon or CNN or Facebook or whatever. It’s complete overstimulation. Who can pay attention to anything in that mental state? By contrast, the brain on the left is calmer. Not completely still, far from it. It’s just a different kind of frenetic energy.”
I clicked to the next slide. This one had a different gif. A cartoon sponge absorbing a lake-sized amount of water, over and over again.
“When they are browsing online, they suffer from information overload. It doesn’t matter how clever, simple, or creative you make your ads. Banner ads, social posts, featured stories—they all might as well be white noise. But when people are asleep—particularly when dreaming—their brains are very receptive to information. The question I dared to ask was, what if we could figure out a way to reach the consumer when they were the most receptive to our messaging at a time where there is little to no competition for their attention? How much more exponentially effective would our ads be?”
Todd left the doctor’s office and headed home. At the last moment, he changed his mind, left the Sunrise grounds, and caught a bus towards town. He didn’t have a particular need to go there. It just seemed like a good idea. He had no reason to stay home. It was two in the afternoon. The sun was shining. It was a gorgeous day.
He could stop at Wentworth’s bookstore, chat with the owner, pet Trixie the trusted bookstore’s mouser and buy a new paperback. Or take in a movie if anything was worth seeing. His next-door neighbor Carla had mentioned something about a French restaurant that had just opened. He could have an early dinner. If it was good, then perhaps he and Carla could make it a date, albeit a platonic one. Neither had interest in the other beyond friendship. He hadn’t had interest in anyone in a while.
Oak. Pussy. Dammit all, he thought. What do those words mean? Why do they appear? Why him? He’d never been much of a drinker, never took drugs at all. Hadn’t had a stressful day since he sold the company. His brain wasn’t on the fritz. What was this strange development and why now?
He thought back. Two months ago. It was a Wednesday. Did something different happen then? No. It was a day like any other. He was sure of it. He got up, had his breakfast, took his morning walk. Answered some correspondence. Checked in with his stockbroker. Had lunch. Thought about napping but didn’t. Listened to music. Had dinner. Emailed his daughter. Watched the news. Met up with friends at the Sunrise bar, and then made it an early night. In short, it was a regular day. If anything, Todd felt he’d been in a bit of a rut the past year or so. It all felt too familiar.
Then the words came while he was in the shower. He grabbed the soap, lathered up and thought Oak Pussy. Except it wasn’t really a thought, was it? No. Just words. Oak Pussy. Or Oak and Pussy. Or Oak. Pussy. His mind churned. Oak was easy enough. But was Pussy a cat or a vulgar slang? If so, did that make Oak a phallic symbol too, or just wood? It was confounding.
Doctor Emily mentioned the phenomenon of songs that stay with you. Ear worms. In this case the words stayed with him, but with no melody to accompany them. No meaning that he could see. But disturbing in their persistence somehow, like an ominous sign he couldn’t read.
Todd stared out the window, still lost in thought. No school buses in summer, still too early for rush hour. Traffic was light. What was the name of that French restaurant? Chagall? Chantal? Something like that. The thought of food made his mouth water. For the past year he’d watched his weight with the discipline of a prizefighter. With the good news from Doctor Emily, it was time for a rare indulgence.
He glanced out the window once again, realizing too late, he’d missed his stop. He stood in a panic, touched the bell to alert the driver and walked to the front of the bus. The next stop was four or five blocks away. It wasn’t the hassle of walking back that irked him. It was more that his wandering mind had been the cause of it.
Todd reached out a hand to grab a railing as he made his way to the front of the bus. He was surprised how crowded it was. Every seat was taken except three. Nurses, construction workers, college students, businessmen, and the occasional tramp—everyone was represented.
If only he could drown out the two words that haunted him like nonsensical ghosts. Think about the bookstore, or Trixie the cat, or the restaurant. He wondered what kind of French restaurant it was. Something regional, or old standards? Either was okay with him provided the name wasn’t Oak Pussy.
“I see I have your attention now. Good.” I changed the slide again. On this one was a photo of a geek wearing a VR headset arms outstretched. He looked like a zombie.
“Many of you think VR has vast potential. You’re convinced that in just a few years from now, a budget for a VR experience will be as cost-efficient as as a social media post. Perhaps some of you have already produced some concepts involving VR. I wouldn’t know since I don’t watch case study videos, which is the only way most people would even hear about it. Regardless, I’m here to tell you that what’s up here in our head is truly untapped territory. At least, it was until now.”
I changed the slide once again. Now I would grab their attention with a two-minute animated film that went into just enough detail to make them understand without giving away anything that would threaten my patent-pending intellectual property. I talked over the film to give a brief explanation of how it worked.
It opens on a woman getting ready for bed. She closes her eyes. An old-fashioned alarm clock with two hands starts spinning. The film then goes inside her head, revealing a smaller version of herself. She sets up an old projector. On the screen is a Dreamverts™ logo followed by a message that reads: Your Brand Here.
When the film stopped I said, “Obviously, this is an oversimplification, but you can get the gist of it.”
A voice interrupted. I couldn’t see where it came from. “Are you really proposing to advertise to someone against their will?”
“You mean beyond what we already do?”
When the laughter died down, the voice continued. “But this is different. They’re asleep, for God’s sake. What you are talking about is subliminal advertising.”
As a kid, I’d heard about subliminal advertising. The story went that a soda brand added in a single frame of their drink during a movie. The frame would go by so fast it would be imperceptible to the viewer. But their brains would recognize it all the same, propelling them from their seat to the concession stand. It felt like a letdown when I learned it was just an urban legend.
“There’s a difference between subliminal and subconscious. Besides, you’re not seeing the bigger picture here.“
A client spoke up. I recognized her as the CMO of a financial planning brand I pitched once. I didn’t win the account. “What I’m seeing is probably unethical and farfetched at best.”
“Sounds like you’re the one spewing the bullshit,” another person said.
“I’ll prove it to you. Would you like that?” I stepped away from the podium and walked into the audience. I looked around the room until I spotted the first victim, a junior account executive.
I pointed. “You had a dream last night, right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Her face turned crimson. “Yes, okay? I had a dream last night.”
“Tell us about it.” I smiled in encouragement.
“It was unusual because it was, well, kind of erotic. I dreamed I was having sex with my boyfriend in a Spanish villa.”
“Muy caliente,” I said. ”Go on. Without the graphic details, of course.”
“I remember after we were done. I went into the kitchen. I asked him if he was hungry. And I opened the refrigerator.”
“You opened the refrigerator,” I prompted. “And?”
“And I saw a jar of Jif peanut butter. It was so striking I wrote it down in my dream journal this morning.” The expression on her face went from realization to horror, before ending on unbridled anger. “You bastard. You violated me. You fucking bastard.” She tried to charge me, but was stopped by an art buyer friend of mine I hadn’t noticed earlier.
“Show of hands. Anyone else have a vivid dream involving Jif?” Sixteen hands went up. “Congratulations! You experienced Dreamverts™.”
Todd reached the front of the bus just as it slowed. He glanced at one of the passengers. What he saw made him stop in his tracks. A man in his late thirties clutched a messenger bag. He wore a newsboy cap and brown t-shirt. Two words were written on the shirt in white blocky letters.
“Oak Pussy,” Todd shouted. The man looked up, startled. He got up and ran off the bus. Todd chased after him.
“Wait!”
The man headed north at a brisk pace. He kept glancing over his shoulder. Todd followed after. Five blocks later, he watched the man enter Wentworth’s bookstore.
Todd waited, letting his breathing go back to normal. He pushed open the door and went inside. Trixie was in her usual spot in the window, fast asleep. Mr. Wentworth stood behind the counter, flipping through a magazine. He looked up when he heard the bell on the door ring.
“Nice to see you, Todd. Been a few months.”
“Indeed it has,” Todd said. “Time for some new books.”
“Or old ones, eh?”
Todd looked around the store. The man in the brown t-shirt was nowhere to be seen. He walked through each aisle, picking up books and putting them back without even looking at their covers.
“Help you find something?”
“You see a man with a brown t-shirt come in here?”
“When?”
“Few minutes before me.”
Mr. Wentworth took his time answering. His voice was cautious. “What do you want with him?”
“To talk to him. That’s all.”
“About anything in particular?”
Todd pointed to his chest. “He had the words ‘oak pussy’ written on his shirt.”
Mr. Wentworth’s face was blank. “Those words mean something to you?”
Todd told him what little there was to tell.
“So I just figured that if he had it on a shirt, he’d know what it was. Is it a fashion brand? Or is it a band name? A movie?”
Mr. Wentworth switched the “Yes, We’re Open,” sign so it read “Sorry, We’re Closed.” He then locked the front door.
“Figured there had to be more. Come on.”
Mr. Wentworth led him to a door at the back of the store. He’d assumed it was an office or storage room. When Todd pushed open the door, he was surprised to see the room was not only larger than the bookstore itself, but filled with a few hundred people.
Waves of anger threatened to turn the audience into a mob. I went back to the podium for safety as much as to regain control of the room. “Calm down, everyone. I’ll explain.” Their anger subsided. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and plunged in.
“Sixteen of you dreamt about Jif because you kept your mobile phones on your bed stand at night. Now, I can’t tell you the ins-and-outs, that’s proprietary. What I will say is proximity is key. As long as your phones are within six feet of your bed at night, Dreamverts™ will work. The majority of the population sleeps next to their phones. Young, old, black, white, doesn’t matter. All demographics are represented. By the way, this is true on a global scale.”
A client I used to work with when he was on a different brand raised his hand. “What do phones have to do with our dreams?”
“Ever have a conversation about losing weight and all of a sudden Instagram shows you nothing weight-loss ads?”
The junior account executive sat with her arms crossed. “The number doesn’t seen very high. Sixteen.”
“I’m sure there were more. But for this particular focus group I only chose twenty-five of you. That’s a 64% response and retention rate for product placement. How many of your digital ads ever received that kind of response the very first time let alone ever?” That’s a rhetorical question; we all know the answer.”
The same client raised his hand again. “Can you guarantee those numbers??”
“With almost near certainty,” I said. “The average person sleeps seven hours a night and has anywhere from four to six dreams per night, maybe more. The odds are always in our favor.”
I clicked onto the slide showing a booze bottle and a marijuana leaf. “Our studies show the difference in retention of people who were drunk or in any other way impaired was negligible.” The next slide showed a pill with an RX on it. “Same with sleeping pills and anti-depressants. In other words, Dreamverts™ doesn’t just cut through clutter. Dreamverts™ negates clutter entirely.”
The client raised his hand again. I ignored him.
“I need to stress that our research didn’t only come from those of you who were, shall we say, organic participants in this focus group last night. Far from it. We’ve conducted multiple studies over the past year and three months. We’ve done our homework. We’ve got the numbers. And I stand by those numbers.”
An executive creative director cleared his throat. I’d only seen him at award shows. I avoided him like the plague. He was the type who would bully people into drinking shots with him. By the end of the night he was so loaded he couldn’t stand. He was known behind his back as Peter Pan.
A person I didn’t recognize raised his hand. He was English. “This sounds like a great shortcut. But at what price?”
“Morally? There is none. Everyone here downloaded the Cannes App. I worked with them to embed our Dreamverts™ program into it and then enabled it on a select few. By agreeing to their terms of service, you agreed to our terms of service, too.”
“I was rather thinking financially,” the Englishman said.
“We can talk one-on-one if you are serious. There are a lot of variables, but for argument’s sake, I can tell you the starting price is equal to if not more than what you’d pay to produce and run a thirty-second Super Bowl spot. But while the Super Bowl can reach hundreds of millions, it’s a grapeshot approach. This can target everyone in your demographic by country, city, neighborhood, even by a street. This technology doesn’t come cheap, but it’s a small investment considering we can beat your KPI’s without even trying.”
It turned to the last slide in the deck that once again featured the Sidewinder logo.
“I realize this is a lot to process. But I’m open all tomorrow. Come seek me out, ask questions. I am inviting you to try to poke holes in this. You won’t be able to. But by all means, try. Thanks for listening.”
I went back to my room. Cannes was hot as shit as usual. I could have mingled with people I’d worked with in the past, drinking rosé at scandalous prices. Instead, I sat on my room’s balcony, sipping Amaro Nonino with ice, and waited for the texts and emails to come. It didn’t take long. First, a client texted asking if they could set up a one-on-one meeting at my earliest convenience. Then the CCO of an agency that had lost its luster at the turn of the century wanted to have breakfast. Another former client sent a smarmy email suggesting lunch. And a Scandinavian art director sent a flirty DM to my Twitter account wanting to meet for drinks in my room. I answered her first.
Twenty minutes before the Scandinavian art director arrived, I received a frantic text from Jake, the head of Sidewinder’s IT department:
Know you’re busy but we have a problem. When can you talk?
I frowned at the message, and then picked up the hotel’s phone.
“Hi, I’d liked to order a bottle of rosé. Dry, not too fruity. I’d also like the escargot, the squab and John Dory, and for dessert, let’s go with the cheese plate. Oh, and a bottle of Pastis. Perfect. Merci.
I undressed, hopped in the shower and got ready for my date. I was used to Jake’s panic attacks. They happened with regularity. He could wait.
Todd lost count around the one hundred mark, but there might have been two times as many. Men, women, young, old, all sitting in rows. Almost all wore the same brown t-shirts.
“Todd is a long time customer,” Mister Wentworth said, by way of introduction. “He came in here not five minutes ago wondering what Oak Pussy meant.”
“Hello Todd,” the group said in unison.
Instead of responding, he turned to Mr. Wentworth. “Do you know what’s going on?”
Mr. Wentworth gestured to a chair. “Please.”
As Todd sat, Mr. Wentworth moved to the front of the audience.
“I will recount everything for Todd’s benefit as much as ours as I know some of you are still very new to this, whatever it is. Starting approximately two months ago, possibly as much as three, all of us came to the realization that the words Oak Pussy held a large but inexplicable significance in our lives. As a few of you are frequenters of my store, we naturally met up. Slowly the word got around, and the rest of you appeared and now here we are, trying to understand this phenomenon.”
The room was cool. Todd stared at the collection of people. None of them shared any common trait. It was, he noted, a perfect portrait of diversity. He saw representatives of every demographic. Men. Women. He wasn’t positive, but he thought there were a few transgender as well. The religious were represented, too. Sikhs, a rabbi, and imam, and two nuns. No doubt many members of other religions as well as atheists were gathered. Not to mention everyone on the color spectrum.
Mr. Wentworth smiled. “Todd, I don’t know how I became the organizer of this group. But I’ve had this large back room for quite a while. I used to keep my collection of rare antique books here, but that still left more than half the room unoccupied. Once I sold off my collection, I planned on leasing it out to another business. Before I could though, this thing started happening. The room’s where we’ve been having our weekly meetings.”
Todd looked around the room. “What do you meet about, exactly?”
“We meet to try and figure out why we are all so fixated on these words. What does it all mean?”
“I still think it’s something perverted,” a man with a heavy accent that Todd couldn’t place said. “Pussy. Disgusting.”
A woman in a grey shapeless dress shook her head. “But it must mean more than this. It’s not like this is a sex cult.”
“If it was, I’d have gotten some by now,” an old lady said.
“Be that as it may,” the rabbi said, “the significance must mean something. I have searched the Torah, the Talmud and even the Zohar and have come up blank as it were.”
The two nuns and the imam voiced their agreement. A young man with a pierced cheek, wearing a t-shirt with Darwin’s face on it nodded as well. “From a pure scientific and atheist standpoint at least, none of it makes sense. I keep thinking we’re under some sort of collective hypnosis. The collective cognitive imperative, if you would.”
A girl in her late teens said “Sometimes when I try to describe it, it sounds like we’re members of a cult. But if we’ve all jumped on some bandwagon, it has no driver.”
More discussion ensued. The back and forth threatened to devolve into aimless chaos, until Mr. Wentworth clapped his hands. “Please, this is getting us nowhere. Last week we agreed to come up with suggestions as to what Oak and Pussy might mean. Now then, has anyone had any success?”
The room fell silent. Mr. Wentworth looked at Todd. “How about you? Anything you can contribute?”
Todd looked around the room. “Unfortunately, no. Except, I went to my doctor today for a check up and mentioned it.”
“Yes?” Mister Wentworth said. “And?”
“And nothing. She said it was one of those things. Mind playing tricks on you. Like when a song gets stuck in your head. Nothing to worry about.”
“Your doctor is an idiot,” the man in the Darwin t-shirt said.
“Now, now,” Mister Wentworth cautioned. “Todd, how did you come to uh—”?
“All I know is two months ago I was in the shower and the words came to me.”
“Me too,” the woman in the shapeless grey dress said. “I told you it was connected to water.” She smiled at Todd. “Are you an Aquarius like me?”
Others did not share the same experience, however. The words came to some while driving, or eating breakfast, or sitting in a meeting, or drinking coffee or reading a newspaper. One person even admitted the words appeared while they were having sex with their partner.
“This is getting us nowhere,” the rabbi said. “And yet the words are there as strong as ever.”
A chubby man in a short-sleeved dress shirt stood up. He held a piece of paper in his hands. “Look, we’re all bringing our own cognitive bias to this. And maybe that’s helpful because each point of view is like looking through a lens. And if the lens is blurry, we look though another lens.”
The imam asked: “And what is your lens?”
“I work for the state parks and recreation department. I started thinking. Let’s assume for a moment that the words have to do with nature.” He held up the paper for the room to see. It showed a satellite map. “Now this is a map of the largest park in the state about an hour from here.”
“Go on,” Mr. Wentworth said.
The man pointed to a demarcation line. “Well, it just so happens that there is a large pussy willow arbor here. It’s kind of a landmark along this hiking trail. Some couples even get married there.” He looked at the photo and then looked around the room. “This arbor is in a clearing. But surrounding it is an oak forest. Might be a long shot, but maybe this spot has something to do with it?”
I woke up early next morning and telephoned room service for deux café completes. The Scandinavian art director and I had enough time for one more romp before the breakfast arrived. Good day so far. I chugged my coffee, squeezed her ass as she went out the door, jumped in the shower and went downstairs for the first of many breakfasts, lunches, drinks and dinners with prospective clients. Word had gotten around fast and my phone kept blowing up.
“Hey it’s Jake, we really need to talk. Shit is really hitting the fan here and it’s not going to—”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll fix it. I trust you.”
“This is important,” he protested.
“So is this,” I yelled. “I’ve got at least eight potential client meetings today. Possibly more. I’ll be coming home fifteen pounds heavier from all the food and drink. But if I even sell this to like two people, we are set for life, do you understand? I just walked in the elevator, so I might lose you.”
His voice was desperate. “Listen to me. We have a huge problem on our hands. Like, Hindenburg huge.”
“What? How?”
No answer. The elevator opened. I hurried out to call him back. Before I could hit redial, I was stopped by one of the clients who attended my presentation.
“There you are. Ready for breakfast? You must tell me more about this. I trust you have not only metrics but hard costs?”
I put my phone in my pocket and smiled. “Of course.”
Over my second breakfast that morning, I laid out specifics in a granular way that was different from my general presentation. More detailed, and with more numbers.
The client whistled. “You know, that’s a lot of money.”
“You saw it work with your very own eyes. And for the record, I don’t know any of those people and have never worked with them professionally.”
“Oh, I know,” the client said. “It worked on me as well. And we’d never met before, either.” He shook his head. “It’s just really a lot of money.”
I flagged a waiter for the check. “You’re the head of yet another company who recently pulled fifty million of your digital spend. I understand you feel a bit jaded by the people who sell you a bill of goods. But I’m telling you this is real innovation that brings real results. For your digital ad spend, I can guarantee at least a sixty percent response rate and increase in sales. Within six weeks.”
I signed the bill, letting him see my black American Express card in the process. Sure, it was a cheap trick. But people fall for cheap tricks in Cannes. Stupid things impress stupid people.
“Think it over. Sorry to rush. I have seven more meetings today.”
He stopped me. “I am on board. Believe me. I just need to meet with our leadership team and head of finance. They’re going to want to unpack this first. Really understand the process. Is there a PDF of the presentation you could send me?”
I shook my head. “Not even if it were password protected and your entire company including the cleaning crew signed an NDA. There are people within my own company who haven’t seen this project.”
“I can respect that. You just need to understand, even though I’m CMO I don’t pull the purse strings regardless of what people say. There’s the president and our shareholders to think of.”
“Tell you what. Let’s meet up in the next couple of weeks when we’re stateside. Bring the people you need to convince to L.A., or I’ll come there and do a closed-door presentation. But only to the real decision makers. No junior level people.”
“I appreciate it.”
“I’m in no rush. Business is booming.”
That last part was a stretch. But he needed to believe that I didn’t need him. He needed me.
Mr. Wentworth decided they should break off into small groups to get to know each other and discuss further before calling it a day. Todd sat with the imam, rabbi and three other people whose names he forgot as soon as he was introduced to them. They spent the rest of the afternoon on into early evening getting nowhere before giving up.
“Okay,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Are we at least all in agreement that we should go to the pussy willow arbor?”
The group murmured in approval.
“I think Friday would be best. Try to get off work because there will be too many hikers on Saturday. If you can’t make it, we’ll just have to report our findings at the next meeting,” Mr. Wentworth said. “Make your own travel arrangements.”
Todd agreed to carpool with his group. One of the women had an SUV that sat seven which was more than enough room.
Bringing the room to order once more, Mr. Wentworth said, “I almost forgot. For any newcomers, please grab a t-shirt on your way out.” He pointed to three large cardboard boxes lined up by the exit. “We’ve only got smalls and mediums left. But I’d encourage you to wear it in public. We might find some more people before Friday.”
As they were leaving the building, the rabbi grabbed Todd by the arm. “Excuse me if I’m being forward but I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t say much.”
“I guess I was taking it all in. It’s a lot to process.”
The rabbi laughed. “There’s a Yiddish expression: Klieg, Klieg, Klieg-Du bist a Nar. It means ‘You are smart, smart, smart—but you are not so smart.’ Some of those theories I heard today were far from smart. I can say this for certain. Perhaps you were wisest of all for staying silent.”
“Not so sure about that,” Todd said. “More like I just didn’t have anything to contribute.”
“But these words must have meant something to you, otherwise you wouldn’t have sought out their meaning.”
They both stopped at the bus shelter. “You know, my life was going along fine until this incident. Sometimes I wish it wasn’t so routine, But it wasn’t terrible. Then all of a sudden these two words that might have no connection to each other got me thinking about mortality and worried about my sanity. Meeting everyone else today has given me a sense of peace.”
The rabbi nodded. “That you aren’t alone. Connected to humanity, yes?”
“Exactly,” Todd said. “I’ve been living a nice life. I used to live large.” He held up his thumb and index finger. “Lately it’s been life with a small ‘l,’ if you get my meaning. But this experience has shown me that I’m still connected to a larger world.”
The rabbi smiled. “And to think you just said you had nothing to contribute.”
The bus came and the rabbi bid him goodbye. Todd was halfway home before he realized he’d forgotten about the French restaurant. He was too far away from town to stop and walk back and as good as it was, he didn’t feel like eating at the retirement community restaurant.
He got off at his stop, crossed the street and continued down the boulevard, looking for a suitable restaurant. He bypassed Star of Siam, a Thai restaurant he found lackluster. Same with Athena’s Greek Palace. Three blocks later, a stained-glass window piqued his interest. The blackboard sign on the sidewalk indicated a new restaurant was open for business. It was an upscale tavern serving elevated traditional pub fare. While this in itself was inviting, the name of the pub made him laugh. It was called The Cat And Fiddle.
He was shown to a large green booth and was handed a thick menu. The server was wearing a plaid dress that he guessed was supposed to resemble traditional pub attire.
“If you like scotch, we carry dozens.”
“Brown liquor and I are not friends,” he said, and ordered shepherd’s pie and an English lager.
By the time my meetings ended, it was past nine. I was at that stage in Cannes where I needed a new liver, gastric bypass surgery and new vocal cords. I was tired of clients, tired of eating, tired of advertising, tired of snooty French people and the world in general. All I wanted was a bath, and a good night’s rest.
There were four messages from Jake on my hotel phone, three emails, not to mention a bunch of text messages, too. I emailed him a one liner, saying I was not available to discuss but he would have my full attention on Friday when I was back at home. With that, I closed my laptop and got in the tub.
I’d ended up talking to nine people that day. If one client or one agency got on board with Dreamverts™ it would be game over for the ad industry as we knew it. Not to mention a shit ton of money for Sidewinder.
We were a small operation. Six full-time. Six freelancers. I kept it lean with as few layers as possible. The full-timers had equity and were going to make out like bandits. That pleased me to no end. All were good people and great creative thinkers, and finding people who possess both traits in this industry is a rarity. They deserved every dollar coming to them.
Through the open balcony, the never-ending asshole brigade raged on the streets below. I pictured sloppy grinding to Eurotrash music, expense account dickheads trying to figure out how to open champagne magnums, and lusty heads of accounts that live by some horrific code like “It’s not cheating if you’re out of the country.” I hated them all and couldn’t wait to suck as much money out of them as possible.
I slept with that delicious thought in mind and woke up to a midmorning sun blazing through the window. I checked out of the hotel and made my way to Menton, a little town just across the way from Italy. It is a beautiful place very few in the ad world ever frequent, thank God.
A few mornings on the beach and solitary nights of eating dinner on my balcony overlooking the sea set me right. My eyes saw no static banners, billboards, or TV spots. Not even a print ad in the local newspaper. I ignored all social media and kept my phone turned off. In the two days I spent there, the only real conversation I had was with a realtor. I entertained the notion of buying property. I looked at an exquisite seven-room villa with a pool that cost just over two million Euros. I was assured the seller would accept a lower offer. Tempting though it was, in the end I decided against it. How often would I really go to Menton, anyway? I’d rather get something closer to home.
By the time I got to Nice international airport and was seated in first class, champagne in hand, I was ready to get back to work. I’d arrive in L.A. early Thursday evening, get a good night’s rest and then take Friday to deal with whatever was making Jake freak out every hour on the hour.
Like most people who work with computers, Jake could be a little awkward, a little too technical for his own good. But he knew his stuff. He and his team of freelance programmers and testers took made the back end run like a ship. But there were some days were Jake could be so uptight he’d drive everyone in the office crazy. I kept telling him to lighten up, all would be fine, but he never listened. Just as well. It was one of the reasons I trusted him so much. He was there to find the exploits and patch them, look for bugs and remove them. And above all, make Dreamverts™ the best fucking thing to happen to advertising since Bill Bernbach.
I just wish sometimes the guy would give it a rest for a bit. We’d gone into beta with a real client and would get results soon. I could understand having some measure of anxiety, but you had to draw the line somewhere.
I popped an Ambien and folded my seat down to turn it into a bed. We’d chosen a cross section of five hundred people in a small town in northern Virginia as the first beta test. All seemed well. What was all the fuss about now?
It would wait. Can’t solve it from thirty-five thousand feet in the air, anyway. Just need to keep our eye on the ball, I thought. And with that I fell into a blissful, dreamless sleep.
Once the SUV was filled, the woman drove her group to the park. It was just after eleven. With so many cars arriving at the same time, parking was difficult. They ended up having to drive on the other side of the park to a different lot.
Mr. Wentworth had emailed instructions the previous night. Wear your brown t-shirt. Print out the map to the arbor. And call him if anyone got lost.
Todd got out of the car clutching his map and feeling foolish.
“We look like cult members,” the rabbi said.
“Or worse,” the imam said. “Like we’re on a cheap vacation as part of a tour.”
The group descended upon the arbor from all corners of the park. He took his time, smelling the earth and subtle sweetness from the yellow blooms of Golden Rain Trees. Everyone was caught up in the beauty of the park.
He felt someone walking close by. It was the woman who drove the carpool.
“Such a beautiful day isn’t it?”
Todd agreed that it was. She looked like she was in her late fifties, and well taken care of. Her pale skin was smooth. Her eyes were blue. Her hair the color of straw.
“It’s funny,” she said. “I’d been keeping this SUV for ten years now. But my husband died a while back and my three kids are all grown. It’s the first time in a while so many people have been in it.”
“And what an excursion to make.”
Her laugh startled a pair of resting sparrows. “I don’t know what to make of it, to be honest. One afternoon I was sitting on my porch watching the world go by and oak pussy showed up like an alley cat I couldn’t shake. Up until then, I’d been lost in my own head. Wondering if I should sell the big house and the SUV, and downsize but never doing anything about it. Stuck in a rut.”
“I know that feeling well. If it weren’t for oak pussy, I’d still be going about my daily routine. Sleep walking, really.”
They walked together in silence, veering from the concrete path to walk on the grass.
“It’s almost like we’re on a picnic. By the way, my name’s Emma.”
“I’m Todd. Emma’s a nice name,” he said.
“I always thought it sounded old-fashioned. Most people call me Em.”
“Well, Em, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I think we share the same kind of life in a way. Only I went one step further and downsized and moved into a retirement community. I feel like I could have waited another decade to do so. Kind of silly, right?”
“You had your reasons,” she said.
“I lost my wife, too. Our kids are also grown. One lives out of state, the other lives out of the country.”
“So the nest got too empty.”
“Something like that.”
“Look,” she pointed. A long willow arbor bridge stood a hundred yards before them. On the other side, they could see the rows of oak trees, just like the parks and recreations man described. The rest of the group had already assembled.
“Guess we got distracted.”
She took his arm. “Come on. Let’s see what this is all about.”
They reached the arbor, taking their places among the group. Mr. Wentworth took a head count.
“Do we wait for something to happen, or what? I’m confused,” a man said.
“No idea,” the parks and recreation man answered.
Em spoke up. “I have an idea. I don’t know if it’ll lead anywhere, but it’s something, at least.”
Me Wentworth nodded. “Let’s hear it. No bad ideas at this point.”
Em bit her lip. “This might sound crazy, but what if we all walk though the arbor to the oak trees together? See what happens?”
Mr. Wentworth thought about it.
“Couldn’t hurt.”
They lined up at the entrance of the arbor. Mr. Wentworth gave the signal, and walked through it. A person followed. Then another. And another. When it was their turn, Em and Todd walked together. She took his arm again.
Everyone walked in silence through the arbor as if part of an ancient ritual. They reached the other side, and continued toward the line of oak trees. When the last person joined, they stood motionless, waiting for something to happen.
“So that’s that,” Em said. “Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for,” a woman said. “It was a stupid idea to begin with, coming here.”
“If you had a better one you could have mentioned it,” the parks and recreation man snapped.
Mr. Wentworth held up his hands. “Please, please. Let’s not start fighting. We all agreed to come here thinking it might lead us somewhere but keeping an open mind in case it didn’t. I don’t know about the rest of you, but Oak Pussy is still stuck in my head. And it’s looking likely that we’re never going to understand why that is. This experience has been a strange one to say the least. I’m grateful to have met you all. But I don’t think I’m going to pursue this matter any further.”
His words hung in the trees.
“So you’re giving up,” the rabbi said. “Just like that?”
“I’ve got a bookstore to run and a life to live. Pursue all you want. If you believe this is a sign from God, well, either God’s not being clear enough, or he hasn’t finished saying what he’s got to say. So I’ll just check back later.”
No one argued the point. And yet no one was in a hurry to leave, either. It was as if in this brief pursuit of meaning, they were joined by a common cause.
The imam and the rabbi joined Todd and Em.
“I must say I’m disappointed,” the imam said.
“Me too,” the rabbi said. “Why would anyone halt their pursuit of the unknown?”
“Isn’t that what makes us different from all other animals? The quest for knowledge?” The imam shook his head.
Em shrugged. “Maybe he just prefers to get his knowledge from books.”
They walked back to the SUV without speaking. Em drove them back to town.
“Regardless of today’s outcome, I don’t think this was wasted time. It’s been great getting to know you all,” she said.
She dropped them off one by one, saving Todd for last. She pulled up outside the retirement community.
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Thanks for the walk.”
“Glad you enjoyed it. I love walks,” Todd said. “I take long walks every morning. Sometimes five or six miles.”
“Do you? That sounds lovely. I should try that some time.”
“Hey, Em? This might be out of the blue, but I found a great new restaurant down the street. It’s sort of a British pub, with a more interesting menu. You wouldn’t by chance want to have dinner there tonight?”
Em smiled. “I would love that, Todd. Is eight too late?”
Todd reassured her it was not. He loved eating late. They exchanged numbers. After a moment’s hesitation, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.
“See you tonight.”
No one ever came to work at Sidewinder before ten. L.A. advertising agencies tended to get started later. The only people who came early to work were those who had meetings, juniors or interns trying to impress, or losers who had no life and were married to advertising.
I got up early, still a little groggy from the Ambien. I went for a quick run, then showered, ate breakfast and caught up on the news. It was ten-thirty by the time I entered Sidewinder.
I greeted the receptionist, picked up some mail and walked through the main workspace.
“Okay Jake, let’s talk.”
We went into my office, and I closed the door. I paused to look at a print ad for our sole client so far: Glenmorangie scotch. The ad was just a pack shot of the bottle with the logo on it. I thought it was shit but had it framed so when the clients came for meetings they would think I cared. For the record, I did care about their business. That’s why I was going to grow the fuck out of it using Dreamverts™.
“What’s all the fuss?”
Jake ran his fingers through his hair. “Our beta testing got fucked up.”
“Fucked up, how?”
“It’s like this—“
Before he could continue, I held up a hand. “Act like I’m four and speak in short non-nerd sentences.”
“With Dreamverts™ there are two methods of delivery. The first way is the program gives you a preprogrammed dream with an ad already baked in. It’s a self-contained unit, right?”
“Right. I’m following.”
“And second, you’ve got ads that find their way into organic dreams. Those are trickier to control but in some ways more effective.”
“You told me. We prefer to keep it organic because it’s less invasive than a pre-programmed dream unit and the KPI is higher, which means the ROAS is higher. Listen to me, now I sound like a nerd. Jake— can you get to the point?
“In each version essentially works the same way. There’s the front facing messaging that people actually see in their dreams, and stuff for the developers on the back end. Are you tracking?”
“So far.”
“Well I kept wondering why we weren’t getting much of a read out from any of the five hundred beta testers. It’s been months. Sales of Glenmorangie haven’t budged. Not in bars or liquor stores. So I started searching. And it took six and a half weeks but I finally found the bug.”
I sat up. “Okay, so you found a bug. Did you fix it?”
“Finally, yes.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Jake exhaled. “The problem is all the previous testing is corrupted.”
“You mean everything is fucked?”
“Yes.”
“How fucked?”
“This is where I’ll have to get a bit technical. You see, the bug I found had to do with the meta tags.”
I stood up, opened my desk drawer and brought out a bottle of the scotch. I poured myself a generous measure. “English, Jake.”
“Okay, sorry,” he said. “Meta tags are like key words. They’re content descriptors that help us research the effectiveness of the ad. Just like on a website. If I’m a user on a website I don’t see them. Same with Dreamverts™. The dreamer who experiences a Dreamvert doesn’t see it. Again this is source code stuff. It helps with SEO.”
I swallowed the scotch in one go. “Meta tags. Key words. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is, the bug I found was causing the meta tags to show instead of the actual Dreamvert.”
I choked on the scotch.
“Wait. Hang on. Are you telling me for the past few months that five hundred people haven’t see our fucking ad? Is that what I am hearing?”
“Not all of them,” Jake continued. “A little more than half of them.”
“So only a little more than two hundred and fifty people.”
“More like three hundred and twenty five, give or take. That’s why we haven’t seen any significant movement in sales at all. But I’ve fixed it now. I’m sure of it. We can just use another batch of people. We can partner with another app and get them to pay, explaining it’ll be good for them as well. And once the users agree to the terms we’re up and running again.”
I recognized the fear in his voice but I’d stopped listening because I was thinking of something else. “Question about the meta tags.”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t they usually least related to the product?”
“Yes. For sure they normally are. They don’t all have to be though but generally yes although they don’t ever include the brand name.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “But you at least used the word ‘scotch,’ didn’t you?
He didn’t answer.
“Jake.”
“The thing is, in a million years I never would have thought that anyone would see them.”
“What words did your team use?”
“’Oak,’” he said.
I gripped the glass like I was about to throw a fastball.
“Oak because Glenmorangie is aged in oak.”
He nodded. “And um, pussy.”
“And pussy.” I repeated. “Why pussy, exactly?”
Jake babbled. Developers. Programmers. Computer geeks. They are a special breed. Because they’re not only geniuses but also pranksters. They like hiding things for other computer geeks to discover. He went on to give a detailed history of all the instances in which such Easter eggs were planted and discovered by other geeks. He explained that his particular Easter egg was meant as an inside joke for some developer friends of his who are the type to go looking for stuff like that and that he was waiting for them to discover it.
The ramifications of the focus group seeing the meta tags and having a dream about the words oak pussy for the past one and a half months were unknown at this point. But in a way, he said, it was good to know because all developers like to be the first to discover bugs and fix them.
“And so I fixed the bug. And again we can get accurate results with another beta test and we can start it right away, by the end of the week if you want.”
My voice rose even as I rose to my feet. “Try end of tomorrow. Hear me? I don’t care what you have to do to make that happen. Get me 500 people, and you launch a beta test by the end tomorrow. Because if you don’t, then don’t come in again. You fuck.”
My inbox was full of emails from the clients and heads of agencies I’d met, and dozens of others I hadn’t who had heard the word. The phone rang. I put my head in my hands and let it keep ringing.
“Oak pussy. That’s just great.”