by Orla Bailey
It seems her and I are in direct competition but if she thinks that is enough to throw me, she’s mistaken. I’m ready for her. Amanda turns her first board over.
Immediately I’m confused. This is so close to my own dynamic opening as to be almost identical. I’m shocked at the coincidence.
As Amanda speaks she glances my way. The look of triumph on her face tells me everything. I recognise my own work when I see it. My head spins towards Libby’s and hers towards mine. Has Amanda accidentally picked up the wrong team’s boards and notes? There’s surely been a mistake. Her cool manner and steady voice as she delivers what is effectively my own presentation, tells me this is no accident.
She’s stolen my pitch.
My eyes fly to Brent. He’s looking very smug but he can’t have directly had access to my plans. He’d left the company long before the bid was that well developed and locks and security codes have all been changed since. I can’t understand it. Any potential cronies of Brent’s were kept securely away from this work and I won’t believe that any of my trusted, hand-picked, team members would betray CaidCo in such an appalling way.
We sweated blood researching Jack’s business, its domestic and global markets and most significantly its future, for this presentation. My team were driven like sled-dogs covering difficult terrain to make the whole thing comprehensive, insightful and frankly, bloody-well brilliant. This is the best work I’ve ever done.
And Amanda has stolen it from me.
She continues to deliver my pitch without turning a platinum hair. Every perceptive point I planned to make is in there. There isn’t anything original that might suggest this is a dreadful co-incidence. This is my work and we both know it.
Her eyes slide to mine again in a way that confirms my worst fears.
Jack notices my disquiet. He glances discretely over, asking me, with a gentle frown if everything is alright.
But I’m not about to jump up and cry foul. That is exactly what Amanda will be expecting. She’ll have prepared for it so she can make me look like I’m trying to spoil what amounts to a slick, professional pitch by my competition. I bite my lip, drawing blood, as I listen to every word of my own pitch exactly as it has been appropriated.
I am coldly incensed. Shaking with rage.
Did I think Amanda would have surrendered the field once she knew Jack and I were to be married? No. But did I think her next move would be such a brazen all-out attack on the future of my business? Never in a million years. Once again I have been royally out-manoeuvred.
I have underestimated that woman’s willingness to risk everything for very high stakes.
Feeling weak as the familiar words wash over me I consider how she has been able to engineer this. It certainly took some planning.
Then it comes to me in a flash.
The intern. Zoe. Her pushy interest in the work of the bidding team was no co-incidence. I took it as keenness to learn. And Brent was on the selection panel that chose her. Now he is with Amanda and Advance.
Zoe is the only person tying everyone together. She’s no intern. She’s a spy, planted by Amanda.
Jack has one eye on the presentation but another on me. He knows something’s wrong but waits for a more discrete moment to ask me.
I fold my arms, grit my teeth and discover just how perfect my presentation is. I cannot possibly stand now and deliver the exact same performance. It would appear I was the one who has come totally unprepared and was stealing Advance’s ideas in desperation. It’s a clever play for power. Amanda wins and she destroys me at the same time.
Libby and I stare at each other in disbelief. I raise a discrete palm to indicate to her not to react. She takes her lead from me but I know she must be burning to call for some sort of justice or, better yet, to take the law into her own hands, knowing her, and kick Amanda’s head in.
The woman doesn’t falter as she continues. “Advance’s ideas evolve continuously. Our latest recognises Jack Keogh’s long established connection to the Irish Derby at the Curragh.”
Jack and I stiffen at the same moment. She is making her acrimony at my invitation to his family event – one to which she’s never been invited – very clear. She’s also stolen my latest, ingenious strategy. The one I hinted at to Jack, the moment it formed in my head on the racecourse itself.
I smile coldly.
Amanda has hung herself with a rope of bitterness. Jack knows I formulated a plan to link Zee-Com to the Irish Derby somehow. It was my idea. He will believe the rest is too.
“… a marvellous opportunity for publicity, televised around the world, for Zee-Com to annually sponsor one of the day’s races, leading up to the Dubai Duty Free grand Irish Derby itself.”
Jack stares at her like he is attempting to burn a hole through her head through sheer willpower. My fingers grip the arms of my chair as I swing wildly between imagining myself bludgeoning her to death, to wanting to hang a laurel wreath round her perfect little neck; the top prize for shooting herself in the foot with her own scheming. She isn’t quite as clever as she thinks she is.
Jack has seen right through her.
When she ends her presentation, Jack prevents any positive reaction or self-congratulation by standing immediately. “I think we should all take a little break before the next presentation. Tabitha, my office please.” He marches to the door and holds it open for me to exit before him. “No interruptions. None,” he orders Dorothy.
He closes the door behind us.
“Do you want to tell me what just happened in there?” he asks.
“I believe you’ve guessed already.”
“That stuff about the Irish Derby was your idea, right? The one you had on the racecourse.”
“The very one,” I confirm. “Every idea she had out there was my idea.”
“She’s stolen your pitch? How?”
“Would you believe she planted an intern to spy, using Brent Tapper?”
“I believe that woman capable of anything, Tabitha. Yes, I believe it.”
I hug him. “Thank you, Jack. That’s more important to me than anything else.”
“Except what you’re going to do about it.”
I nod and explain my dilemma. Any open accusation would look petty and weak in the face of a stronger opponent. Going ahead with a repeat performance, even more pathetic. She’d be prepared for either. “I don’t want to play right into her hands.”
“So throw her a curve ball. I can postpone. Give you time to sort this out.”
“I suspect that’s also what she’ll be anticipating. I’m done fulfilling her expectations. I have to show her I’m not so easily beaten.”
A look of admiration shines in his eyes. “Are you telling me you still want to go ahead and pitch?”
“I’m fighting for a big deal here. Getting Zee-Com’s business account is major to my company.”
“I know that.” He smiles down at me.
“You’d hardly offer such a lucrative and important contract to someone who couldn’t handle a bit of flak, would you?”
“Unlikely. What are you saying? You’re planning to wing it?” His eyebrows do the same.
“Don’t be flippant.” I turn and pace as I formulate a plan. “I know this business. I was doing advertising grunt work when most girls were playing with Barbie dolls. And I learnt from one of the best.”
“Harry Caid.”
“Exactly. Besides I wasn’t the highest achieving student in my final year at university for nothing.”
“So I heard.”
I turn and focus on him. “Yes. I forgot you were keeping tabs.”
“Looking out for you.” He shrugs at my critical tone. “I was interested. What can I say?”
I relax. “That you loved me.” Even then. I don’t know why but knowing Jack never stopped loving me gives me a calm sense of my own power.
“Love you,” he corrects.
“Then let me carry on like nothing has happened. I worked damn hard to get
this chance.” I prod him in the area of his immaculately knotted tie remembering exactly how our deal began. “In fact I went through hell and back.”
“I wasn’t that bad was I?”
“A nightmare.”
“While you were pretty dreamy.”
We grin at each other.
“Enough. I’m not planning to lie down and quit like a loser when the path gets stony.”
He smiles gently at me. “You always were the bravest girl I ever knew. Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“I am. Tell that bitch I’m coming for her.”
I follow Jack back into the boardroom. Libby has discretely fielded questions, I can tell, as Jack’s team seem perplexed. Advance’s CEO, Anderson, is either a pretty good actor or as genuinely confused as all the others. Except Brent and Amanda. They just look smug. They think they have this in the bag and don’t even try to disguise their gloating. They’re expecting me to concede defeat.
I walk calmly to the head of the room as Jack coolly takes his seat. In the past I would have been fighting to remain upright and breathing, let alone preparing to address a roomful of people but I know how to handle myself better now. Jack has taught me everything I need to know about being an effective CEO and beating Amanda is the only distraction technique I need. Already her air of confidence seems dented.
I may not have any resources at my disposal to come up instantly with a significantly different focus to the one I had an hour ago but I know my own business, Harry Caid’s former business, and I know the way it can dovetail to develop Jack’s.
I smile coldly at Amanda and begin to speak.
“Zee-Com has a rather impressive domestic market share, no little thanks, in part, to the work done with CaidCo Advertising in the past. But times change. The global market changes and Zee-Com is changing too. CaidCo Advertising is the business associate most prepared to meet those future challenges. Let me tell you how.”
The Advance team squirm in their seats. My opening is not what they’re expecting. Amanda silently quizzes Brent Tapper as if he very well might have double-crossed her but he shrugs his lack of knowledge about what is happening, in mute reply.
“In today’s whole world marketplace, any business needs to run fast just to stand still. I’m certain Zee-Com doesn’t wish to stand still.” I pause confidently while my rhetoric settles in their minds.
Jack smiles at me. His lips may not have moved but I can see it in his beautiful Arctic blue eyes. He doesn’t remove them for a second from mine and his shining trust gives me all the strength I need.
“It’s no longer enough to blinker ourselves with western domestic strategies of the past.” I’m tearing up my original pitch to pieces and I know it. But now that one is Amanda’s pitch, I don’t want it any longer.
“Everyone knows continuous innovation is key to business success. Firstly, as CEO I’d like to show you the way we’re changing the traditional set-up at CaidCo.” I glare at Brent Tapper. “Young, ever-changing, dynamic teams formulated to handle innovative global business needs include some of the brightest, most forward-thinking students on internships who are recruited from that whole world marketplace Zee-Com is continuously expanding into. Connections with universities, especially those recruiting in emerging market economies, place us at the cutting edge of expansion and link us to tomorrow’s business revolutionaries.” I’m thinking on my feet but even I like my ideas as they formulate.
“We are creating young teams who are more familiar with digital media and its fast-changing potential to harness digital marketing more effectively.”
I dredge up facts and figures from recent lectures that on occasion, I’d felt I was the only student listening to. I’m so glad I paid attention now. I remind the room of the eighty-five percent of global humanity with a different demographic from theirs that will constitute the bright future of Zee-Com’s business expansion.
“Did you know the average age of all humanity is just twenty-eight? That’s only a few years older than me.” I take pains to glance at Amanda who seems to be ageing by the minute. It’s a mean trick, I know, but she’s played dirty with me often enough.
“CaidCo, today, is a young company that can tap into the ambitions of a new global generation of consumers that doesn’t reside in the affluent west. One that has very different aspirations to their parents, who probably didn’t even own a TV set. Do you remember 2005 as a cool year? Not if you’re under twenty years of age it’s not, like the average potential consumer in the Middle East and Africa is and who has little sense of that traditional world view that Advance talked to you about a moment ago. It’s already way out of date.” Like my original presentation, I think, smiling at my master-stroke.
I’m really dissing my own work and seeing its limitations. I feel like my head has suddenly expanded into the universe and understand what the future of advertising is really all about. Finally I’m playing to my own strengths, not Harry’s. I’m making CaidCo my own company, at last.
I drag supporting facts out of the ether. “Your biggest consumer markets aren’t in the west any longer. They’re in countries like China, India and Brazil. Have you even heard of China Mobile? It’s a brand worth fifty-six billion dollars. Indian telecommunications companies have reduced the cost of calls and texts by ninety per cent, putting cell phones into the hands of poor peasant farmers and expanding their market share. That’s the kind of innovation we envisage.”
The more agitated Amanda and Brent seem when they see I have Zee-Com board’s full attention, the more I maintain my own calm. In fact Anderson looks rather angry with his own staff for underestimating me so badly. I begin to believe he really didn’t know about his staff’s scheming after all and feels let down by the very people he trusted to deliver.
I pick up my phone and fire off an Instagram of Zee-Com’s captivated boardroom. “I want the world to know who I am, where I’m heading and who I’m taking with me,” I explain. Jack laughs. Even he knows Amanda isn’t in my picture.
“CaidCo’s young employees and student interns understand the world of video streaming and social networking. We play amongst that instant buzz every day as it rushes through the world like forest fire. We understand geo-tagging and value for money. We understand the power of the visual moving image.”
I tell the board I’ve been videoing their rapt reactions to my company plans for the last minute and a half then toss the phone to Libby with instructions to upload to other accounts. I fire off a list and she gets to work, announcing them as they’re done, seconds apart.
“Twitter”, “Facebook”, “YouTube”…
“Be competitive. Be afraid to fail. Be savvy enough to involve a bright, young, innovative company like CaidCo in Zee-Com’s whole world future. We’re not planning on standing in the past. Are you?”
Jack and Libby, who know what I’ve just done off the cuff, break into wide grins. You couldn’t scrub the scowl off Amanda’s face with a stiff bristle brush. I’d like to try. She expected me to crumble or complain. What she didn’t expect was what she got. What I am. Original. Now it’s her who’s dying to object but she has no grounds whatsoever.
I’ve proved to myself and Jack I have what it takes to be a bloody marvellous CEO. I’m so happy I could dance.
Jack stands and addresses the room. “Thank you, CaidCo and Advance, for such interesting and thought-provoking material. I’ve arranged refreshments while my team and I retire for deliberation, if you’d care to wait.”
None of us are going anywhere.
Dorothy supervises trays of coffee, soft drinks and snacks while Libby and I huddle with our small team in one corner of the boardroom enduring the harsh whispers and stares of Anderson’s heavyweight members.
“You do realise you created both presentations?” Libby says.
“Let’s hope the one I got to deliver was the better one.”
“Sounded amazing from where I was sitting.”
“Thanks, Libby.”
Within half an hour Anderson and I, alone, are called to Jack’s office to receive the verdict. The others, much to Amanda’s total disgust are asked to wait behind.
Jack shakes hands first with Anderson and then with me. With his back turned to my rival he mouths a couple of words at me: Trust me.
Despite my confusion, I nod without hesitation. He invites us both to sit.
Jack speaks. “I felt it fair to deliver my final verdict, to both of you at the same time.”
“Of course.” Anderson’s confidence has not entirely waned.
“Anderson. Yours is the bigger company. Your financial assets and contacts more extensive. The speech Ms Devereaux delivered suggests a very strong awareness of my current and domestic market.”
I note he does not refer to it as Ms Devereaux’s speech. He wants me to know he believes it was my work. I smile inwardly.
“Quite so. We concentrated on that, of course, as that is where your market share is strongest.”
Perhaps Anderson’s company is too big, I think, if he doesn’t personally handle accounts as big as Zee-Com’s. His failure allows people like Amanda far too much power.
“I believe it is in Zee-Com’s interests to avail ourselves of those strengths.”
Anderson jumps to his feet in delight and crosses to pump Jack’s hand again. “Thank you, Mr Keogh, you won’t regret this.” He turns sideways to me. “Commiserations, Ms Caid.”
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t shocked, disappointed, about Jack’s decision, after everything. I know what Jack says about Advance is all true but still, I expected, hoped for, a more favourable outcome.
But I remember his request. Trust me. I unstiffen. I know I will. I do. I will always trust Jack.
“Just a minute, Anderson, I’m not done yet. There are conditions.”
“Conditions?”
“Conditions.” Jack’s tone of authority is not to be ignored. “Sit down and listen.”
“Yes, of course.” Anderson looks a little uncomfortable. The wind has certainly buffeted his sails.
