We All Fall Down

by Peter Barry

Hugh had an unexpected and irrational desire for Geoff to reassure him that, despite working on what he called the glamorous side of the business, his job was safe. Geoff wasn’t management, so the gesture would have been meaningless, yet it may have made him feel more confident. But he knew Geoff was far too self-involved to ever consider, for even a fraction of a second, the welfare of anyone else, and that such reassurance was therefore unlikely to be offered.

  His visitor got up off the sofa, which he regarded with an air of disdain. ‘You should get that replaced. Pinch the one out of Willett’s office before anyone else gets in there.’

  ‘Was he fired too?’

  ‘Not fired, let go.’

  ‘That’s not a nice way to treat the dead, Geoff. Anyway, why don’t you take his sofa?’

  ‘Too big for my humble office, Hughsy, but perfect for your palatial abode.’ And he disappeared down the corridor without a word of farewell.

  * * *

  It was unusual, if not a first, for Alpha to go back to a client and suggest the agency wanted to reconsider, and hopefully improve on, creative work that had already been presented. This was because Alpha management did not consider creativity to be their raison d’ être, regarding it more as a necessary evil, something the agency had to provide, and the sooner they could put it behind them the better. So it was with great reluctance that Hugh called the German marketing director, and arranged to go and see him after lunch.

  Dieter received the news in his customary deadpan way. He listened to Hugh’s little speech, his reasons for wanting to do a new campaign, keeping his hands clasped on the edge of his desk throughout, before he said, ‘But I am happy with the campaign you have given me, Hugh, and it is already sent to Mannheim.’

  Hugh made an effort not to look pleased. If the campaign had already been bought by head office, he wouldn’t have to continue with this sham. ‘And what do they say?’

  ‘They say nothing. They have not yet got back to me.’

  Hugh now tried not to look disappointed. He would have to continue with this charade after all. ‘We want to make sure we give you the best, most effective campaign, Dieter. It’s as simple as that. Russell and Murray also asked me to emphasise that you aren’t expected to pay for this extra work.’

  ‘Ya, ya, of course, I would not expect to.’

  ‘In my opinion, you’ve nothing to lose. If you like the new campaign, you’ll be happy. If you don’t like it, we’ll go with our original concept and you’ll still be happy. It’s a win-win scenario, as they say.’ He hated trotting out business clichés, and normally went out of his way to avoid them, but he also appreciated that most clients found them instantly understandable. It was their regular method of communication, sometimes their only method of communication.

  Hugh suspected Dieter would have problems with the new campaign anyway. If Simon Hogg – or Si as everyone in the agency already called him – lived up to his reputation, Dieter would most likely find it far too ‘creative’.

  Fiona, supported by Hugh, had been proud of the fact that, step by step, she’d led Bauer down the path towards more creative advertising. Nothing revolutionary, nothing that would win an award in New York or London, but more adventurous than anything the company had run elsewhere in the world. Fiona considered her biggest success to be the fact that Dieter no longer insisted his commercials were shot on the Great Ocean Road – as were nine out of ten car commercials in Australia – and that there could be a story in the commercial as opposed to a string of images. One commercial she loved, which had proved too challenging for the Calvinistic marketing director, showed a bored God, reclining on a cloud, amusing Himself by throwing bolts of lightning at a speeding Bauer. The driver dodges them all (showing the car’s exceptional acceleration, braking and cornering), prompting God to give up His little game and stalk off in a huff.

  ‘Ya, very funny, Fiona,’ Dieter said at the end of the presentation, ‘but, nein.’

  ‘Why not, Dieter?’

  ‘It will offend too many people.’

  ‘There’s nothing offensive about it. We’re not saying anything against God.’

  ‘You’re saying He’s bored.’

  ‘It’s a bit of light-hearted fun.’

  ‘You’re saying He’s nasty, that He tries to kill my customers with bolts of lightning.’

  ‘No one’s going to take it literally, Dieter. No one’s going to actually think that.’

  ‘It is also, to some people I believe, being offensive.’ And that proved to be the end of the discussion.

  Hugh, as with many things, felt most comfortable somewhere in the middle. He believed in creative advertising, in advertising that was both intelligent and humorous, but he also believed in a strong selling message. He had a good feel for what clients would find acceptable.

  After one presentation, Fiona said to Hugh, ‘Dieter thinks the work we give him is edgy, but he really has no understanding of the word. If we gave him a genuinely edgy campaign he’d have a seizure on the spot.’

  Now Dieter shrugged. He was not happy, not even by his less than taxing Germanic standards. His fleshy face, looking pink and pampered as if it had never been touched by the elements, resembled that of a young child who has just been told he has to turn off the television. ‘Hugh, I do this for you, and for you only. I respect you, but I do not see the point in a new campaign. First, you show me a campaign you say the agency is happy with, and now you tell me you are not happy with it –’

  ‘We are happy with it, Dieter. It’s just that we think it may be possible to improve on it.’

  ‘To me it sounds like you are now not happy with the first campaign.’

  ‘We are very happy with it.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘As I said, it may be possible we can do better.’

  Hugh was reluctant to push the matter. He knew Dieter would do anything for a quiet life. He was very much a hands-off manager, his commercial venture sailing quite happily along without any guidance or interference from him. Bauers sold well, therefore Dieter was perceived as a successful marketing director. He said little, therefore people thought him a serious thinker. He did little, therefore people thought him strategically cunning. In fact he was neither profound nor cunning, he was lucky. He was in a job that exactly suited his limited abilities, and he was well away from the main action, in Europe. In the eyes of his masters in Mannheim, on the rare occasions they gave him a passing thought, Dieter was in a backwater and it never concerned them whether or not he had a paddle.

  Despite the geographical handicap of being in Australia, Hugh had raised, on two earlier occasions, the possibility of moving the prestigious international account to Alpha. At Russell’s request, he raised the matter again, but without any real conviction. The problem was, it wasn’t up to Dieter. He didn’t have the power to move the account, he simply had the power to open the doors of those who could, in Mannheim. If Hugh had been in Dieter’s position, he wouldn’t have considered such a move. It was true, or could be persuasively argued, that Alpha’s Australian campaign for Bauer was of a higher standard than the international campaign. Even Dieter, over a quiet drink with Hugh after work, might have gone along with such an argument. That was the nature of international advertising campaigns: they’re never any good simply because they have to appeal to so many diverse markets, or at least not offend anyone – anywhere. It’s their very nature to be wallpaper. The Alpha Agency might – almost certainly could – produce more of the same, but why move agencies to get more of the same?

  Dieter was exasperated. ‘Hugh, I speak my mind, no? I have plenty of respect for you, but for the rest of your company I am not impressed. So I am not content to go to my superiors in Mannheim and suggest they put all of our worldwide business into your advertising agency in Sydney.’

  Hugh wasn’t prepared to argue. He stated his professional opinions, based on his experience or, when possible, on facts and figures, but he did not push them. This might be because, as in th
is case, he didn’t believe in the cause he was proposing, but it could also be because of his deep-seated fear that he was always walking on quicksand when he was with clients – not just Bauer, but most of the clients he’d ever worked with. His mood was always the direct result of whatever his client said or did: if they smiled he was happy, if they frowned he was unhappy, if they were worried he was worried. His job, the reason he got out of bed every morning, was to make sure his client was happy, because that was the only way the agency could hold onto the account. Unhappy clients walked. He knew he had to keep the car account no matter what, because if it ever walked out of the front door, it was more than likely Russell would show him to that door too.

  Dieter’s office, situated above the city’s main showroom, was much smaller than Hugh’s. It had three large filing cabinets, files also stacked in several mounds on the floor, and a small coffee percolator balanced on a window ledge that looked across a narrow laneway directly onto the back of another office block. Sitting there, squashed between Dieter’s desk and the filing cabinets, Hugh understood that his job, his existence, his welfare as well as that of his family, the happiness of Kate and little Tim, all depended on this wall of a man, this deadpan, unreachable German in his crowded, unremarkable office. Dieter finally repeated what he’d said to Hugh on a previous occasion, ‘The only reason The Alpha Agency keeps the Australian business is because of me, because I am fighting in your corner. My superiors in Mannheim, they are keen to move the account into our German agency. They have the account everywhere else in the world.’

  Hugh suspected there was some exaggeration here, a bit of grandstanding on the part of his client. The fighting on behalf of the agency didn’t sound like Dieter, but even if it wasn’t completely true, it sounded plausible. So it wasn’t surprising Hugh felt permanently on edge with Dieter, as if he was expected to perform for him, jump through hoops and wag his tail while he did so.

  On television once, in the UK, Hugh had seen a comedy sketch in which a businessman, dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase, was shown being trained like a lion in a circus. A woman carrying a whip, and with a whistle in her mouth, made the businessman jump onto an upturned half barrel, jump from one barrel to another, balance on a stack of barrels, and finally jump through a hoop. It was an amusing sketch and, at the time, Hugh had laughed, but he wasn’t so sure he’d laugh if he watched the same sketch today. It was too near the reality of his existence.

  As he left Dieter’s office, he noticed there was a missed call from Fiona on his mobile. He knew what she was calling about, but as he was nowhere near raising that particular subject with Dieter, and couldn’t even contemplate doing so with everything else that was going on at the moment, he didn’t return the call. It could wait until tomorrow. He had to get back to the agency in time for Russell’s get-together and pep talk.

  * * *

  Hugh was fully aware of how the advertising business works on perception. It prospers or declines as a direct result of how those outside its doors see it. It’s a victim of what advertising agencies themselves sell to their clients: an image. If people think an agency’s hot, it is hot; fashionable, it is fashionable; on the slide, and it is on the slide. Such perceptions often have little basis in reality, but they’re powerful because they’re self-fulfilling and, like a cancer, build on themselves.

  So although Alpha’s reason for being was to understand the general public better than it understood itself, it also had to impress corporate executives, businessmen and city high-fliers. So, when you walked into Alpha’s reception, there were original works of twentieth century art on the walls, a collection of modern, discordant furniture, and a girl who looked like a supermodel behind the reception desk. The room itself could have doubled as the foyer of a five-star hotel.

  If the proverbial man-in-the-street was to accompany Hugh through either of the large, open doorways at either end of Reception, he’d see boardrooms that boasted tables with enough wood to build a sizeable sea-going vessel, sufficient chairs to seat an army, and lighting so subdued and restful it might have been on Valium. He’d see video and audio equipment that the local cinema would gratefully seize, and mini-bars in every boardroom with enough wines, beers, spirits and soft drinks to satisfy the most desperate of alcoholics. And he’d see that even the non-management offices, like Hugh’s, were spacious and carpeted, with large desks, original artwork on the walls, and often views of the Harbour.

  This proverbial man-in-the-street would have be stunned by such opulence and space, and would probably laugh out loud if Hugh told him that the people who worked at Alpha had a firm grasp of his wants and desires, understood what would appeal to him, and empathised with him absolutely.

  It was in the reception area that Russell addressed the staff on the Monday evening, the next work day after the thirteen people were made redundant. Alcohol and tidbits were laid on beforehand, almost as a warm-up act. Despite this, Hugh, who stood near the back of the room and was only present because he knew his absence would be noted, thought the atmosphere in the room was subdued. People spoke little, and huddled together in small groups as if ready to repel an attack. There was little if any laughter. This was unusual for an advertising get-together, which, according to Russell’s all-staff email, was what this was supposed to be. Obviously, no one was fooled. Everyone knew its purpose: it was a morale booster, and building the morale of the notoriously fickle and cynical advertising crowd was no easy task.

  The managing director started by saying, ‘Now that we’ve got rid of the dead wood, the agency is free to move forward.’ Considering that most of the people in the room had either lost a friend or a colleague in the recent purge, it was not the most diplomatic of comments. In the short speech that followed, Russell Grant promised his stony-faced audience that good times were just over the horizon. A colleague standing next to Hugh whispered that maybe someone should point out to Russell that horizons could never be reached. The managing director then claimed that the clients who’d left the agency either hadn’t been ‘the right fit’ or weren’t spending any money anyway, and that there were several prospective clients – which for reasons of confidentiality he couldn’t yet name – on the horizon. This was news to everyone in the room, including Hugh, who was also beginning to worry about the sheer number of things happening on this horizon. Russell finished his talk by claiming that the agency’s shareholders had never been happier, with the share price recently hitting an all-time high. This was of no interest to well over ninety per cent of the people in the room. Although Russell made several attempts at being funny, few in his audience were inclined to smile. Many of them felt the same way as Hugh: that they were standing in a line-up, like peasants, facing a firing squad, knowing that some of them were to be shot, but not knowing which ones. The waiting, the uncertainty, was the unbearable part.

  Hugh stayed on for twenty minutes after the talk, and made sure he spoke with Russell before he left. Murray Wheeler and the finance director, Roger Grandfield, stood alongside the managing director like cruisers escorting a valuable cargo ship.

  Russell was in an expansive mood. ‘I’ve just come from a good meeting with my accountant.’

  ‘That has to be a first, Russ,’ Murray said. ‘Never heard of anyone having a good meeting with their accountant.’ Even though he’d known Murray for many years, Hugh was still surprised by how obsequious he could be.

  ‘You malign my profession,’ Grandfield said pompously, a broad grin sitting comfortably atop his layer of soft, pink chins.

  Russell ignored both comments. ‘He was pointing out to me that all my investments have been in the Sydney property market to date. He says I should spread my money further afield. He’s come up with two really promising deals. One is in Adelaide, which he believes is about to go through the roof. It’s the only city that hasn’t as yet. The other’s in Melbourne.’

  ‘Good luck, Russ. I’m not sure I’d be putting any money into property right now, in any State.
I reckon it’s peaking.’

  ‘I’d trust my accountant before you, you miserable old bugger. Is that the message you’re sending out to everyone from your shack on the beach?’

  Murray laughed, and even Grandfield chortled before emptying his glass of wine. Hugh felt he’d gatecrashed a party out of his league.

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ Russell continued, ‘they’ve been talking about the market peaking for the last ten years, and it hasn’t happened.’

  ‘Has to one day. There have always been peaks and troughs, always.’

  ‘We live in extraordinary times, Murray.’

  Grandfield thrust his chins forward. ‘Look at the stock market. On its longest record breaking run in history. Plenty of people think the same way as Russell. Maybe the rules of the past don’t apply any longer.’

  ‘My accountant,’ Russell continued, ‘was telling me about this guy in the States – Madoff or someone. Not sure if I’ve got the right name. It’s Made-something. He guarantees returns of at least ten per cent, guarantees them. All the Hollywood stars are with him, anyone who’s anyone.’

  ‘You?’ Grandfield asked, failing to keep the envy out of his voice.

  ‘My accountant’s looking into it.’ Russell stood before his colleagues as if Stephen Spielberg and John Malkovich were on either side of him.

  Hugh said nothing. He wondered if Russell had any idea how it sounded to others when he spoke of investing hundreds of thousands of dollars within a day or two of being responsible for firing thirteen people. He tried to give his boss the benefit of the doubt, that the connection had simply never entered his head. A minute later, as he made to wander off, the managing director said, ‘Hughsy, I want to talk about that research report with you tomorrow.’

  Hugh nodded, although he had no idea what he was talking about. ‘What report’s that?’

  ‘The one on the prestige car market.’

  Hugh still didn’t know what he was talking about, but before he could say anything Russell added, ‘Another thing, mate. I need you to make yourself available over Easter. Need you to help out on the Bauer presentation.’ Hugh straightened up, involuntarily, almost as if he’d been physically hit. ‘I spoke to Si this afternoon and he wants to start work on the new campaign straight away. He’s coming into the agency over the weekend. We’ve agreed we need to get back to Dieter by the end of next week. We can’t waste any more time on this.’