Ad Nomad, the Case Histories of Dane Bacchus
© 2011 by Eric Jay Sonnenschein
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by
Hudson Heights Press, New York.
ISBN: 9780983194743
eBook ISBN: 978-0-9831947-5-0
For my wife, Marilyn and my daughter, Amanda
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank my wife, Marilyn Oran Sonnenschein, for her unwavering support and help, my daughter, Amanda, for designing the cover of this book, and Ralph Gabriner for the photograph.
CONTENTS
Ad Nomad 1: The Oldest Living Junior Copywriter
Case 1-A Pre-Existing Condition
Case 1-B The Advangelist
Case 1-C Madison Avenue Cocktail
Case 1-D Have Book, Will Hire
Case 1-E Interviews, Menus and Take-Home Exam
Case 1-F Adthropology
Case 1-G Dumbo, Mon Amour
Case 1-H Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Ad Nomad 2: Writer of Record
Case 2-A No Kennel for Old Dogs
Case 2-B Branding Incontinence
Case 2-C GERD-Master
Case 2-D Office Vigilante
Case 2-E The Guinea Pig & the Whistle Blower
Ad Nomad 3: Grandmas Gone Wild & Other Acts of Genius
Case 3-A Aesthetic vs. Assthetic
Case 3-B An Old Lady and a Dog
Case 3-C Your Best Move: Admit You’re a Hermaphrodite
Case 3-D Research: The Most Creative Advertising
Case 3-E Grandmas Gone Wild
Case 3-F Promiscuous Goldfish
Ad Nomad 4: Drugs, Sex and Advertising
Case 4-A Einstein, Ice Cream & the Crybaby of Capistrano
Case 4-B A Passion for Prostates
Case 4-C Four Men and a Fish
Case 4-D Job Castration: Pathology & Treatment
Case 4-E: Belong or Be Gone
Ad Nomad 5: Supervisory Warning
Case 5-A Road Worrier & Cake Crusader
Case 5-B Managing the Moment
Case 5-C Mental Bends & Other Disabilities
Case 5-D Nipel’s Gift & The Bosom Bully
Ad Nomad 6: Under a Colonial Power
Case 6-A A New Frontier
Case 6-B Growth Factors
Case 6-C The Good Fight
Case 6-D Going Rogue on the 10th Floor
Case 6-E A Fresh Breath of Asthma
Case 6-F Coming Together & Apart
Ad Nomad 7: Nomad’s Land
Case 7-A Freelancing: Function, Freedom & Faking It
Case 7-B Freelance vs. Staff: Comparative Pathologies
Case 7-C A Serious Side Effect of Copywriting
Case 7-D Dangers of Self-promotion
Case 7-E Why Revenge is Sweet—and Sour
Case 7-F Mentaloscopy: An Invasive, High-Risk Procedure
Case 7-G Living Your Dream vs. Dreaming Your Life: Perspectives and Priorities
“The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious, unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness…Each of us carries his own life-form—an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.” GF Jung
This novel is a work of fiction, not a record of fact. The situations, characters, locations, and institutions depicted here are products of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, institutions, locations, or people, living or dead, is coincidental.
AD NOMAD 1
THE OLDEST JUNIOR COPYWRITER IN THE WORLD
Case 1-A
PRE-EXISTING CONDITION
1. THE PASSION AND THE PARACHUTE
Dane Bacchus sat at his desk and faced the harvest of a spring semester, one hundred final exams to read. He told himself it was no big deal. He would pace himself, read ten—make it five—blue books, then break. He would take many breaks, so his mind would not wander—or overheat. At this rate, he would finish by sundown.
He picked up paper #1.
Crash! Bang! Boom! That is the sound of a auto accident. No, not an ordinary auto accident, but a alcohol related auto accident…
Maybe the reader should be drunk, Dane thought. But it was 10 AM and he didn't drink.
Driving under the influence of alcohol is deafinitely a serious offense. The reason is because some body could be hurt or killed. When people are drinking they get so drunk. Everything gets blurry.
Dane graded the test and moved to the next.
Students that plagiarizes a term paper or cheats on an exam should be given a written test to determine his or her failure of the class.
Sometimes plagiarism might be best, Dane conceded. He paused to indulge a moment of mind cleansing resentment. After twelve years at the university and as a full-time instructor for six, he was still teaching remedial sections. He coped with it only because it provided time to write. But now the seventh year loomed. After seven years, university rules barred him from a full-time job. He reread the letter from the Dean: “The committee agrees that Professor Bacchus is an enthusiastic and effective teacher, but the Handbook requires that the next year be his last.”
He was so close to a literary breakthrough. If only he could keep his job for the foreseeable future, he would endure reams of academic ineptitude. All he needed was income enough to support his wife and young daughter. But no, the Handbook denied him!
Dane stared at the leaning tower of blue books, which seemed no shorter, despite his efforts. At least he had a job for one more year. He eyed the test booklet at the top of the pile reluctantly and delved into it. Dane sighed with relief. The student chose to write about “Flowers for Algernon.” How bad could that be?
Self respect is something everybody’s got to have. But when you have a learning or mental disability of reality, good luck with that. It’s like self respect sometimes gets the rong image. In our society people dont except you for who you are but more like what you are.
Enough! Dane scooped up the tower of blue books and heaved it. Tests landed in a disheveled heap on the bedroom floor. Dane concluded that if he flung the exams a thousand times, the result would never be as disordered as their contents.
“What’s going on?” Becky asked. “Why are finals on the floor?”
“I had a meltdown,” Dane explained.
“Then I shouldn’t show you this. The health plan won’t pay for that doctor’s visit.”
“What?” Dane read the document. Becky’s last visit to a doctor, which Dane had insisted upon when she experienced dizzy spells, was not covered because his plan stipulated one checkup per year.
Dane stared at the explanation of benefits and at the blue paper around his feet, and considered his next move—toward the telephone in the kitchen. “This can’t be right,” he muttered. “I’ll take care of it.”
He dialed the university human resources department. He would remind them that it might be his last year but it was premature to pull the plug on his benefits. His conversation with human resources followed a familiar trajectory. He bewailed the unjust charge to an administrator whose most salient qualification was patience. She pointed out that his plan allowed only one wellness visit per year, which had been his choice. When Dane accepted culpability for his putrid lack of foresight, the woman rewarded him with the good news that he could modify his plan next year in an open enrollment period.
“But there won’t be a next year!” Dane blurted.
Like a geyser, his truth spouted from the bedrock of denial. He knew it was futile to grovel for nonexistent security. Dead air filled the phone line like nerve gas. The human resources officer surmised that Dane was terminally ill or planning suicide. He, m
eanwhile, saw himself as a human lemming approaching a malevolent future in lockstep with an irrelevant past. The stable ground of a decade split under him. From its terrifying maw issued a harrowing question: What would he do next to support his family?
If he continued to teach, he could look forward to eking out a small and unstable income from several low-paying, part-time jobs at many institutions. He needed a new career but teaching was the only work Dane had done for years. Could he do anything else? He had no choice. His daughter was four, his family needed more living space and he was their sole support.
Desperation is a gale that shakes complex questions into simple answers. As Dane recognized the vast dimensions of his uncertainty, his mind was plunged into frenzy. Out of this chaos, came a moment of coherence and purpose. To quiet his nerves, he flipped through a magazine that had arrived in the mail. Facing an article on the sewers of Paris was an ad whose headline read: Buses tell the best stories.
“Becky, look!”
His finger jabbed the glossy page; his jaws twitched but he could not speak.
Becky looked over his shoulder.
“Buses tell the best stories. It’s good. But it sounds familiar!”
“Because I wrote it! It’s my ad!” Dane shouted.
From the sideboard he extracted his old zip up portfolio. “There it is, see? Buses tell the best stories.”
Years before, Dane had tried breaking into advertising and wrote this headline for his “book.” It won his teacher’s praise but no job came of it. Now the concept returned to taunt—or invite—him. Dane was bitter that his idea was stolen but he viewed it as a providential sign providing direction, even salvation. It was the burning bus exhorting him to stop teaching others to write, and to go forth into ADVERTISING.
Reasons against attempting this exploit piled as high as the blue books, but Dane was transfixed by the ad in Global World Magazine. The headline, Buses tell the best stories, decoded, meant YOUR FUTURE IS ADVERTISING. It was a message he could not ignore.
Case 1-B
THE ADVANGELIST
2. BODY ODOR MAKES A COMEBACK
Dane’s previous attempt to break into advertising, fourteen years before, had come unexpectedly in the heat of inspiration and had died predictably in cold criticism and general indifference.
He was in a clerical position at Lumbago Associates, a small firm that sold advertising space in non-profit science magazines. It was his first full-time, dead-end job after scraping by as a writer and journalist, and he quickly learned that if he wanted to succeed and make more money, he, too, would have to sell ad space, which he despised. The only work Dane liked at Lumbago Associates was the occasional copywriting assignment that came his way when the partners were too busy to write. The copy often amounted to no more than 25 words about a lab product or device, but the task was vaguely creative and engaged Dane’s interest.
His creativity awakened, Dane tore out magazine ads he admired and analyzed them. He foraged for photographs, wrote copy and rubbed on headlines from sheets of Lettraset. When he had done fifteen ads, he bought a leather portfolio and looked for a job.
Dane cold-called major agencies and asked for “the creative director,” but administrative assistants brushed him off like a gnat. After being telephone fodder, Dane modified his approach. He asked for creative directors by name and sent them his résumé.
One creative director offered Dane an interview. He claimed he had hired many men with unconventional jobs, including cab drivers, garbage collectors and morgue workers. Dane was euphoric for a week, but on the morning of the interview, his train was slow and he had to run a half mile from the station to the agency. Despite his strenuous effort to be on time, Dane arrived five minutes late, soaked in perspiration, only to be told his interviewer had gone to breakfast.
The creative director returned at 9:30. He was a suave, older man with thick, well-coiffed silver hair, stylish attire and a confident aura that exuded money and power like designer cologne. He seemed to step out of an ad! He probably had a silver Porsche or Jag to match his hair and impressed young women by driving it top down.
The dashing creative director welcomed Dane with an extended hand and guided him to his office. He apparently bore no grudge against his latest “street find” for arriving five minutes late.
When Dane was seated, the creative director talked about 7 himself.
“I’m a learner, a lover, and a liar,” he said, “Not necessarily in that order.”
The creative director paused, expecting a witty rejoinder or at least a raucous guffaw from his junior copywriter candidate, but Dane emitted a nervous chuckle that resembled a cough.
The creative director rifled through Dane’s book. He stopped at the Heineken ad, with its photograph of Dane in a tee shirt swilling from a bottle.
“Nobody wants to see a slob drinking beer,” the creative director remarked.
“I thought slobs were the target audience for beer, sir,” Dane replied.
“Yes, but they don’t know they’re slobs. They think the drinkers of other beers are slobs.”
“Oh, I get it,” Dane said as he pretended to take notes with a pen he forgot to bring on an invisible piece of paper on his lap. He was miffed that the creative director called him a slob.
The creative director flipped through Dane’s soup campaign, which featured Dane’s girlfriend, Becky, smiling winsomely as she sipped a wholesome spoonful.
“Your sister’s cute, but she could lose a few pounds,” the creative director opined.
“She’s not a model. She was doing me a favor,” Dane replied, his face flushed with anger. How dare this man insult Becky! Dane wanted to leap on the desk and pummel the creative director in the dying name of chivalry, but he felt fairly certain that it would not help him get the job.
The creative director now focused on a men’s cologne ad showing a man and woman on a beach. “This could be it,” Dane thought. He barely breathed.
“This ad could help body odor make a comeback,” the creative director predicted.
“You don’t like two people in love walking on a beach, sir?”
“Not really,” the creative director retorted bluntly.
The creative director closed the binder. “Dan, you need to be harder on yourself. I want you to go through this book and keep only the best work. Then do more ads like it.”
3. VALEDICTORY BEER
Dane was encouraged. All he needed to land an advertising job was to write more and better ads. He enrolled in a Network for Learning class. His teacher was a copywriter named Hal Runny, a soft-spoken ex-journalist from Oregon with horn-rimmed glasses. Hal rode his bike to work through rush hour traffic for a daily dose of life-and-death, which he claimed “added flavor to his burger.”
Hal was more than an advertising teacher; he was an Advangelist and his class was a revival.
The Advangelist imbued his four students with respect for the inner reality of package goods, the lives they touched, the problems they solved and the benefits they conferred. Speaking in proverbs that zinged like headlines, he taught that “products are more than useful items on grocery shelves, but living brands that fulfill the lives and illuminate the minds of consumers and manufacturers!” It was, he affirmed, “the copywriter’s noble task to make brands manifest to the world.” Hal described with homespun solemnity the comparative goodness of a Wendy’s burger, the pathos of his wife’s dishpan hands and his gratitude for the dishwashing liquid that protected them with healing aloe.
Hal’s promotional zeal filled Dane with the spirit of advertising. He now had the conviction that brings vitality to ambition. Dane was so inspired by the Advangelical approach that he signed up for a second session. This was when he had a conceptual breakthrough. He created three campaigns for his book. The best was for Happy Trails Bus Lines. It was a series of Americana photos from the ‘50s: a hipster on a bus, a diner waitress and a geezer with his fiddle. The headline read: “Buses tell the best sto
ries” and the body copy told each person’s reason for being on that bus: adventure, ambition, pleasure. Hal immediately perceived Dane’s quantum leap. The Advangelist proclaimed that the advertising gods had smiled on his apostle and called the bus campaign an act of genius. During the last class, Hal told Dane he was “ready to go out there and get a job.” To celebrate, the mentor invited the protégé to a neighborhood bar for a valedictory beer.
In a dark Blarney Stone tavern, the veteran copywriter imparted to Dane his ultimate thoughts about advertising and media. “You know what scares me most?” Hal said. “While we sit here swilling beer, people’s perceptions of reality are being warped by self-absorbed Hollywood types, who lie around swimming pools and have no sense of reality. In advertising, we use the most popular of these bogus perceptions to sell products.”
A silence settled over the two men in the bar as Hal’s dark wisdom fermented in Dane’s mind. The mentor’s deflating rumination was not the uplifting send-off Dane expected. “You really believe advertising is warmed over crap?” Dane asked. “You always sounded positive about what you’re doing. How can you believe in it, if you think it’s a lie?”
“How could I not?” Hal countered quietly. “There’s truth in lies.”
“What are you saying?” Dane asked the Advangelist. The protégé stared hard at his mentor. Was it possible that the worm of cynicism had subverted Hal’s beautiful faith in the redemptive power of products and unique sales propositions? Dane was taking Advangelism too seriously. He could not straddle a contradiction and move forward; he could not admit he was in a venal pursuit, motivated by greed. He needed to believe he was embarked on a noble and worthwhile enterprise. Perhaps noting the deranged zealotry in Dane’s eyes, Hal fine-tuned his message.
“Believe it or not, even minds and hearts corrupted by non-stop deception respond to a clearly-stated truth,” Hal said. “That can be your mission, your niche. Dane, I’ve had by-lines on award winning articles, but they pale next to writing a great campaign. You’re capable of great work. So go out there and do it.”
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