Storyboard, page 13
So Ralph was choked off. And at his own home in Purley, Keith found that, however urbane his manner might be in persuading a client, when he spoke deviously to Sylvia his ears went red. Perhaps he should have put it off until after the meeting with Hoppness, when he would be calmer. “It was just something Don thought you might enjoy,” he said. “We were talking about it.”
“Why?”
“Oh…. I don’t know.”
“Do you often talk about me to your friends at the office?”
“No, of course not, Syl. Don was saying how difficult it is to get the right sort of interviewer for the Consumer Research Panel; that’s all. And he wondered if you might be interested in helping out sometimes. I just said I’d ask you. You’re not committed to anything. If you don’t want to do it, I’ll tell him.”
“I haven’t said I don’t want to do it.” Sylvia considered. She stacked the plates, and put them in the sink. She sat down again, and poured tea. Keith lit a cigarette. Sylvia thought, It might be just the sort of thing. Occasionally anyway. A break. Hadn’t she decided only the other day that she would get a job? But Keith’s ears were red. “You asked him,” she said. “You weren’t just talking about it. You went and asked him.”
Bloody woman! She did this sort of thing; she’d done it before. She would have a suspicion, no more than a guess, the merest guess, something she couldn’t possibly know, and she would hit him with it as fact. Whether she were right or wrong, the effect on him was always the same. He blushed; his voice had a shake in it; meeting her eyes became a conscious, difficult thing, so that he would hold his gaze too steady, and look too long. Now, whether he were to lie or tell the truth, it would still come out as a lie.
“Well, did you or didn’t you?” Sylvia said. “And don’t lie about it. I’m not a child, you know.”
Keith found that he couldn’t answer. The unfairness of it, especially when he was so worried about the Hoppness meeting! All he had done was to try to help her. Not that he could tell her this, since Sylvia never allowed that she needed help.
“You did then?”
“I just thought of it during the Store-Check. I thought it was the sort of thing you might like. Meeting people. If you don’t want to do it—”
“You thought! And what did Don Wallace think?”
“Well, Don —”
“Did he think you needed the money? Trying to get a part-time job for your wife?”
“No, of course he didn’t. Don’s a good——”
“What then?”
“What do you mean?—’ What’?”
“What did he think when you came and asked him to find me a job?”
“Look here, Syl, it wasn’t like that at all.” (But of course it had been. Keith’s overdone unconcern: “Old Sylvia gets a bit bored in the mornings. You know how it is. I just wondered if she could help at all, if we were doing anything in the Purley area.” And Don had said, “It’s untypical. All AB country. But there might be something a bit more downscale within range.”)
“What was it like then?” Sylvia said.
“I told you. We were just … talking. I may have brought the matter up. I can’t really remember.”
“You did bring it up. You went to see him about it, didn’t you? What did you tell him about me?”
“I may have said you get a bit bored. Something like that. Nothing important, Syl, for goodness’ sake.”
Sylvia leaned across the table, and slapped his face. Keith looked at her. He didn’t feel angry; just dazed, with a hint of tears. Once, long ago on the sea front at Scarborough, he had said something—it was something witty and amusing; he was fifteen, and he had thought it witty—it was about his aunt’s new dress. And his father had hit him, just like that, across the face, with no reason for it. It was like going through a paper hoop; the world went to bits around you, but you were still there, and when you looked the world was still there also, but something had happened. His father had never hit him before. Sometimes, when he was a child, his mother, with a hairbrush—but nobody had needed to punish Keith; he was not ill-behaved. Sylvia stood up, and said, “If you ever do a thing like that again, I’ll leave you.” and Keith sat where he was, still unable to speak. “Anyway,” she said, “how could I possibly do a job when you know I get so tired.” She left the kitchen, and went upstairs. He knew she had gone into the spare room, where she would sleep that night. It was so unfair on the night before such an important Client Meeting.
*
It was unfair, Sophia felt, to take her snappishness out on Ralph. And it was even unfair to try to make conversation about Brecht, about theatre-in-the-round, about Hampstead, about any general worthwhile intelligent subject, when her mind was so set on another. She had a duty to Ralph to take things seriously; she should not have accepted his invitation if she didn’t intend to be a real companion. So, as they drank a before-bed cup of tea together back at Sophia’s flat, she said, “It’s not straightforward dishonesty, you know, because there isn’t much of that. You can’t lie. Anything you state as a fact, must be a fact. All you can do is to create a sort of impression. I mean, I used to work on a rheumatism remedy. What it was really, was a sort of local anaesthetic, which you rubbed in. You can’t cure rheumatism; nobody can. Anyway, you’re not allowed to use the word ‘cure’ in any patent medicine advertising; it’s forbidden. And rheumatism’s mostly psycho-somatic; people wanting attention. So all we could actually promise was ‘Quick Relief’, which was true. And they wouldn’t have gone on buying the stuff if it hadn’t helped. Only we had to make it sound like a cure, or they wouldn’t have tried it in the first place.”
“But don’t you think that people ought to be told the truth, and then left to choose for themselves.”
“It was the truth. ‘Quick Relief.’”
“No, but really the truth.”
“I don’t know. Everything’s so complicated, Ralph. I know you have to have principles and all that, but they never fit when you try to apply them. Suppose we’d said, ‘Amipax won’t cure your rheumatism. Nothing will. But it’ll stop the pain for about half an hour.’ First the newspapers and the telly would have refused the advertisement because we’d told the truth and said, ‘Nothing will cure rheumatism’, and you aren’t allowed to knock the competition.”
“Aren’t allowed?”
“Of course not. Not right out. Your competitors buy time and space too, you know, and the newspapers and the telly won’t risk offending them. Do you want any more cake?”
“No…. No, thanks.”
“And then, after all, it is a psycho-somatic thing. None of our ads ever said Amipax cured rheumatism, however we may have implied it, but we kept getting letters from people who said they’d been cured, and our own Legal Department wouldn’t let us use them. Probably all they’d needed was something to rub on, and anything would have done. So what’s the truth? Seems to me there are as many truths about that kind of thing as there are people.”
“Yes, but …” The Radical would say that if democracy were to work, choice must be as free as possible. Leave democracy out of it, if humanity were to work it had to be on the basis of individual choice individually undertaken. Choice was never free (we knew that nowadays), but there was usually an amount of freedom within narrow limits. But what if the right to be deceived by advertisements were part of the choice. There was a prissy, mandarin phrase, not often used now, which went, “I should prefer not to believe …” One had the right, if one were human, not to believe the truth. Local government was not as complicated as this, Ralph thought.
Sophia said, “I never know what people mean when they talk about honesty and dishonesty. I don’t think you can draw a line like that; intentions aren’t so clear. I mean, take all this stuff about motivation research. You only do it because you want people to feel happy about your product, and the people themselves want to feel happy, and if you can make them happy they pay you for it by buying your jelly, or baby powder, or whatever it is—like paying three bob for a seat at the pictures. You put babies into an ad because they’re so cuddly, and women get a sort of warm feeling from looking at them. Well, you can say that the advertising’s manipulating people, and turning on mother love like water from a tap, which I suppose it is, but I can say that what I’m doing is making people feel good—and I really mean ‘good’, because what you feel if you’re a woman thinking about babies is sort of noble—and it’s good for people to feel good, whatever caused it. Like therapy. All this hidden-persuaders stuff. Maybe people smoke cigarettes because they want a nipple to suck, but the want came before the cigarette or the advertising, and it won’t do them any harm to smoke your cigarette instead of somebody else’s—though, mind you, cancer comes into that and makes it worse. You don’t invent the want, and you don’t make it worse by recognizing it. Seems to me to be only common sense to find out the real reason why people want things, and then sell them your brand of the thing by knowing what that reason is. Do you see what I mean? It isn’t—you know—simple at all.”
Get Sophia on to her own subject and she really did talk, Ralph thought. Usually it was he who talked, and she who listened. It was piquant to turn the experience the other way about. What a pity he couldn’t make notes of all this! She seemed to be muddled about it all, as one would expect, and it was certainly interesting to see the processes of self-justification at work in her. He’d always assumed that advertising people had to have some kind of rationalizations for what they did. Usually Sophia was more clear-headed, and that was why she was giving advertising up, as she had told him, but even Sophia must sometimes share—Just the same, it was obvious that the whole picture couldn’t be seen in the clear black and white terms of Harvey Bodge. That was where Ralph’s own academic training would be so useful in keeping a sort of balance.
“No, what I hate about it mostly is the waste,” Sophia said. “That’s what I really hate. Competition’s all right. At least—” she looked timidly at Ralph for reassurance. “At least, I suppose it is if it leads to an improvement in the product. But when you just use advertising to kill things——”
“Kill things? How?”
“You know, like buying up somebody’s invention, and then not using it. I don’t know if people really do that; it was in The Apple Cart, so I suppose they do. But what I’m working on now, for instance; that’s only being launched so as to drive something else off the market.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s quite simple. There’s something called Foundation Soap. It’s quite a good idea, but it’s only got a limited market—women living on their own. I suppose you could say there were too many women like that nowadays, but it’s still only enough for one Foundation Soap. And now we’re launching another exactly like it, called Water Nymph, the New Cosmetic Soap, and since we’ve got more money, we’ll win. I mean, we’ll advertise much more, and we’ll give the chemists a bigger discount if we have to, and maybe even lower the price.”
“But if it leads to a lower price——”
“Oh, it wouldn’t be an economic price. We’d have to come up again, once we’d got rid of Foundation Soap. Only I expect we wouldn’t bother; we’d just let the whole thing die. Hoppness are only doing it because they don’t want anybody else coming into the soap market. They think there’s enough competition as it is, with the other two. It’d probably be easier to let Water Nymph die, because if they didn’t, one of the others might launch something like it, and the whole thing would start again.”
“Yes…. And you’re working on this?”
“More or less. Of course, it may not be quite identical, you know. I’m not sure they’ve matched the colours exactly.”
“Tell me about it, love, and then we’ll go to bed.”
“Oh, it’ll take all night.”
“Tell me about it in bed then. I’m not sleepy.”
Sophia was delighted that Ralph was so interested.
6
CLIENT MEETING
So in the morning, Keith and Sylvia would not have been speaking to one another, except that they had to keep up some sort of front before the child. That was a pity, because it took them two removes from reconciliation instead of only one. If it had not been for the necessity of the pretence, each of them would have sulked, waiting for the other to apologize. And if they had sulked for long enough (since silence only exists to be broken), Keith might have said, as he wanted to say, “I shouldn’t have talked to Donald without consulting you first. I’m sorry,” and Sylvia might have said, as she wanted to say, “I’m sorry I hit you.” As things were, they kept up a front, so that Stephen should not see his parents quarrel.
Keith didn’t feel like eating. Butterflies. But he had to eat his breakfast cereal, or Stephen wouldn’t have eaten his. “When are they coming in?” Sylvia asked, knowing the answer, because they always came in at ten, and Keith said, “Ten,” and added, “everything’s ready, though. I checked it all last night.”
Sylvia blew her nose, and Keith said, “I hope you’re not getting Stephen’s cold.”
“If I don’t, it’ll be the first time.”
“You won’t give mummy your cold, Stevie, will you?”
“Mummy always gets my colds.”
“Well, don’t boast about it. What are you going to do today?”
“Going to do my transfers.”
Transfers had replaced pollywockets in the cereal packet. There were two in each, and you could send sixpence in stamps and a packet top to the manufacturers, and get a Special Book for the set. “Well, transfers will keep you out of trouble, I suppose,” Keith said.
Sylvia said, “Not for long. There’s only two. I wish to goodness it weren’t raining, and he could go outside.”
“Not with his cold, dear.”
“All I’ve been doing this winter is boil hankies.”
“Send them to the laundry.”
“When they make you a director, I will.”
“He could use Kleenex.”
“Oh, Keith, you know what happens. Germy little bits of paper all over the house. Or else he leaves them somewhere, and uses his sleeve.”
Keith looked at the kitchen clock, and said, “Oh dear! I must rush.” Sylvia did not get up to come with him to the door; keeping up a front was one thing, but it would be ridiculous to pretend nothing had happened. “So long, Steve,” he said, and then, looking at his wife over the boy’s head, “Wish me luck.” Fishing! She had no patience with that sort of thing. Keith was always anxious before a Client Meeting, but he could hardly expect her to maintain the same pitch of anxiety every time. “Well, here I go,” he said. “I won’t kiss you, darling, or I’ll get Steve’s cold too.” And he went out into the hall.
Well, he would only fret if she didn’t wish him luck; he was the breadwinner, after all. “Good luck, dear!” she called behind him, but Keith had already closed the door, and could not hear.
*
They had arrived from Luton by the early train. They had been greeted. They had been brought into the Meeting Room, where the tape recorder had already been set up, with a long lead on the tape so that it would not run off the spool when Keith wound it back for a replay. There were the lay-outs, one in colour and one in black and white, face down on the table. There was the storyboard, with three photostat copies, made at a cost of £2 10s. a photostat, so that the Hoppness people would not suffer the inconvenience of being made to crowd together, but could follow Keith’s explanation without moving from their places at the table. There were the typed sheets of press copy, the television scripts, all neat on white paper, typed and retyped because even erasures were not permitted on copy that was to be submitted to Client; each piece of copy had to be typed at a stretch without errors, and the typists would stay to do it until it was done.
Hoppness, Silch sat at one side of the table, and the Agency at the other. P.A. and his opposite number at Hoppness, Arnold Brady, the General Advertising Manager, were at the foot of the table, a little distance from their juniors. Of all his clients, P.A. liked Hoppness least. They called him “Pat” instead of P.A. He had often thought of resigning the account, except that to do so would have shifted the balance of power within the Agency.
Keith was at the head of the table, with Tony beside him. Dave Amber, the Advertising Manager for Water Nymph, the New Cosmetic Soap (if Hoppness would agree to call it “Water Nymph”) sat opposite Keith. Next to him was his assistant, Peter Pope. Dave was twenty-six years old, Peter only twenty-three. They were all so young at Hoppness, and they all held second-class degrees in History or Economics, and they all dressed the same way, and talked the same way, and had the same sort of haircuts, and they were all married, and were all (Christian used to say) issued with the same contraceptives at the Hoppness Canteen. And here they were, three of them, looking at Keith and waiting for him to start the meeting.
“Play it against the advertising,” P.A. had told him. “It’s the only way with that lot. No gimmicks. Play it as safe and dull as you can. Begin with the strategy. Then, when they think they’re safe, spring it on them.” You could sell some clients with a display of enthusiasm and coloured charts. You could (P.A. could, at least) throw a single lay-out down on the table, and say, “There you are. That’s your next year’s advertising. Now let’s go and have a drink.” You could josh some clients, and gentle some, and blind some with tales of famous artists who were panting to work for them, but none of that would do for Hoppness, who measured everything against the strategy, and would discompose you by taking notes while you talked, distinguishing what was fact, and could be checked, from what was your opinion.
All opinions were alike to Hoppness; insofar as they had a philosophy, that was it. All opinions were of equal worth, and the worth was low. There were no experts in matters of opinion; in the private language of the Hoppness philosophy the word “opinion” was a tainted word, meaning something which was not a fact. You could tell Hoppness that housewives wanted a superlative degree of whiteness in their heavy wash, and they would agree with you because Hoppness had done a research, and a significantly greater number of respondents had ticked the word “whitest” instead of the word “cleanest” in the questionnaire. You could tell them that those same housewives were more interested in the social and emotional contexts in which their wash would be seen than in the exact ingredients which went into the powder that washed it, and that washing clothes was just part of the whole complicated, harassing exciting, fulfilling business of making a home, bringing up children, being loved by one’s husband and moving with respect among neighbours, and they would smile politely and ignore the conclusions that followed from your statement, because what you were saying was not proved fact, but merely opinion. So Keith would have to begin by persuading Hoppness that this new advertising for Water Nymph (if they were going to call it “Water Nymph”) was not simply the expression of opinions within the Agency on how to sell the soap, but incorporated every point made in the typed and duplicated sheet of objectives agreed after weeks of conference between Hoppness and the Agency—the sheet which Dave had already taken from his brief-case, which lay in a blue folder in front of Peter, which Keith now held in his hand; the Strategy for Product X——or Water Nymph (if they would call it “Water Nymph”). The Strategy was always more important to Hoppness than any advertising. If you had got the Strategy right, they said, advertising would surely follow from it. It was always held by those who had worked on advertising with Hoppness, that if, by some mischance, they were visiting an agency and there were no advertising to show them, one had only to propose a revision in the Strategy, and they would talk all day, and go away congratulating each other on a fruitful meeting.
