Luke Upward was sanguine when the Marks and Spencer people rejected his proposed advertising campaign based on the legendary Oliver Hardy. But when he read their drivelling explanation (“focus group responses suggested this was likely to appeal to an older demographic than those prioritized by our marketing strategy, going forward”) he turned from sanguine to sanguinary. His knuckles whitened and his Ichi and Scraatchi co-workers were shocked to see him display no fewer than 2 ¼ inches of shirt cuff beneath his normally faultless suit sleeve. When Upward himself caught sight of this horror, in his mirrored cocktail cabinet, he restored the sleeve to normal, and with it, his customary equanimity. “So, the hell with them and their damn dog food,” he remarked, in the colourful argot of his new profession. “Who’s next?” “We’re pitching for Tesco’s own-label champagne,” said some underling. Upward nearly blurted “Who are Tesco?” but remembered in the nick of time the name of the overweening emporium from which he had once purchased, in emergency, a pack of organic limes for a fussy margarita-drinker. Instead he remarked, more credibly, “I had no idea that Tesco did their own champagne.” “Neither do most of their customers, and those that do refuse to believe that it’s as good as it is.” When the Ichi and Scraatchi team, headed by Upward, came to pitch, the Tesco executives confirmed this problem, at considerably greater length, repeating their words identically on Powerpoint slides to give them more authority, and with frequent citations from focus groups. When the last Tesco executive had garbled the last statistic, his leader asked Upward to present his proposal. “Alas, Madam,” rejoined Upward, with a shy, self-deprecating smile. (He was always at his most courtly when he failed to remember someone’s name.) “I have no proposal, for your product remains as unknown to me as the proof of the Goormaghtigh Conjecture. If you can spare it, perhaps a small sample might suggest some solution to your difficulty?” At the first bottle of Tesco’s own-label champagne, Upward murmured. “Oh yes.” At the second, he murmured, “Oh definitely.” At the third, he murmured “Oh yes.” At the fourth, detecting faint signs of impatience in the potential client, he murmured “An apricot melody over a driving bass line of hazelnut, with a counterpoint of medlar, and do I detect a naughty note of nasturtium? This is an excellent champagne. The amiable owner of our firm, the Marquis de Tarpaulin, would not be ashamed to serve this at one of his glittering soirées, and not, I hasten to add, as a hint to the tardy to leave. No, Madam, he would serve this cheerfully to his most favoured guests, the ones he likes to call his premier crew.” “Why, thank you, Mr Upward. We think it is an excellent champagne. It has won prizes. But too many other connoisseurs look at our name on the label – and turn away.” A small tear fell from the eye of the Tesco executive, and lay suspended on her daring own-label mascara. “How do we overcome this?” Upward thought of a solution in a flash but he favoured the Tesco people with an even longer trance than the one he had used on Marks and Spencer. The eyes re-glazed and refocused somewhere near the far pavilions of Samarkand. The lips moved in and out. The room fell still. Cats and dogs stopped yapping, traffic ceased its roar, thunderclaps stopped clapping and they tell me Niagara stood still. In the Amazon butterflies ceased to flap their wings: eternity took a different course. At last the lips ceased moving and returned to speech. “Madam, a simple tweak to your label will persuade even the most precious and pretentious wine snob of the merits of your champagne. Spell your name TESCQUOT.” The room fell silent again. The Amazon butterflies, who had just begun to recover their nerve, again ceased flapping and all the other things again stopped clapping and yapping. Niagara changed its mind about re-starting, and on the American side lawyers passed their cards to disappointed spectators. Finally a Tesco underling stammered “But won’t the Clicquot people object?” “Pshaw! It has long been established that a mere collection of four letters is uncopyrightable, which happens to be the longest word in the English language, unless you count the rare word ‘grapefruityshod’, meaning ‘wearing primitive footwear improvised from grapefruit skins.’ If the Clicquot people dared to sue, your product would get magnums, nay Jereboams, of free publicity before the judge laughed their action out of court. Your right to TESCQUOT is unimpeachable. I see for your champagne a future as golden as the product itself. Now, I don’t think it would be at all prudent to open a fresh bottle, but we have good cause to celebrate, and if you insist…”
Posted on: Fri, 12 Jul 2013 06:26:13 +0000
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