Chapter 6: Advertising

Tuesday morning, Jack dressed and drove to his office. As soon as he walked in, the receptionist, Teresa, looked up, her big, dark eyes flashing at him, “Jack, you’re looking good,” she said giving him a big smile. Picking up her phone, “Tina told me to let her know when you arrive. She is really pissed you didn’t come in yesterday,” she said quietly.

“I was on vacation, remember.”

“I don’t think she cares.”

As Jack headed for his office, he was waylaid by Tina. “Jack, you were supposed to come in yesterday! We were able to delay the meeting until today, but your thoughtlessness could still destroy the entire campaign! Don’s with Mr. Cortez in the conference room. You need to get in there now.”

He saw her looking at his beard. “And like I told you yesterday, I was on vacation. Don approved it.”

“Don didn’t know about the meeting.”

“Then take that up with Don, not me.”

“Watch your mouth!”

“Whatever.” Jack headed towards the break room. “Let them know I’ll be there in a few minutes, as soon as I get some coffee.” She glared at Jack for a second, then started down the hall.

Jack contemplated how he had ended up at Booker & Blakely. He had gone to school at USC and earned a degree in marketing, but nothing had ever quite worked out as he had thought it would. For a number of years, he had bounced around at various radio and television stations selling advertising, but that never appealed to him and it wasn’t his strength. Then he had switched to creating the ads and had worked his way up at a couple of agencies, buying ad time and dealing with various stations, but that still didn’t thrill him. For the last several years he had been an account exec with Booker & Blakely, which at least let him use his imagination. He doubted he was going much higher, though. The principals, Will Booker and Don Blakely, were the primary account execs and he reported to them, and they didn’t seem interested in letting anybody else into the upper ranks.

He filled his coffee mug, glanced at the pile in his in-box, ignored the message light on his phone, and walked down the hall to the conference room. The door was open, Tina standing just inside. In one corner Danny Cortez and another man were huddled over some of the storyboards for the planned ad campaign. In the opposite corner Don Blakely and Lisa Colosino, the art director, were talking quietly. It didn’t look like things were going well.

“Mr. Blakely, Jack’s here now,” Tina said.

“Jack, glad you could make it,” Don said shaking his hand. “How was the vacation?”

Jack told him it was fine and then asked what was going on. “Well, Mr. Cortez and Henry Green, his general manager, don’t seem to like our idea for the ad campaign, but we can’t get them to let us know what the problem is. I had Lisa come in, but they don’t seem to be able to tell her what the problem is either.”

Jack understood what was happening. That was the way things went around here. They wanted him to save their bacon even though it wasn’t his project, it was Don’s. Jack had a reputation for being a good listener and communicator. Maybe with the crystal and the ring he’d be able to do even more.

“Will I be able to influence them without touching?” he asked Construct, thinking it would be hard to touch them and put them under his control with so many observers.

“Yes, Lord, with your natural ability and the crystal, you will find you will have great influence over them.”

He turned to Lisa. “Let’s see what they’re unhappy about.”

She smiled at him, her eyes bright. “Well, I hope you can find out, Jack. I sure couldn’t get anything out of them.”

Jack always liked Lisa, was even attracted to her, but never did anything about it. She was Italian, he guessed in her mid to late twenties, tall, with a great figure, long midnight black hair, scrunched up in back now. She was wearing a blue t-shirt, jeans and sandals.

“She would be suitable as a concubine,” Construct said.

“We’ll see,” replied Jack. Even with his new and improved equipment, he would never be able to handle all the women Construct wanted him to have.

Danny Cortez stood up, shook his hand, and introduced him to his general manager, Henry Green, a tall, thin, African-American. Don let him take the lead trying to find out why they were dissatisfied with the proposal. ‘Cortez Motors’ was one of the largest Hyundai dealers in the LA region. The new store they were opening soon would make them even bigger, and the ad campaign would be an important part of their marketing strategy. Booker & Blakely didn’t want to lose the account.

Of course, Jack could have used his powers to make them agree to anything he wanted. It might have taken some time, but he could have maneuvered them away from the others and put them under his control. The problem with that was if the planned campaign was flawed, there was no way he could control everyone in LA These two knew their business better than anyone, they should be able to help create a successful campaign.

They talked for a while, but all Jack could discover was they were dissatisfied but didn’t seem to be able to articulate why. It was nearly noon when Cortez said, “We’re going to lunch now. We’ll give you a week to develop another proposal, but if that doesn’t meet our needs, we’ll have to consider someone else, maybe a larger firm.”

“Have lunch here, with us,” Jack said, all the time thinking, agree, agree, agree. “We’ll order some pizzas, if that’s okay. Just give us one more hour to try to find out what we can do to meet your needs.”

They agreed. He had Teresa order pizza, wings, and soft drinks from a nearby pizzeria. As they were eating, Jack concentrated on having them focus on how the campaign could be improved. Suddenly, Henry Green said, “Maybe other models, more like our customers, would make a difference.”

“How so?” asked Lisa, beating Don and Jack to the punch.

“Our demographic is more minority, less affluent than the image you present,” Green answered.

“Yes, I’d like to see more minority customers,” Cortez said.

Jack huddled with Lisa while she did some quick work, sketching out changes to the commercial. Since the agency was completely digital, she was drawing on a tablet computer and could simply use the existing storyboards but editing in different actors.

Jack and Lisa finished about fifteen minutes after lunch was over, with Jack and Don apologizing for the delay. Then, after Teresa cleaned up the pizza boxes and trash, Don nodded to Jack. “Showtime,” he said quietly.

Jack nodded and grabbed the remote control. A large screen lit up, and a slideshow began. “I am sure you can understand why we don’t have large printed storyboards, but we just didn’t want to take the time today. In any case, let’s look at two possible scenarios.”

Don blinked at that. He had been expecting simply to repeat the earlier storyboards, only with some darker complexions. Instead Jack was going off-script!

Jack noticed Don’s face changing, and simply made a subtle gesture to stay quiet. To Cortez and Green, he said, “Here’s our first cut, modified to meet your demographic.” He started flipping through the slides. Instead of a Caucasian woman showing off her new car to a Caucasian man, she was showing it off to an African-American woman. ‘I got mine at Cortez Motors,’ was the tag. Then the black girl parked her new Hyundai close to where a Mexican-American model was standing and repeated the tag: ‘I got mine at Cortez Motors.’ This was repeated through another couple of minority actors. “This is fine for a thirty-second spot, or we can cut out a segment or two and make it a fifteen-second spot.”

“Yes, that’s more in line with what we want,” Cortez said.

Jack nodded but said, “But that’s not what you really want.” Don’s eyes popped open at that, but Cortez and Henry looked confused. “This is an ad campaign, and we can make it a great campaign, but you want something more. You need something more. You need ... this!” With that he started flipping through some new slides. These were the same as before, but the balloons with the dialog had changed. After the question of ‘Where did you get your car?’ the response changed to ‘Cortez Motors, of course!’ At the end of the slideshow, Jack stopped on a slide simply showing that tag line, ‘Cortez Motors, of course!’

“This is what you want, an entire marketing campaign, and it’s all based on your tag line. Now, we can change that tag line, but ‘Cortez Motors, of course!’ extends past car sales, and will impact everything you do.”

“How so?” asked Green.

“The mechanics of this ad campaign are the same, but we extend the tag line to all aspects of the business, and we create ads for each business line. Follow me on this.” Jack stepped over to a line of whiteboards along one wall of the conference room. “From new cars we can expand to used cars. Consider an ad where two fathers are talking about where to get a used car for their kid. Maybe one father wants a car that is cheap and reliable, or safe, or easy to maintain, and he asks the other guy where he got a car for his kid. ‘Cortez Motors, of course!’ is the answer. You give us the reasons people buy used cars, and we can create an ad for that, always with the same tag line, ‘Cortez Motors, of course!’” Jack was writing reasons and the tag line on the whiteboards as he talked.

Cortez and Green looked at each other, nodding slightly. Behind them, Don nodded also, and pulled out his cell phone, and began to subtly take photos of what Jack was writing.

Jack continued, “We continue on, with every aspect of your business. I understand that Cortez Motors has a business in converting vans and trucks for commercial use.”

Cortez answered, “Yes. It’s not a big part of our sales, but we can take a standard van or truck, Hyundai or other brand, and run it through our body shop and convert it to a custom commercial configuration.”

“It’ll be a bigger part of your sales when we run an ad campaign aimed at that. All we need to do is take that ad and change the actors to blue collar workers driving around your trucks and vans and saying, ‘Cortez Motors, of course!’ Trust me, you’ll have commercial buyers coming in!”

Cortez and Green looked at each other again and nodded silently.

Jack said, “We leverage each of your assets. The body shop that converts trucks and vans also does repair work. Run an ad that shows two people talking about where they had their cars repaired after accidents. ‘Cortez Motors, of course!’ Your finance arm - we have two people asking where to get the best financing on their car. ‘Cortez Motors, of course!’ Everything relates back to the tag line. It is your new slogan! When people hear the words ‘Cortez Motors’ we want their next thought to be...

“Of course!” answered Cortez.