Page 23 of The Change
Harriett leaned forward in her chair to study the last board. It was truly remarkable. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the whole thing had been crafted by an alien species.They live alongside us,she thought.Some work with us. Some fuck us. And some do both. And yet they seem to know absolutely nothing about us.
“What is it?” asked Andrew, sensing trouble.
Harriett sat back and wove her fingers together. “I don’t think I get it,” she said.
“What don’t you get?” Chris asked.
“The whole thing,” Harriett told him. “So this chick sleeps with lots of guys, and it makes her sad. Then she drinks a tea. It purifies her, and suddenly a man wants to marry her.”
“That’s it!” Chris seemed relieved. “You got it!”
“So sleeping around made her dirty?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s meant to be tongue in cheek. We’re just riffing on society’s hang-ups.”
“Ah,” Harriett said. “I see. You’re playing off the common misconception that women who like to fuck are whores, and men won’t marry whores. Perhaps the girl in the ad should be douching with Pura-Tea instead of drinking it? I mean, you’d want ladies to purify their real dirty bits, would you not? How much tea would they need to buy for each guy they’ve fucked?”
The four men in the room stared at her.
“I think you may be taking this a little too personally,” Andrew finally said.
Harriett grinned. “You’re married. How did you make sure Celeste was pure before you slid a ring on that finger?”
Andrew blanched. “Can wenotbring Celeste into this?”
“Now who’s taking it personally?” Harriett laughed. Not at her joke, but his chutzpah—acting as if she were besmirching his wife while everyone in the agency knew he was screwing a junior copywriter. “Show the ad to Celeste. See what she makes of it.”
“Celeste has retired from advertising.”
“As I recall, Celestewasretiredfrom advertising,” Harriett corrected him. “Who’s the target audience for this campaign, again? May I see the brief?” She read the target section, though she needn’t have bothered. “They call them the Mindful Moms. Affluent, health-conscious women age thirty-plus. They love yoga, drink herbal teas, and champion social causes... Holy shit, that sounds just like Celeste, does it not?”
In fact, it sounded like every woman in Mattauk. From the viewpoint of giant corporations, they were all the same person. They were all Mindful Moms.
“By the way,” Harriett added, “how old’s the girl in this spot? She looks a little young for a Mindful Mom. Where’s she hiding her kids while she’s banging everyone in the neighborhood?”
“Max loves this script,” Chris interjected. “He thinks it’s fucking brilliant.” The way the words came out, it was perfectly clear that he intended them to be the end of the conversation. Harriett had no intention of stopping.
“Max is a fifty-five-year-old Scottish male. I’d much rather hear what Andrew’s wife, Celeste, has to say. Presumably, she’s the one who’ll be buying this shitty carbonated water.”
“I don’t give a fuck who the ads are for,” Chris sneered. “Max thinks this spot could win awards, and that’s why he brought me here. To win awards. You’re here to sell the work I tell you will win those awards.”
Harriett almost admired him for saying out loud what they were all thinking.
“I’mhere to sell work thatyoutell me is good?”
“I think I’m the best arbiter of what’s good and what isn’t. How many Gold Lions haveyouwon?” Chris asked.
Thirteen was the answer. Her ideas, her lines, her scripts had gone on to win thirteen Gold Lions at Cannes. But her name wasn’t on a single one of those trophies. And unless your name was on the trophy, and the trophy was displayed on a window ledge in your office, you were a loser just like everyone else. That was one of many mistakes Harriett had made over the years. She’d let men take credit for her work assuming they would be grateful and her contributions acknowledged. But selective amnesia was endemic in the advertising community. Most of the men she’d helped didn’t even remember. The rest saw her generosity as a sign of weakness.
“I’ve brought in seventeen new accounts since I came to this agency two years ago,” Harriett told him. “I’d like to make Pura-Teathe latest. We can discuss this script later with Max. Let’s see what else you’ve got.”
Harriett knew it was going to get ugly. And she couldn’t wait.
Somewhere in the mission statement of every ad agency in New York was a nod to their respect for the “consumer.” It had always seemed to Harriett that a good way to show real respect might be to give them a label that didn’t call to mind brain-dead omnivores. At all five agencies where Harriett had worked over the course of her career, she’d made it clear that these faceless “consumers” were flesh-and-blood women. Around the world, she would tell whoever would listen, women purchase or directly influence the purchase of 80 percent of all goods—and the women dropping serious change are usually over thirty-five. Whenever a man questioned this, she’d ask him when he last bought toilet paper. What brand was it? How much did it cost? Nine times out of ten, they couldn’t answer.
When Max had hired her as new business director, Harriett’s first step had been to put together a presentation on that very subject. Max hadn’t been in favor of showing it. He worried the agency would develop a reputation for specializing in women’s brands. Eventually, it became apparent that Harriett’s “lady deck,” as Max called it, drew clients in. People whose jobs actually depended on selling things bought what Harriett was offering. She became the bait that the agency dangled in front of them until the papers were signed. Then Harriett handed the new clients over to an organization that employed a grand total of six women over thirty-five. Two were administrative assistants. One was the office manager. One ran the agency’s feminine hygiene account. Another was a midlevel art director. The sixth was the head of the new business department.
Outside the new business department, the agency was one hundred percent devoted to making great advertising. When he’d taken over the flailing organization, Max had made it clear that that was all that mattered. “It’s all about the work,” he would say. Every year, he sat on award-show juries along with other creative rock stars. His fellow judges were almost always men, almost always in their forties and fifties, and almost exclusively white. This cabal of rich white dudes was responsible for deciding what was “good advertising.” No other opinions mattered. Their stamp of approval could lead to prize money, industry-wide adulation, and seven-figure salaries. When a creative team sat down to develop a new campaign, these men were invariably their true target audience. Assignments that weren’t deemed to have award-show potential were quickly shunted off to junior, less favored, often more female creative teams.
