Page 23 of Executives' Omega
Then his scent hit me and caused gooseflesh to rise on my arms. The normally warm and welcoming aroma was spiked with the harsh tang of rage. Describing him as angry would have been an understatement. He was seething, ready to erupt, and any omega in their right mind would be best to stay away.
I stood, but my feet were rooted to their spot as I wondered what I’d done wrong to elicit such a reaction. “D-do I ne-need to call d-down?”
“I already did,” he replied, pausing halfway between my desk and the elevator when he realized I had yet to follow.
A stone formed in the pit of my stomach. “Umm…”
“Bring your tablet and voice recorder. And your driver’s license.”
I nodded, grabbed everything, made sure my wallet and phone were in my pocket, then jogged to catch up as he started walking again. It seemed that the anger wasn’t directed at me.
“Wh-what’s…?” I started as we entered the elevator and he pressed the button for the lobby.
He let out a low growl and ran a hand through his black hair. “A magazine is giving us the runaround. We had a full-spread ad scheduled for the issue that came out this morning. It cost a pretty penny and is nowhere to be seen. The editor is claiming that they never received the materials, but I was copied on the emails. Everything was sent more than two weeks before the deadline, and we have confirmation of receipt.”
“So we’re…”
“Heading to their office,” he finished, a hint of a snarl creeping into his voice.
“There’s nothing they can do about it now, though. Is there?”
He shook his head. “No, but the way they’ve handled it demands an in-person response.”
I swallowed. “Won’t they just run the ad in the next issue?”
“That would be the least they could do, and I’d still expect a significant reduction on what we paid.”
The elevator opened, and he strode out, leaving me scrambling to catch up again.
“Your car is waiting out front Mr. Olsen,” called the lobby receptionist.
“Thank you,” he replied, not breaking stride
We stepped outside, where a black sedan with a driver waited at the curb. We got in, then he continued.
“This ad was part of a coordinated marketing push,” he explained as the car started moving. “Many businesses will start budgeting for the next fiscal year as early as September. It can take anywhere between six and twelve weeks for us to complete an assessment—though we normally come in around eight. That means that we want them onboarded within the next month or so, in order to provide recommendations for them to include in budgets. The timing is tricky. Too early in the year, and many businesses aren’t ready, too late, and they can’t get key upgrades budgeted.”
I shrunk back in my seat. His words were calm and measured, but the undertones in his voice made it clear that he was still on the verge of lashing out. Plus his scent had yet to settle.
“We had full-spread ads scheduled to run this month in about a dozen national magazines covering various industries, plus smaller ads in another twentyish,” he continued. “It’s the kind of campaign we run every year, so everybody knows what to do. It makes fuckups like this all the more glaring.”
“Do things like this happen often?”
He shook his head. “It shouldn’t happen at all. An error like this represents failures on multiple levels.” He let out a low growl. “Magazines have to go through many people and approval stages before being sent to press. There’s a lot of back and forth between editors, the advertising department, and formatters. The fact that the ad is missing was overlooked not once, but probably half-a-dozen times or more.”
Another low growl. “Full-spread ads are the most expensive option, and we paid to have it in the first half of the magazine, which makes it cost even more.” He paused. “It’s on par with somebody paying for a Superbowl ad, and it not running. The scale is different, obviously, but the result is the same. We paid for placement, and they didn't deliver.”
“How much was it?”
“Just under a quarter-million,” he hissed.
I did some quick math in my head, then the blood drained from my face. It was one thing to know the company was successful, it was another to realize that if prices were similar across multiple magazines, they had spent several million dollars for a single advertising push.
“Is that expensive an ad worth it?” I squeaked.
He looked at me, then his demeanor softened. The rage that had been boiling under the surface reduced to a simmer, and he managed a small smile when he replied. “It is. We only need between three and five big contracts to recover one ad that size. We expect to pick up multiple smaller clients as well. So far the ROI on these campaigns has been more than worth the expense. We also run less expensive ads throughout the year, and we’ll publish advertorials during the other quarters. But this strategy has proven effective.”
I nodded, then glanced out the window, only to notice that the driver was headed to the outskirts of the city, rather than downtown as I expected.
