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Saturday, May 31, 2003
I just finished the revisions and submitted my article yesterday so this morning I want to have a celebratory breakfast. Torn between pancakes or something to do with eggs, I remember my brother's story... Vertical advertising or Blame it on the Pancakes Having just finished college and before a change of heart and politics led him down a career road of acting, what color is my parachute, then high school teaching; my brother Ted was all set to embark on a career in advertising. Things looked good—he had just got an interview with a big ad agency in Chicago. It was going to be a two-day affair and they were flying him in from DC and putting him up in a hotel. The morning of the interview he was nervous but excited. Here he was in a swank hotel with an all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast that was all the more appealing after a summer of cheerios in my mom's little house. He piled a stack of pancakes high on his plate, smothered them with syrup, and settled down to his table and read some last minute info about the workings of the advertising business from a book on the business he had picked up at our local library. He was set for the day. Things went okay at the agency until the afternoon interview. That's when the sugar low from the pancakes hit him hard. He felt his energy sag and his confidence wane. He heard from what seemed like a great distance the question from the associate: "What kind of product would you be interested in advertising?" He was drawing a blank—the only thing he could remember was a phrase that he had read over breakfast— vertical advertising. He grabbed for it. "I think it would be important that the product be vertical," he heard himself saying. "Vertical?", the associate asked. "Like, tall?" Ted tried to explain but couldn't really—the concept had caught his eye in the morning but he really didn't have time to thoroughly understand it. It meant something like having a product be connected to things above and below it, but clearly it wasn't the huge and instantly recognizable concept in the business that my brother thought he was invoking. And the more he tried to explain it, the more he realized he didn't really understand it himself. Luckily the phone rang and the associate was distracted from disastrous turn down the vertical advertising lane that the interview was taking. Ted tried to recompose himself during the break that the phone call afforded him, but still under the spell of the pancakes, when the guy got off the phone, like a nightmare that keeps returning after you've woken up and tried to get back to sleep again my brother heard himself say "So let me explain what I meant by vertical." He knew it was all over then. Ever since he came back and told the story to us "remember the pancakes" has been a mantra in my family. When it is invoked, it’s a reminder to evaluate the risk of the pancakes for the plans of the day and decide accordingly. I think it might be a pancake day today. |