Tasmina Perry - Original Sin

Liz almost laughed. Already there had been rumours that the drugstores were going to cut back on the retail space they had allocated for Natural Glow because of poor initial sales. If that happened, it was a certain death warrant for the brand.

‘Eleanor, let’s face facts,’ said Liz irritably. ‘We are dead in the water if we don’t do something radical immediately to start shifting units.’

‘Liz, now is not the time for scaremongering,’ said Eleanor.

‘Scaremongering? Natural Glow is haemorrhaging money. It won’t last until fall at this rate.’

Liz looked over at her brother. Only eighteen months older than her, William looked at least a decade her senior: old and tired, worn out by the responsibility. He had none of Liz’s flair and none of the natural authority of their father; he was just a worker bee, a drone reluctantly forced into the queen’s seat. Liz, on the other hand, had been profiled in the Wall Street Journal as ‘that rare executive, one who combines creative brilliance with astute business sense’. They both knew who should be sitting in William’s chair.

William cleared his throat. ‘Let’s not forget that the product we have here is good.’

Liz laughed. ‘Of course it’s good.’

Before Eleanor Cohen had been brought in to launch Natural Glow, the product had been Liz’s baby. The fresh organics concept had been her idea, and she had spent fifteen hours a day working with industrial designers to perfect the dispensing pumps that mixed the fresh ingredients in-store.

‘The problem is not the product,’ said Liz, looking pointedly at Eleanor, ‘the problem is the marketing.’

‘Well, it would have been nice to have received this insight before we launched,’ replied Eleanor tartly.

‘I assumed marketing was your area of expertise,’ retorted Liz. ‘Wasn’t that why we hired you?’

‘Okay, everyone, let’s keep things constructive,’ said William. ‘Liz, you clearly have some ideas.’

A faint smile played on Liz’s lips. She had been anticipating another difficult board meeting and relished the opportunity to place herself in the sun.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘First of all, we’re not using our core brand effectively. Nobody knows that Natural Glow is part of the Asgill brand.’

‘You are quite happy for Skin Plus not to have brand association to the company,’ scoffed Eleanor.

Liz shook her head vigorously. ‘That’s different. Skin Plus is being positioned as a premium, luxury product, so we need to distance ourselves from Asgill’s. Natural Glow, on the other hand, is very mass market. When you’ve only got fifty dollars disposable income a week and you’re spending a chunk of that on a face cream, the customers want the reassurance that it’s good. They like the validation that a major cosmetics player is behind it, so we should have branded it Natural Glow by Asgill on all the retail units.’

‘I disagree—’ said Eleanor, before Liz cut her off mid-sentence.

‘Point two. We’ve created these fantastic pumps that allow us to deliver fresh product, with fresh ingredients blended and dispensed in front of them, but does the consumer really understand that? Have they been told about the benefits of this unique product? I don’t think so.’

‘We had the idea of putting the star bursts on the retail units,’ offered Caroline Peterson, the marketing director.

‘Nice idea, shame it didn’t happen,’ said Liz witheringly. At this point, Liz reached behind her and picked up a Natural Glow advertising board.

‘Three,’ continued Liz, now in full flow. ‘Advertising.’

The image she held up was of a sliced avocado sitting next to a tumbler of water, a drip of water on the rim of the glass. It was an image that made Liz angry just to look at it, an affront to all the hard work she had put into research and development to bring the product to life.

‘Look at it,’ she said, tapping the board. ‘How is an avocado going to make Natural Glow the market leader in mass-market skincare?’

Caroline Peterson looked embarrassed as she opened her mouth to speak.

‘We worked with O&M for twelve months on this campaign. We felt that the avocado summed up in one image everything that the brand stood for. Exotic yet accessible. Fresh and natural. The soft lime green of the fruit … it says healthy and aspirational.’

Liz rolled her eyes. ‘This line is aimed at the under-thirty-fives. They don’t respond to a fucking avocado.’

Now she pulled out another board with a pasted-up image torn from magazines. It was a photograph of a beautiful woman running along a beach.

‘This is what they respond to. Straightforward, aspirational lifestyle images. They want to be fit and beautiful, and this product will give them that.’

‘Are you now proposing we ditch an advertising campaign that has been running for less than ten weeks?’ asked Eleanor with alarm.

Liz nodded. ‘Absolutely. I also propose that we recall our retail units to rebrand them “Natural Glow by Asgill”. I also think we need a celebrity face, shot in a lifestyle context rather than in the bland studio shoot everybody else does. In fact, I was thinking we could use Brooke.’

There was another murmur from the board, this time one of approval and interest. Liz knew she had their attention.

‘Brooke?’ asked Meredith cautiously. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Remember Aerin Lauder fronting Lauder’s Private Collection fragrances? Everyone thought it was the perfect fit. I think this will be a perfect fit too. Who better represents what the young woman of today wants than Brooke Asgill?’

Liz held up her photo of the girl on the beach. ‘Imagine this girl is Brooke. Now, imagine the headline: “Fresh, fun, fabulous - Natural Glow by Asgill”. In fact, having Brooke as our front woman might even save us rebranding the in-store pumps. After all, everyone in the country knows who she is.’

William shifted uncomfortably in his chair. ‘These are great ideas, Liz, but it would be such an embarrassing U-turn in the industry.’

Liz spun to face him, anger prickling her cheeks. ‘Either we save face and we discontinue the line, or we take decisive action now,’ she said fiercely, her frustration at William’s ineffectual leadership spilling over.

Things had been so different since her father died. Howard and Liz would have huge debates in board meetings, constantly challenging each other, bouncing ideas off each other, so that they produced better results than anyone had originally hoped. Liz and Howard had been so similar, so close. Liz knew he had wanted her to be CEO of the company when he stepped down, but his death from a stroke four years previously had been swift, and formal provision for Liz had never been made. Meredith inherited Howard’s shareholding and she had allowed William to take over the company.

Still, she had some allies. Leonard Carter was nodding his head. Younger than Meredith but still in his sixties, he too no longer worked five days a week, but he was still a respected member of the board. After all, he’d spent twenty years as vice president in charge of international development.

‘We could certainly use Liz’s ideas to roll out the Natural Glow launch in Europe. We’re only just liaising with the media planners now. The avocados were going to be the global brand image, but we could change that.’

‘Hmm, I’m not sure the Billingtons will approve of this,’ said Meredith thoughtfully.

William pointedly ignored Liz’s glare and glanced down at his watch.

‘We should push on. Let’s save this for the Natural Glow brand meeting.’

Meredith had a glorious corner office from which she could see the Empire State Building. She mixed herself a drink from the cabinet by the window, watching the yellow cabs and pedestrians below. Moving behind her desk, she picked up Quentin’s financial report and began to read. It didn’t look good, not at all. They needed this wedding more than ever, it seemed. Just then there was a crash, and Meredith looked up in alarm as Liz strode in, and slammed the door.