Jonathan Dee - Palladio

“To sell casual clothing,” Doucette said, a bit more animated now. “What the hell do you mean, how am I going to use it?”

Osbourne put his hand over his mouth for a few seconds. Then, saying something to himself the others couldn’t hear, he marched over and tore the drapery off the second easel. The eighteen people at the table saw a large color photograph of a sparkling white beach, in the light of midmorning. At the left of the picture were two tanned, attractive couples, sitting in beach chairs, under a broad umbrella. One of the women had turned her head to the right, where, perhaps a hundred feet away, an inflatable life raft floated near the shoreline, filled to overflowing with a dozen or more dark-skinned, ragged, exhausted people, two of whom had climbed out to pull the craft the last few feet on to the sand.

“I submit,” Osbourne said, “that the only effective way to use it is to show people something other than what they are bombarded with every second of their waking lives.”

“What the hell is that?” Doucette said.

“It’s a photograph of a boatload of Cuban refugees landing on a south Florida beach.”

“Is it staged?” Gracey asked.

“The world’s a stage. Our plan is to run this as a kind of inaugural next spring in Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, Elle—”

“You do understand, young man,” Doucette said, “that we’re trying to sell a product here?”

“Yes, sir,” Osbourne said patiently.

“And you understand the nature of that product? Casual wear, sportswear?”

“I understand it perfectly,” Osbourne said. “I just don’t think it matters.”

Everyone on the CLO side of the conference table was watching Osbourne motionlessly, as if they were all having the same dream.

“With all due respect,” Osbourne went on, “the product we’re talking about here is not one that’s unique to the market. The consumer knows, presumably, that Doucette’s jeans or boxers or what have you are attractive and not cheaply made; but there’s the Gap, there’s Banana Republic, there’s J. Crew and Lands’ End. When you really think about it, what could possibly be unique or distinctive, in the common imagination, about Doucette clothing?”

He smiled and lifted his hands in a gesture of self-deprecation.

“The advertising,” he said. “The advertising. Nothing else. Nothing but that.”

He unveiled the third image: a photograph of a vast herd of cattle in a holding pen just outside a slaughterhouse. Rolling hills and a deep blue sky were visible in the background.

“Transgressive images,” he said, “are your only viable strategy for rising above a market that’s frankly overcrowded, for making yourself heard above the cultural noise.”

One of the junior executives on the Doucette side of the table raised her hand; Osbourne nodded.

“I’m unclear on something,” she said, very earnestly. “I would have thought we’d given CLO time enough to prepare some finished materials. But how are these photos you’re showing us ultimately going to be incorporated into the finished ads?”

Osbourne raised his eyebrows; he looked behind him at the easels, then back at the young woman. “These are the finished ads,” he said.

The woman laughed — then, embarrassed, returned her face to its businesslike cast.

Mr Gracey leaned forward and reexamined the photographs through his glasses.

“There’s no logo,” he pointed out, and sat back immediately as if regretting having made this observation out loud.

“That’s correct,” Osbourne said, unable now to keep some excitement out of his voice. “That, if you’ll permit me, is the master stroke, I think, of the campaign we’ve devised for you. On one level, it’s a way of acknowledging the truth that any powerful image, whatever its provenance, once it’s released into the world, belongs to the world. There’s no claiming authorship of a picture like this, and it would be unseemly to try to do it. I mean, my name isn’t on it either. Imagine these photos you see here, two-page full-color bleeds, placed in magazines all over the world, with absolutely no attribution. It has a kind of guerrilla aspect to it, doesn’t it? And of course the paradox is that people all over the world will forget the other five hundred ads they see that day in their frenzy to find out who’s behind these anonymous images. Network news, the Internet, friends in restaurants, everywhere they’ll be talking about it. I guarantee a buzz the likes of which your product could never generate by any other means. And it should also be said that this approach will insulate you somewhat from the inevitable, benighted charges that you’re exploiting these images simply in order to sell more sweaters.”

With that, he pulled the cloth off the final easel. Upon it was an enormous close-up of a woman giving birth. She was shown from knee to knee; the baby’s head was fully emerged. The room erupted in gasps and oaths, and every single person twitched abruptly in his or her seat.

“My God!” Doucette yelled. “What is the meaning of this?”

“The most fundamental, most positive, most optimistic of human messages,” Osbourne went on calmly, “and yet the one—”

“There are women in this room!” Doucette shouted, and he began to get to his feet. “Are you insane?”

Gracey jumped up and put his hands on his boss’s shoulders. “Let’s be calm, please,” he said. “Mr Osbourne, if I could just return this conversation to the planet Earth for one moment, surely you know that no ad-sales department anywhere in the world would ever accept a photo like that for publication.”

Osbourne smiled. “Well, I have to disagree with you a little bit on that. For one thing, this particular image has appeared in at least one magazine already — just not as an advertisement. For another, I can tell you that it’s always possible to find two or three prominent print outlets who are willing to test the envelope a little bit. Because transgression — though it’s getting harder and harder — transgression is still the engine of culture.” He paused to let that sink in. “But your point, Jerry, is well taken. Most print outlets will indeed turn this piece down. That refusal, in itself, is news. And news is publicity. Of the free variety, I need hardly remind anyone. Again, I come back to the uncomfortable point that the best, in fact the only, way to associate a familiar product with the fashionable, the avant-garde, is for its advertising to establish that avant-garde.”

“So let me get this straight,” Gracey said. He still had one hand on his boss’s shoulder. He himself was perfectly cool; perhaps he had reckoned that his own job would not survive this fiasco. “Your media buying plan for Doucette incorporates censorship?”

“In a culture of excess, censorship is an achievement in itself, a measure of success. And as for any negative publicity that might also be generated, from right-wing watchdog groups or what have you, I think that one of the self-evident truths in a competitive business like ours is that airtime is airtime.”

John had forgotten his problems; he had forgotten that his own deception of his friends regarding his acquaintance with Osbourne had been exposed; he had forgotten whatever might have been going on outside that conference room. Doucette’s face was so red that John wondered if he might be in any sort of dangerous distress. It was all so rarefied and silly: and yet, in a sealed room in a neutral city, where competing ideas seemed ready to bring men to blows, John was in the grip of a feeling that seldom came over him, which he couldn’t have called anything more specific than an awareness that he was alive.

“Are there any other questions?” Osbourne asked amiably.