One of the things I learned very early on in my somewhat checkered career was that bullshit works, and outrageous bullshit works even better. Among my favorite quotes is that of movie scriptwriter, William Goldman, who once said… “Nobody in Hollywood knows anything about anything.” I must confess, I have “homaged” the shit out of that one whenever possible by substituting Madison Avenue for Hollywood. Goldman also wrote “Which Lie Did I tell?” Something worth remembering when engaged in the day to day cheating, manoeuvering and back stabbing necessary to succeed in the ad biz, because, it’s often forgotten that in order to be a successful liar, it is essential to have an excellent memory.
Back in the early eighties, I was making big bucks freelancing for agencies in Silicon Valley, who were humping Hi-Tech clients for at least ten zillion dollars a day. In fact, everyone was humping everyone for as much money as they could get away with… It was called capitalism. I believe it still is.
I was working for the agency handling the Applied Materials account. This is a company does not make chips; they make the machines that make chips. These are the size of small aircraft carriers and have to be housed in temperature controlled, air filtered buildings you could lose a dozen football fields in. They also cost more money than the GDP of a small African nation, and the accompanying service contracts their customers are obliged to sign up for are worth additional millions.
During one meeting, I was presenting a series of ads for the “Applied Materials Cluster Fuck Sub-Zero Mach 6.0” or something equally mind-numbingly boring. As this was the early eighties, it was pre Internet/Web time, so the agency was expected to cram all the technical details, or as the Silicon Valley Technorati love to call it, “speeds and feeds” into each ad. Not only is this impossible, it’s also unnecessary, as big-time chip companies such as Intel, or Micron are not going to blow a massive chunk of change on the “Cluster Fuck Sub-Zero Mach 6.0” because of something they have read in the third paragraph of copy in an ad that ran in that week’s issue of the Chip Makers Gazette.
Halfway through my presentation of the ads, one of the client’s marketing geniuses comes up with the remarkable observation that there seems to be an awful lot of copy in the ad. Yes indeed, I replied, so why don’t we take some of it out? Obviously, that went down like a lead balloon, because then you wouldn’t have all the “speeds and feeds” shit the client wants, even though no one is ever going to read it. Then another of the client marketing wankers comes up with a master stroke solution. “Let’s bullet point the copy!” This immediately makes me want to kill the fucker. Because I really hate bullet point copy. Not only is it as ugly as a K-Mart, three cents off coupon, I honestly think it makes the copy harder to understand because it breaks up the natural flow of the language.
I leapt on the fucktard’s suggestion with well-feigned enthusiasm. “That’s a damned good idea,” I said. “But unfortunately, a new study has just been released by the Institute of Datametric Cognitive Studies showing that bullet point copy is 72.36 percent, harder for readers to assimilate than regular galley set type.” The fucktard stops in his tracks and looked at me, his weevil-like eyes narrowing. He slowly breathed in through his open mouth, while shifting his gaze from me to his boss. His boss said nothing, but was obviously curious to see where this pantomime was going. The fucktard’s brain was now engaged in overdrive, but you could sense that the spinning wheels were starting to become bogged down in the sands of uncertainty.
“The Institute of what?” He asked “The Institute of Datametric Cognitive Studies,” I said. The wanker was well and truly screwed – I mean, c’mon, it was the perfect name, how could something with a title that scholarly not exist? “Then” he sighed, “I guess we should leave it the way it is.” Ha, I had single handedly bullshitted the guy into an inescapable corner… Because, apart from the name of the organization, I had been so precise with the magic number, no majorities, no generalizations, no perhaps, no ifs, ands, or buts. Just a fucking diamond hard number… Seventy two, point three six percent. I didn’t even have to deliver it with the benefit of a Power Point slide, just an air of nut crushing authority.
After the meeting, as we left the building and I was lighting a fag with my fake solid silver Dunhill lighter I had bought on Canal Street for twenty dollars, the agency suits demanded to know where I’d read the study from “The Institute of Datametric Cognitive Studies,” that I’d just quoted. Taking a big drag on my unfiltered Gauloise, I informed them there was no such report, and I’d just made the whole thing up on the spur of the moment! “But, what if the client had demanded to see proof of your claim”, they asked. “No chance”, I replied, “as long as you lie with rock solid conviction, and are very, very, precise with your numbers, no one will ever challenge you.”
The moral of the story is that lying can often work, but it will unfailingly work if you do it with perfect panache and absolute precision. It’s worked for me seventy two, point three six percent, of the times I’ve made presentations. You can read all about it in another recent report from “The Institute of Mendacious Poseurific Studies.”
