Straight from “MBS-in-hand” churned copy for Coolman & Associates Advertising and Image Management (AIM). Cool AIM.
Agency days bleak indeed. Frantic. Hive of urgency and tension. Get Word to public. Word was product. Word and image. Factory of words images. Word-image-product proposal better be damn good or say “good-bye” to the
account. Ready. AIM. Fire(d).
Didn’t mingle. All those stressed designers and copywriters stiffening in cubicles, dreaming words and patterns.
Meetings flushed us from our cubicles. Forced exodus to the Conference Room, discuss strategy, pursue pure talk. So many products to sell, so many words. Lost faith in Great Books. Lived pure talk. Feared I’d advertise forever – no trivial concern.
Daily forgettable copy, slogans, agitprop. Cornucopia of prototypes marked time’ s passing. Colorful presentations of Desire conjured by Department of Motion, Graphics and Design. Slo-Mo Antics in Lost Time.
What was I doing, me and my false words? De-generative lingua-phobia. Overexposure to corrupt grammar of “the sell.” Scored one big league victory. Winning copy for a winning campaign: the NUDE (Naja’s Urban Design Emporium) account.
NUDE meeting in the conference room so important Naja herself presided with two assistants — grimly erotic, gracefully coiffed and appareled in NUDE couture. Naja in black. Suave, hip, sexy hirelings projected NUDE image for suave, hip, sexy, clientele. Naja herself a model in “the Day.” Now, fashion designer of The City. Oracle of style.
NUDE was remaking itself in its own image, she said, and invoked its new slogan, “Designing the NUDE you.”
She expounded upon the company’s new Lifestyle mission.
“It’s more than the clothes on your back, it’s the fashion inside you. NUDE doesn’t just put clothes on your body, but fashion in your soul. NUDE customers are more particular, more demanding of the very best in fashion. NUDE men, NUDE women. ‘When the God-Man created man and woman they were naked. Then they became NUDE,’ something like that. I forget the exact wording of the copy,” said Naja.
The clothes in my closet called me home: “New clothes replace old clothes people wear for a time until designers design new clothes and black is gray and gray is brown and garments of last season seasoned in closets, thrift shops, material waste or clothe new bodies. Life stained seasons dyed washed…”
Ear of my stomach. Not quite conventional discourse. Naja instilled NUDE sense into the copywriters, unveiling Earn, inter-gender perfume. Fragrance of bodies in dynamic transition. Pheromone scent of rut. Human-all-too-human crest of concupiscence. Desire. Raw. Lust.
“Earn will enhance the natural aromas of male and female bodies, especially in the erogenous areas, where glandular concentration is thickest and most redolent,” said Naja.
“Special blend of herbs and flowers tinctured to perfume by some of our finest scent artists overseas. Earn scent of The Nation,” she declared.
Poster by Motion, Graphics and Design Department held aloft: Wedding party. Tree-lined field. The Big Park. In the offing gray black towers of The City like men in suits. Wedding guests beautiful. Friends, lovers, children, animals. No family no old no middle-aged — not the stimulus-response target zone for Earn.
“We want them young, hot and horny,” Naja said.
Bride barefoot. Gauze frock translucent. Hair wild auburn. Copper tan. Groom’s torn denim, motorcycle boots, tuxedo jacket, top hat. Day’s growth of beard and wired eyes. “Fab cool hip” look. Authentic “check it out, man” (or “Gadzooks, friend!” custom ‘ethnic/caste alignment’ campaign for each consumer relative-age-peer-group and income bracket) or “gotta buy me some Earn so I can [fill in blank]” look.
Time: Absolute Zero. Statue Zone. Marble Moment. Stasis: lovers’ arms outstretched short of embrace, each equidistant from the center. Idyll imposed over a green Earn amphora.
“I’m pleased with this,” said Naja. “But, the copy. There’s no copy.”
Silence.
Came out of me instant reflex. Quick from the gut, resounded.
“Earn the moment,” I said. “Forever.”
“Earn the moment. Forever,” all repeated.
Naja pleased. My superiors pleased. A winning slogan for a winning campaign. Still used by NUDE, my copy. Default slogan for Earn. Wedding-in-the-Park graphic Earn’s enduring image. I saw it on the subway only days ago.
Thing of beauty.
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