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.
“Yes,” Mr Doucette said, and immediately the other murmurings in the room hushed. “I have a question.” His voice still shook a little; slowly he reached up and knocked Gracey’s hand off his shoulder. “These … images, as you call them, they contain no picture or drawing of our product, no reference to our product. They don’t mention the name of our product. So my question is, what, other than the fact that I pay you for them, makes these things advertisements at all?”
Osbourne nodded approvingly. “That’s a very sophisticated question, sir,” he said. “And I could go on about how those sorts of categories no longer exist: how economic and technological history has bequeathed us this network for the distribution of visual messages, a network so self-sustaining and efficient and culturally vital that it’s frankly overwhelmed the whole idea of praising commodities that brought it into being in the first place. But I expect that’s not what you’re really asking. So all I can tell you is this. Your aim in launching an advertising campaign is to sell millions more pants, shirts, and sweaters. The campaign I’ve shown you today will result in the sale of millions more pants, shirts, and sweaters. I guarantee that. I guarantee it. If that’s all our two ideas have in common, then that’s all they need to have in common.”
Doucette nodded, drumming his fingers on his leg. It was clear from his demeanor under stress that he had not been born into the class he now exemplified. He leaned forward and put his forearms on the table.
“You think I’m an idiot,” he said quietly. “Don’t you?”
“No, sir. I don’t think that. And I understand your hesitation. The way I look at it, our relationship, yours and mine, is an ancient one. It’s at least as old as the Renaissance. I am coming to you, in effect, to ask you to be my patron. As my patron, what glory accrues from my work will both reflect on you and, in indirect but very real ways, reward you. And you, of course, have something that I need, in order to do the work that I want to do. Which is why I thought it necessary that you and I meet here today. In order to obtain the opportunity to educate the public, it’s first necessary to educate the patron.”
The meeting broke up quickly after that. The junior people on each side of the table stared dumbly at one another for a few seconds before the Doucettes abruptly left as a group; Gracey said only that he would be in touch very soon. Osbourne seemed tired but well pleased; earnestly, he thanked his own eight staffers for their support, and without waiting for any reply, he gathered up the four boards, folded the easels, and left.
On the train back to New York, the stunned silence held for the first few minutes, before people began arguing tentatively about the exact nature of what they had just seen.
“He had to know what he was doing,” Dale said. “I mean, he had to know that no client in the world would ever go for that. So why would he go all the way through with it?”