Creative Solutions, York
Monday, September 26
A word of warning to marketing managers: Avoid any advertising agency calling themselves Creative Solu-tions: they are neither creative nor a solution. While most industries can get away with such blatantly uninspired waves to their core service – Cool Air Conditioning, Accountable Accountancy, I See Optical – advertising agencies can’t. I cite examples at random from recent inductees into the Clio Hall of Fame, arguably the most prestigious international accolade you can bestow on an advertising agency: Del Campo Nazda Saatchi & Saatchi, Buenos Aires; TBWA/Germany, Berlin; TAXI, Toronto. These are proper advertising agency names – the multi-barrelled telephonist’s nightmare; the meaningless but big sounding acronym; and the ever popular ‘Name your agency over a drunken game of I spy’.
Creative Solutions, York…
The really scary part was this: the same level of expertise that went into that name would be applied to the marketing of some poor unsuspecting sod’s product. Which explains most of the commercials on daytime television. I kid you not – a New Zealand ad for car windscreen repairs described patch up work on stone chips as ‘optically difficult to detect’. Not ‘hard to see’, ‘optically difficult to detect’. This is the level of expertise we’re talking about.
I wanted nothing to do with that level of expertise. But I had no option.
Gabriel had hated the way I’d sloped around the house in my dressing gown while she was readying herself for work. She hated it even more when I sloped around in the same dressing gown at night unable to provide sufficient proof of outdoor, job seeking attire worn in the interim. I’d then remind her that I, not her, had paid for the roof she currently had over her head. And that I was the one making the soul destroying cold calls to every advertising agency in the north of England. Calls that would have got me no further had I been wearing a tuxedo.
She then suggested that the dressing gown spoke volumes for my state of mind. I told her there was nothing wrong with my state of mind; it was the state of the nation I was worried about as no decent ad agency in North Yorkshire had immediate need of a writer, which meant nobody was advertising, or at least, nobody was advertising at sudden, bloated levels sufficient to call in reinforcements. The only word Gabriel picked up on in this entire sentence was ‘decent’.
After a brief, explosive row – the highlights of which were me reminding her I had standards and her reminding me I’d been walking around in a tatty purple dressing gown for two weeks – I agreed to call the indecent agencies as well.
The first indecent agency I called had immediate need of a writer.
I should have been pleased. I wasn’t. I didn’t know which was worse. Being seen as a terrorist by my potential family. Or being seen as a failure by my peers.
***
Creative Solutions, according to my directions, was located at 8 Monkgate, York wherever that was. I knew where York was, I was there now thanks to Dawn and an effortless, detour-free journey from Hartley Castle House. I was on the York Inner Ring Road as instructed, mentally preparing myself for the undoubted bitter disappointment to come. ‘Leave. The. Roundabout. At. The. Third. Exit.’ Proceed. Without. Dignity.
York, for those not from – or familiar with – England, was and probably still is a medieval city of some half a million people, one of the oldest, most history-laden cities in England; a sort of mini-London with mini museums and mini monuments, and ancient stone walls protecting its city centre, walls London couldn’t boast unless you counted the Congestion Charge. York’s main claims to fame were preserved ruins from the Roman and Viking ages, exceptional late night ghost hunts and The Shambles, a long, pin thin cobbled lane now overflowing with shops, but once overflowing with the blood of freshly slaughtered animals courtesy of the myriad open air butchers who plied their grisly trade before the eyes of man, woman and child. York also boasted England’s largest cathedral, the rather gothic York Minster, if you liked that sort of thing. I didn’t, such gargantuan shrines and their monumental upkeep just one more way the religious machine lubricated its myth.
‘Why are these massively expensive buildings necessary just to belt out a few hymns?’ I’d asked Gabriel as we’d taken a cursory tour of the Minster’s outrageously ornate interior some weeks before.
‘They’re places of worship, monkey. The Houses of God.’
‘Yeah, well. If God was such a swell bloke, don’t you think he’d be a bit dark on all this decadence? How can they justify all these cavernous shrines when there are still starving people? How can the Pope stumble about in the Vatican saying “Terrible, terrible, all the bloated black children,” when his very existence eats up more than entire countries eat in a year! How can they spend millions renovating St Paul’s Cathedral, then pray for an end to poverty! If God really stood for compassion and self sacrifice, don’t you think he’d say fuck all this, if you lot really give a shit, you’ll be happy to sing Hallelujah in a tent!’
Gabriel suppressed a giggle. ‘Keep your voice down, monkey.’
‘Why? Because I might offend a religious person? I want to offend a religious person! Tell them their bibles and Korans and whatever else are the real weapons of mass destruction. You brainwash enough people, all you get are these buildings, holier than though pricks complaining about every second television commercial and twelve year boys wandering into cafes strapped with explosives! I hate religion!’
‘You. Have. Reached. Your. Destination. Heretic.’
Having parked and walked to the exact location of Creative Solutions one minute early, I still managed to be five minutes late. Their sign was so small and apologetic I walked straight past it four times – Creative Solutions, the advertising agency that didn’t believe in advertising. I cursed under my breath and sloped in the door of what turned out to be an old dusty three storey building. An equally pathetic sign pointed down a long dimly lit ground floor corridor of flaking plaster. At the end of this was a wooden door with a small frosted glass window. Sellotaped to the window was an A4 sheet of paper. Typed on this in about forty eight point caps was ‘CREATIVE SOLUTIONS’, caps which capped the most inauspicious entry to any advertising agency I had ever seen. I was so close to running back out.
Once inside I wished I had. Creative Solutions’ reception resembled a 1950’s doctor’s waiting room; all tired wood panelled walls and vinyl arm chairs.
I approached a desk behind which sat a dim looking spotty girl with a rag doll hair do full of purple streaks. ‘Charlie Chabot,’ I said.
She gazed up at me. ‘And you’re here to see…?’
‘Sorry! That’s me!’ said a middle-aged man flying out of an office behind her. He confronted the girl. ‘I’m Charlie Chabot!’ He swung to me with a full face smile, hand extended. ‘And you must be Bailey. Sorry,’ he said shaking my hand vigorously. ‘Temps, you see. We’re that busy, the place is crawling with them at the moment.’
It wasn’t a great start, but accurately reflected the standard I expected to find. Charlie Chabot, as I’d also suspected from our phone conversation, turned out to be a muddlingly unimpressive man but, it has to be said, a likeable one. He had a warm, softly spoken, dare I say it, priestly manner and ready smile. He was also surprisingly well groomed, his navy blue tailored suit and black (I suspect Grecianed) manicured hair completely at odds with his musty old office and leathery old face. He was frightfully English and frightfully, strangely, compulsively apologetic about pretty much everything.
‘Sorry. Ahm, come through,’ he said extending an arm away from my seat. I headed for his office. ‘Actually. No, I think we’ll go to the meeting room, there’s a bit more room in there. Ahm, Melissa?’
‘Tracey,’ said the purple streaked temp.
‘Sorry. Ahm, Tracey. Bailey and I are going to be in the meeting room for about an hour, if you wouldn’t mind ahm…taking messages?’
She gawped at him.
‘Charlie Chabot,’ he said pointing at a phone list on her desk. ‘Look, it’s third from the top under C. I’m the managing director.’
She gawped at me. ‘Do ye wan me to take messages fa im as well?’
‘No. He doesn’t work here yet, Melissa.’
‘Tracey.’
‘Sorry. Tracey. Ahm, could you bring us a cup of tea as well? With some milk and sugar?’ – I didn’t have the will to tell him I didn’t drink tea – ‘Excellent. Thank you so much.’ He swung back to me with an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry. Bailey. Do come this way.’
‘Well then,’ he said once we were seated in the Creative Solutions meeting room, a rectangular box just behind his office with all the windowless charm of a police interrogation room. He smiled, a smile that effortlessly reached soft kind eyes despite the attentions of a giant parsnip of a nose. ‘As I think I told you on the phone, most of our advertising to date has been property based – apartments, retirement villages, that sort of thing.’
I felt my heart kick my lungs in the nuts. ‘No. You didn’t tell me that, actually.’
‘Didn’t I? Sorry. I do apologise. Fairly important fact that. Ahm, have you worked on much real estate in the past?’
None.
‘Enough,’ I said.
‘Good. Good.’ He consulted several stapled sheets of paper on the table in front of him. ‘Although I have to say your CV doesn’t quite reflect that.’
Charlie Chabot wasn’t quite the fool he appeared.
‘To be honest, Charlie,’ I lied. ‘That isn’t an exhaustive list. I’ve only put all the major stuff on there. Sorry,’ – my turn to apologise – ‘I’d have sent you something more appropriate if I’d known.’ A nice piece of blame switching, which drew a predictable response.
‘Sorry. Entirely my fault.’
‘Do you want to see my book?’
‘Your which?’
‘My portfolio of work.’ I held it up so he could see.
‘Why not. Why not!’
I could have told him why not – because, with all due respect – and there wasn’t any – Charlie Chabot may as well have asked the purple streak to critique my work. Which he duly did when she arrived with the tea.
‘Sorry. I’ve forgotten your name again.’
‘Tracey.’
‘Tracey. Have you got a minute?’ Tracey appeared to have a lifetime. ‘Have a look at this.’ She looked over his shoulder at an ad in my book. I could see that it was a billboard for Arthur’s, a steak restaurant in Brisbane. The purple streak named Tracey stood at Charlie Chabot’s shoulder and peered down at the ad. Charlie Chabot peered up at her with an expectant smile waiting for her to get it. She was reading. He was peering. I was shuffling uncomfortably.
‘Don’t you get it?’ he said finally.
She curled her top lip up into her nostrils, shook her head.
‘Pop in. We’ll put the cattle on?’ Chabot said. ‘As in kettle? No?’ He gave up. ‘All right, how’s this tea then? Ah…’ he said upon seeing, then sipping one of the two cups of tea. ‘Yes. I see what you’ve done. You’ve put the milk and sugar in the teas.’
‘That’s what you told me to do!’
‘No. I meant milk in a jug and sugar in a bowl. They’re in the cupboard in the kitchenette. Bailey, how do you take your tea?’
‘With milk and sugar,’ I lied. The last thing I wanted was for Charlie Chabot to send the purple streak back to the kitchenette to sort out the tea crisis. I couldn’t imagine how long it would take her to complete such a simple task properly and I had no intentions of hanging around long enough to find out.
‘Ah well,’ said Chabot. ‘Looks like you’re off the hook, Melissa.’
‘Tracey.’
‘Sorry. Tracey! Why do I keep calling you Melissa? You must remind me of someone. An ex-girlfriend, perhaps. What the devil, hang around and help me critique these wonderful ads of Bailey’s. They truly are amazing.’
And so it went on. Charlie Chabot greeted every ad in my book with the sort of gasped wonder and broad, twinkling smiles usually reserved for newborn babies. I wasn’t flattered – my book was being viewed by the advertising equivalent of someone seeing snow for the first time – but I was relieved. It meant work, no matter how dire. And right now I’d have sold plastic horns for the devil.
It transpired that Charlie Chabot wanted me to sell dreary looking middle class apartment developments in such places as Blackpool, Brighton and Torquay. All I had to do was find the necessary enthusiasm. And I would. That was what I was good at. For now, dreary apartment developments were my all time favourite thing.
‘Right then,’ said Charlie Chabot. ‘Most impressive indeed. May I suggest your next move is to meet our art director, Fergus Blaine?’
‘Sure,’ I said making to get up.
‘Sorry. No, he’s not actually here. When I say our art director, he’s only just become our art director. Freelance like yourself. I literally saw him yesterday. As I think I said, I’ve been writing all the ads myself up until now and um—’
‘No, you didn’t tell me that,’ I said as the source of the name Creative Solutions became all too plain.
‘Didn’t I? Well, yes. Done a reasonable job of it too, if I may say so myself, but there we are. The price you pay for growing rather fast I suppose.’
Growing and fast were not words I would have associated with Creative Solutions under the nice but naïve guidance of Charlie Chabot.
’Has Creative Solutions been going long?’ I asked, sure the answer was no.
‘Yes. Oh yes, we’ll be celebrating our twentieth anniversary in March next year. You’ll get an invite if you last that long. Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound negative.’ I appreciated the apparent sympathy for my plight. ‘Actually, your question was has Creative Solutions been going long and the answer to that is no. We were Chabot Property Advertising for the best part of eighteen years. Which, of course, restricted us to property advertising. Now we’ve decided to branch out a bit and appeal to a wider client base, attract a few more mainstream clients, we thought a more mainstream name was called for. Hence Creative Solutions.’
Hence the beginning of the end.
‘Do you mind me asking your billings?’
‘No! Not at all.’
‘Okay, I’m asking.’
‘Which must mean I’m telling.’ He laughed out an ahm. ‘Last financial year we billed nineteen million.’
I nearly choked on my indifference. ‘Nineteen?’
‘Yes, we’re the third largest in the country for property advertising and we’re still growing jolly fast. My belief though is this: there is only so much land out there available for development, particularly in England and we are looking beyond immediate horizons to such places as France and Spain with some success, but there are other opportunities right here in Yorkshire if we simply open our eyes to them. There is, of course, the old adage – stick to the knitting – yet we are essentially an advertising agency, our skills lie in creating ads and advertising solutions, and while real estate has been our bread and butter to date, does that mean real estate has to be our entire future?’
This was clearly a question I was meant to answer, such was the upward inflexion. Only problem was I’d stopped listening after ‘nineteen million’. Whatever Charlie Chabot had been whittering on about, I was just staring at him and wondering how someone so patently useless could head a nineteen million pound company. In this office.
‘What?’ I said.
The bright and breezy, apologetic naivety clouded over. ‘You’re not the least bit interested, are you, Bailey?’
‘What?’ I said. ‘No. Yes! Of course! I was just blown away by the figures there for a moment.’
‘Were you? Sorry. But your entire demeanour since you got here has been a little spoilt.’
‘Spoilt?’
Charlie Chabot’s demeanour was now more than a little jilted. ‘Yes. I appreciate what we do here may not appeal to someone from the mainstream but we are moving that way—’
‘Charlie, no. It’s not about that. I don’t care what you’re doing—’
‘Well—’
‘No! What I mean is the real estate stuff is absolutely fine by me. This Brighton job. I can’t tell you. I’ve already been thinking about it based on what you’ve shown me. That’s what I was thinking about just then and, I have to say, I’ve got a few thoughts already.’
‘Oh? What are they?’
‘Well, they’re not properly formed yet, so I’m not saying anything. I just think there’s some real potential there. I think we could do some really great ads.’
‘You do?’
‘I do.’
I didn’t, but at least I still had a job.
‘Well,’ Charlie Chabot said after a brief flurry of mutual flattery and solidarity. ‘Shall I show you round?’
He did. He showed me down a hall lined with small windowless boxes containing sullen people and computers and informed me that these were the accounts service, media and administration staff. He showed me into a more free range affair at the end of the hall where another half dozen slightly less sullen people were bent into computers, music playing and informed me that this was the studio. He showed me out the back to the kitchenette, beyond that to the pool table and beyond that to the car park, which he admitted sadly wasn’t big enough to accommodate any more than two cars.
I returned to my previously prized Volvo in a York city car park wondering which of those two cars in the Creative Solutions car park had been Charlie Chabot’s – the Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster or the Mercedes M-Class 4WD?
My perception of Creative Solutions had been turned on its head. Not the hum drum nature of it, but the sheer money spinning nature of it. Either I was wrong or England was unbelievably easy to please. I knew this wasn’t true – some of the world’s greatest advertising came out of England. It didn’t, however, come out of Creative Solutions, York. I’d seen what they considered to be their showcase ads hanging in expensive frames in reception and along the walls of the hall leading to the studio. And I’d been appalled, not to mention a little embarrassed for even showing my face in there.
The bottom line was I had pride. Pride I discovered I could happily flush down the toilet in a crisis. Charlie Chabot, for all his apparent uselessness and equally apparent millions, had taken me on face value, the face I had manufactured on the spot, a fairly crude face that had ultimately met his expectations.
I did not shake Charlie Chabot’s hand that day as a fully fledged employee of Creative Solutions. I shook it as a freelancer, a free spirit who came and went as the work ebbed and flowed. He told me the work would flow like Niagara Falls for at least the next two months and I didn’t feel elated, I felt gutted – the more I was there, the less opportunity I had to get a proper job somewhere else. Anywhere else. Worse, as I left Creative Solutions that day, head down like I’d just left a brothel, I knew Charlie Chabot was on the phone ordering Creative Solutions business cards. With my name on them.
Perhaps even more awful, he was ordering business cards for someone named Fergus Blaine. My art di-rector. Someone I was yet to meet. Someone I was now obliged to work with. As a creative team. And a crea-tive team was like a marriage. I was marrying Fergus Blaine. Sight unseen. I thought about Charlie Chabot’s only words about Fergus Blaine ‘He was a bit scary, but there was no denying him’. I wondered what that meant and wished I’d asked. I felt like an Indian bride about to be rogered senseless for eternity by an old fat bloke reeking of curry.
Who was Fergus Blaine? What was Fergus Blaine? Well, he was someone desperate enough to accept a freelance position with Creative Solutions.
Someone like me.
