“Are there any real health benefits?” Harriett asked.
“No sugar, great hydration, and loaded with antioxidants.”
“What the fuck are antioxidants?” Harriett joked. “Anyone know?”
Andrew snorted and shrugged. The others in the room shook their heads.
“So basically we’re selling shitty carbonated water with a few vitamins thrown in.”
“That’s why they need advertising,” Chris chimed in. “Shitty carbonated water won’t sell itself. We’re going to convince these women it’s what they’ve been missing all their lives.”
Harriett spun around to face him. “So brilliant,” she gushed. Men in advertising loved to explain how it all worked. “Max said you were a genius. I can’t wait to see what you’ve got. Is that it?” She pointed to a tall stack of foam boards lying facedown on Chris’s desk. The message was clear. She wasn’t interested in a lecture on advertising.
The smile he gave her wasn’t terribly warm or friendly. She made sure the smile she offered in return was pure light and joy.
“Yeah, so I have four ideas to show you this morning.” Chris grabbed the first board off the stack on his desk and turned it over to reveal an illustrated frame from a video ad. A very young woman in a very small bathing suit lay by a glistening blue pool surrounded by forest, a bottle of Pura-Tea on the rocks beside her.
“Fuck, this isn’t the spot I wanted to start with. Andrew, can you rearrange these like I asked?”
As Andrew leaped from the sofa like a well-trained puppy, Harriett pointed at the image of the bikini-clad girl.
“You said they’re going after women over thirty. How old is the woman in the picture supposed to be?” Harriett inquired. “The illustration makes her look sixteen.”
“It’s meant to be an aspirational image of our female audience,” Chris explained. “Fit, gorgeous, and healthy.”
It was funny, Harriett thought. Twenty-five years in advertising, and the aspirational female had never changed. It was always whoever the art director wanted to screw. And, equally serendipitously, she could only be found in places the creative team wanted to travel.
“Women over thirty don’t aspire to be sixteen,” Harriett said. “We can be fit, gorgeous, and healthy at any age. Plus, once we hit thirty, a lot of us can afford a fuck-ton of overpriced iced tea.”
“Let’s not get hung up on the casting right now,” Chris said, handing the boards to Andrew. “Just imagine our heroines the way you’d like to see them.”
“As badass bitches who keep the world running and never get their due?” Harriett asked.
Chris glared at her. “Sure,” he said. “Why not.”
“Great!” Harriett said. “I love it already.”
Andrew passed a set of rearranged boards back to Chris, who plucked several off the top of the pile and held the first up for his guests to see. Fortunately, the ad he’d chosen to start with didn’t feature a half-clad teenager, but rather a plain wooden door.
“So,” Chris said, looking down at the board. “We open with the camera locked on the door of an apartment. The door’s a bit scuffed and the paint’s peeling in places. It’s clearly the kind of apartment you had in your twenties.” He moved on to the second board. “Then we see a young man strut down the hall with a bottle of wine in one hand. He knocks at the door, and a pretty girl opens up and drags him inside. The next time the door opens, he’s coming out. There’s no wine bottle in his hand, and his clothes and hair are rumpled. He’s obviously spent the night.”
He let the board drop, revealing another illustration of the original door.