The Noid
It’s fucking pathetic when you lose your ad buddy.
“You know what would cheer you up Marlow? Let’s head over to the Tsarbucks and get you an extra large Vodka Chillato. The smooth mindnumbingness of the world’s finest potato vodka blended with the rich taste of …”
“That’s a great idea Noid, and I’d love to, there’s only one small problem, I’m flat.”
And that’s how it begins. I can see it in his eyes, the way they search the crowd, scanning retinas and bank accounts. He’s as good as out the door. Noid’s been with me from the very beginning, before I was anyone at all, and now I’m about to loose him. I sink even deeper into debtpression.
The worst part is, he’s stuck with me through so much, so many ups and downs, highs and lows. Two marriages, a merger, the lean years, the rocket ride to the top, and the long agonizing fall to the bottom. I haven’t quite hit rock yet; he’s still with me. Not for long. When he finally goes, that’ll be the sign. Buh blee buh blee buh blee, that’s all folks.
“Marlow, you seem so sad, I know the perfect pick-you-up! That little purple pill by Paxil, RELAXO! You no longer require a doctor’s prescription to purchase Relaxo. In some patients, Relaxo can cause nausea, cramping, and sexual dysfunction. Instances comparable with those of sugar pill.”
I don’t interrupt this time. I let him finish the disclaimer. Everything becomes blurry as the tears come. He knows my account balance, my current employment history, and prospects, and yet he’s still trying to pitch me. I can’t believe how loyal he is. I shudder when it hits me; he’s my oldest friend. I’m about to loose him.
When I first met Noid I was working on my MBA in Adstory. My father was angry because I chose to specialize in AdFailure Studies.
“That’s such a back story son. Do you want to be an academic your whole life? You’ll never be able to afford anything more than a Smart Car. The real money’s in cool hunting. Why throw your life away?”
But I found such joy in dusting off all the old lost case studies. Reading all those well-intentioned briefs. It was such a soap opera, charting the inevitable fall, the profit-hopes eroding to despair. I felt like they were all mine. Sure they were failures, but not in my eyes. They were thousands of targeted campaigns with a demographic of one.
“Every company has an AdFailure department dad. Those who don’t understand the past are doomed to repeat it.”
He didn’t listen. Never did. He’d see soon enough. Eat his hat. Of course, from the highest heights, the most bones break when you fall. In the end, I should have listened to him. Not for his reasons of course, but he was right. Don’t you hate it when your parents are right?
Noid showed up the day after that conversation. My life changed. Oh, not right away, but something about him made me feel I was destined for great things. I was taking a Mocaccino break. It had been a rough night. I had a paper due on failed fast food health product lines of the 20th century. Such a fertile time for AdFailure. I was trying to decide between focusing on the Taco Bell low fat menu, or taking a different tact, and comparing and contrasting the different “healthy” wrap products offered by the various fast food giants of that time. The later was so much more obscure, but I felt like there was real meat there.
He was subtle, he slipped next to me, scanned my retina and my bank account without me noticing.
“Like that Mocaccino Marlow? Then you’re gonna love the Super ‘Nilla Moca BLAST! Now with 30% more SynthiChoc! Can I get you one?”
His pitch was rough, but something about the enthusiasm, the way that he looked, really touched a chord in me. He seemed young and inexperienced just like me. We became instant friends. I had just made my first AdBuddy.
“That sounds great. I’d love one. What’s your name?”
He deducted, ordered, and answered, “call me Noid” in the space of a second. He was more experienced than he looked.
Our first transaction. It makes me smile just thinking about it. We had our last just this morning. I had just enough for a tall Mocaccino. Fitting. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning. It took a lot for him to stick with me. A purely academic degree in a backwards field, guaranteeing an anonymous career, and an eventual fade into total mediocrity. Hardly fertile ground for profit. But he saw something in me. Something I wasn’t even aware of yet. Of course, it could have been worse, I could have been a NoAdster, or an ADdict, but then he would never have looked my way in the first place.
After I graduated I took a low paying contractor research job at Digby & Digby, of course, this was well before they became the world famous powerhouse they were destined to be. Needless to say, I had weak prospects. That didn’t stop Noid from sticking with me.
“Come on good buddy, you’ve put in such a hard day’s work. It’s time to relax, our course is clear, let’s throw in the towel, and get us a beer! O’Flanigan’s is right around the corner, and they’ve got an ice cold Bud with your name on it. During happy hour they’re half price!”
He was always looking out for me in the early years. Helping me budget and stretch my spending cache. I wish I could say the same for Karen. I’d met her several months earlier, at a meet and greet. She was so flighty, so many causes to follow, so passionate. I don’t know what I ever saw in her. Perhaps her Victoria Secrets’ body. She had an AbBuddy too, one of the specialized PSA models. His name was Che.
“Karen, you know, for just a few pennies a day you can make the difference in the life of a …”
That’s how the pitch always started. After she moved in with me, the pitch always ended with a deduction from my spending cache account. Those were lean years for me, and for Noid. It kept me hungry, focused. And though I didn’t have one extra cent to spend, he stuck with me nonetheless. He always understood things I didn’t. He could see that something was being built. On some level, I’m sure I should thank Karen. I would have been happy with that dead end job, all those briefs just for me, but those causes were so damn expensive. I had to do something. It had to change.
“Karen, did you know that there are children who can’t afford designer footwear? It’s a tragedy that doesn’t need to be. For just a few pennies a day …”
A few pennies. Right.
My break through came unexpectedly. I was putting in some overtime on the side. There was nothing left in my spending cache after Karen’s latest cause, and I needed to eat. The call came down. They asked me to put together a research paper on all the fast food burger broadcast ad campaign failures in the last 30 years that targeted the teen and pre-teen demographic. I went to work. I submerged myself into the library, watching endless reams of video, pouring through thousands of briefs. It was quite a daunting task. At about 1 am, Noid tried to get me to take a consumption break.
“Homework, homework, give me a break!”
It made my blood turn cold. I looked at him, and he smiled helpfully.
“What did you say good buddy?”
“You deserve a break today! Gimme a break! Marlow, don’t you think it’s time that you treated yourself to something special?”
He was peppering his pitch with snippets and catch phrases he must have overheard during all my research sessions. He knew how much they made me smile, all that corny old shit. It felt like a punch in the stomach.
“HOLY SHIT! That’s brilliant!”
I spent the rest of the night drafting the brief. AdFailure be damned. Just because a concept didn’t take root in the 20th didn’t mean it wouldn’t work today. 30 years ago it might have been insulting, alienating. Today it could appear new, different, quaint, and retro all at the same time. While Karen and Che plotted the next foray against my spending cache, Noid and I worked side-by-side well into the morning. Bleary-eyed, I presented the brief in the morning instead of my AdFailure evaluation. I should have been fired on the spot. They just looked at me with open mouths.
“After a gutsy move like that, an upwardly mobile young jr. executive like yourself deserves to be pampered. At the Serenity Day Spa, you can experience a week’s worth of pampering in 5 hours. What say I make you an appointment?”
I was in such a daze. I was sure they would let me go. I wanted to go out in style. It was the first time Noid had ever pitched me in this demographic. I charged it, went to the spa and waited for the executioner. He never came.
The company launched the Burger Bundles campaign a month later. It was a runaway success. I became a full timer, a salaried employee. I was on the map. Our CMO knew my name. He invited me out to lunch. I was someone.
The next 4 years were a heady blur. An appointment to V.P. made me far too established for Karen’s comfort, and so she left. There were more late night diggings into the goldmine of the AdFailure Archives. And new campaign launches, sometimes 2 or 3 a month. McRibs, New Coke, Bob. My head spun. The whole industry started to know my name.
Noid’s patience had finally paid off. He kept me honest. He kept me spending. I was so busy doing the research, writing the briefs, I never had time to focus on consumption. He helped me. I moved into my new apartment and he helped me fill it with the top line of furniture from NIKEA. He made reservations at all the finest restaurants, Phillip Morris’ Bistrovia, the Beatrice Tavern on the Green. He bought me all the latest fashions. Triple 5ubu. DKFDNY. I was decked out.
But no mater how much I tried to consume my spending cache grew and grew. It became an embarrassment. The words “savings account” started to be whispered around the office. I was being called frugal. Noid knew that if office opinion turned against me, then it would be over. None of the magic of the new lines that I produced would be worth a thing. He saved me again.
“Marlow, do you ever feel like your life is empty? Aren’t you lonely spending all those long nights in the Archive? You know, that special someone could be out there. Maybe you pass them on the street every morning. Maybe they live a thousand miles away. Either way, you’ll never find them if you don’t look. Would you like me start a search using LifeMatch’s patented algorithmic compatibility widget? Let’s find your perfect match today! Are you looking for a man or a woman?”
He found Susan within the week. She was everything I needed, young, beautiful, and most importantly, a voracious shopper. She was indeed my perfect match. In a week after meeting her, my spending cache had shrunk, my consumption habits were no longer scrutinized. The last piece had fallen into place.
My efforts at Digby and Digby had not only spawned a whole new field of AdStudy, they put the agency on the map. The worldwide visibility of the Burger Bundles campaign was like blood in the water. Coca Cola, Saatchi & Young soon became Coca, Saatchi, Young, & Digby. We were swallowed up to become part of the biggest marketing machine the world had ever known. I was promoted, and promoted, and promoted. The world was mine. Houses, cars, everything, and Susan and Noid lorded over it all. They spent my money like a couple of masters. I was becoming one of the world’s top spenders. I was on the cover of Consumption Magazine.
Why is it when everything is brightest that that’s when it inevitably falls apart?
I was a shining star. The enfant terrible of the modern marketecture firmament. But when you boiled it down, it all played out like another episode of “Behind the fame” on MTVH E! The only piece missing was the “where is he now” segment.
It was all my own fault. You have to understand, it was about loyalty. He’d been with me for so long. When the opportunity arose, all I could see was the chance to create a tribute. I never understood, some things were better off dead.
I never was a hands-off kind of guy. Even though I was an officer level in C.S.Y.&D., I still loved to spend my time in the Archive, digging. I even still created briefs. Oh, not nearly as many as in my younger, hungrier days, and none as successful, but I still kept my “hand in”. I had to let those young whippersnappers know who had created this field in the first place. The last time I descended into the depths of the Archive I didn’t find a thing. I hadn’t written a brief in months. I was starting to feel old.
I was down there just trying to clear my head. I told myself not to expect to find anything, but I was hungry for a discovery nonetheless. I just “stumbled” onto it. Something about it just clicked for me. It felt like something big. It was in it’s own way. In hindsight I should say I heard some voice in the back of my head warning me against it. I didn’t. Even if I had, I’m sure I would have ignored it.
There he was staring out at me from that ancient video monitor. So perfect. The red jump suit, the ears, the red and white N on his chest. It was frightening. It hit too close to be coincidence. I felt that ‘punched in the stomach’ feeling again. I felt alive. It was such a perfect discovery, such a mix of my personal and professional life, such a tribute. The brief almost wrote itself. I felt so on fire I even skipped the focus groups. We launched the campaign in just under 3 weeks. During that time I was high. I spent my nights fantasizing about merchandising, spin-offs, co-branding opportunities. Noid was surprisingly quiet during all of it. I should have noticed. He slowed his pitches to me to only 10 or 15 times a day, and only to the bare necessities. He always knew better than I did.
The “Avoid the Noid” campaign launched amidst a level of buzz and fanfare usually reserved for the largest product re-roll-outs. It was written up in all the industry rags. The latest from the wunder kindt at Coca, Saatchi, Young & Digby. It was supposed to change the landscape of spokescartooning. I was about to become not just a markitecture giant, but a markitecture god.
If only I’d held one focus group.
Riots. Rage. Violence. It was the worst received campaign in modern Adstory, worse than the dn-L riots of the early 2000s. The sickly sweet smoke of the bubbling red bonfires blackened the sky. Enraged consumers piled Noid figurines, lunch boxes, condoms, plastic cups, everything printed with the Noid image, or that red and white N, on to the flames. They were all fair game. They not only avoided the Noid, they scourged the earth of him. They tore down storefronts. Destroyed their televisions. Screamed for blood. My blood. And they didn’t even know it. It lasted weeks.
We hid, Noid and I, hid and prayed to the gods of Advertising to weather out the storm. The mighty empire of Coca, Saatchi, Young & Digby started to crumble. The reporters on KraftNN spoke of the dawn of a new era of marketecture – the era of disAdisfaction. The world was changing. Somewhere in there Susan left. I barely noticed she was gone.
It didn’t come as any surprise to me when I was made redundant. I was surprised they waited so long to do it. I’m sure it had something to do with the sacking and looting of our HR office. I was grateful it happened so quietly. If the mobs had learned who I was they would have torn me apart.
In one month, my life ended. There was nothing left for me. I could commit suicide, or slip into the slums, living on sub-standard, un-advertised products. Eat government cheese. Get drunk. Slowly die. I was too much of a coward to kill myself quickly. I had to opt for the long slow route. I was in such a daze. I am in such a daze.
Noid changed his appearance of course. What else could he do? AdBuddies have an amazing capacity for self-preservation, so much more so than human beings. He kept his name though, until this afternoon. I don’t know why he stayed with me. So long. As long as he was next to me I felt like there was possibility. That life held something for me. Now I’m lost.
I turn down the Relaxo. I have to. I have nothing. And I turn away, ashamed. When I turn back, he is gone. I feel my stomach drop, a chill through my intestines, my teeth are tight. I jerk my head around trying to spot him. Like looking for a mariner lost under the waves. He is gone. Then I hear a voice in the distance, floating over the murmur of the crowd. It is unmistakable. It is Noid.
“Katrina! Do you like that Mocaccino? Then you’re gonna love the Super ‘Nilla Moca Blast! Would you like one? It’s so nice to meet you. My name’s Snuggles.”
And I know it’s all done.
Entries (RSS)