Marketing

Goodness, it was quiet in the Lake District last night.

We did an awful lot of sitting on the taxi rank and not a very great deal of driving a taxi. I might have done rather more driving a taxi if, at the end of the night, some young gentlemen who wished to go to Kendal, had not been quite so rude.

That is to say, one of them was rude. His friends were enquiring about the price, and whilst I was explaining that it would be forty quid between the three of them, he stood next to the taxi shouting about what a wicked robbing rip off it was, as if this might somehow induce me to reduce the price.

After a minute or two of this I stopped explaining, leaned out of the window, and told the young man that I was not taking him anywhere, for any price at all.

I do not enjoy endless carping and grumbling in my taxi, my experience is that it turns into vitriolic abuse very quickly indeed, and so it is better to stop these things before they start.

They were all dismayed about this, and went over to Mark, who was the other taxi on the rank, and who had been listening with interest. Mark quoted fifty quid, and told them that it would be cash up front before they got in, so they went away, shouting abuse and throwing resentful punches at one another.

When we went home shortly afterwards we passed them, walking.

It is a long way back to Kendal, but walking is, at least, free.

I took a group of middle-aged gentlemen to various different places, and one of them regaled the others with some story of how he had once left his wallet in my taxi, and I had found it late at night and brought it back to him at his house.

I recalled the incident, and after he had got out I told his friends that I had almost thrown it in the lake instead. This was because when I first took him home, his girlfriend had paid for the taxi, and he had looked at her in horror, and said: You’re not going to tip her three quid, are you? I think that’s too much.

This amused his friends, who gave me a tenner to illustrate how much more affluent and generous they were.

People are really quite predictable at times.

All the same, it was quiet. We sat around until half past two, but there was nobody around, not even passing werewolves, and in the end we gave up.

We were late to wake up this morning, and shepherded the children out of bed for a walk over the fells, which was shorter than usual because of Mark’s knees and Oliver’s revision, which had got to be done before he went to work.

Oliver is trying to work as much as he can at the moment, having just sunk all of his savings into Roblox shares and a flight to Canada. It is very difficult to make a fortune whilst one is trying to revise for GCSEs, but he is having a good go at it, and I am impressed.

Breakfast did not happen until three in the afternoon, because our household has a peculiar time schedule at weekends, and then Mark got our taxi picnics ready whilst I came belting up here to try and get my university assignment finished. You will be pleased to hear that I have done this, and am now the author of a brief, if somewhat scurrilous screenplay which I have added to these pages for your entertainment.

Please note that it is a work of fiction and in no way intended to be taken seriously. I am a taxi driver and do not have the smallest knowledge of either marketing departments or pharmaceutical companies. Obviously I do not mean in any way to imply that such events might happen anywhere at all in our honourable world. I hope nobody even begins to imagine such a thing.

The Marketing Men.

Premise. A pharmaceutical company has found a miracle cure for an unattractive problem. A marketing man is trying to make it front-page news.

Screenplay.

(An office in a skyscraper. One wall has a huge window through which we can see an American city.

A YOUNG MAN sits at a desk. There are other people in the office, also working, but they are occupied with their own affairs, talking on the telephone, staring at computer screens, etc.

On the paperwork on his desk we see the logo of a pharmaceutical company, a test tube being carried by an eagle. This logo is repeated all over the office, it is the company marketing department.

The YOUNG MAN is not working. He is staring thoughtfully out of the window. He is not looking at the view. He is thinking hard.

On his desk is a pile of notes, covered with revisions and crossings-out. He picks up a pen and then puts it down again. He swings his feet up on to the desk and leans back in his chair, as he flicks thoughtfully through the notes.

The telephone rings.)

YOUNG MAN:  No, not so far. Yes, I know…I know. The thing is, it isn’t a very glamorous…well, it’s hard to think…yes, I know. It needs to be in the public eye. Get people talking about it.

Do we have any famous sufferers? Well let’s see if we can find some. Get your people on to it. It has to become a talking point. Every think-piece needs to have an opinion about it.

Every Style magazine. Every Women’s Section. I’m thinking Cosmopolitan, the New York Times. It needs to be the talking point on everybody’s front pages. Top of the funnel. Then we go live with the product about three weeks afterwards. Miracle cure. The solution to the problem the world didn’t care that it had, and now it does. Bleeding hearts for the sufferers.

We need an angle. A different way in.

Leave it with me.

I’m working on it.

(He hangs up. He takes his feet off the desk and starts to flick through a series of images on his computer. They are all famous people. After a minute or two more and more of the images are of famous people glamorously dressed, red-carpet occasions. The Oscars.

We see his face as he looks. Suddenly an idea occurs to him. He stops, types something on his key pad, and then looks at his computer again.)

YOUNG MAN:   Bingo.

(He starts to write furiously. He pulls his chair up to the desk and writes, concentrating hard. Every now and again he glances back at the computer.

He stops writing and reads through what he has written. A smile spreads over his face, a look of triumph. He gets up and walks around for a few moments, punches the air. He thinks about this, and punches the air a second time, this time as if he were pretending to punch a person. He thinks about it, and then opens his hand and mimes a slap. He does this a couple of times, and then nods, satisfied, and returns to his desk.

He picks up the telephone on his desk and dials.)

YOUNG MAN:  Jerry? I’ve got it. The angle. It won’t be cheap but it’ll reach the whole world.

That’s right. The preliminary interest for your alopecia cure.The whole world’s going to be thinking alopecia. There won’t be a journalist left in the world who can’t spell it by the time we launch the product, I promise.

This one’s going to be brilliant.

FADE TO BLACK