consciousness for no more than a few seconds before he disintegrated.
Khanin said goodbye and hung up the phone. Tatarsky looked up and was amazed to see a bottle of tequila, two glasses and a saucer of lemon slices standing on the desk - Khanin had deftly set everything up while he was talking.
‘One for the departed?’ he suggested.
Tatarsky nodded. They clinked glasses and drank. Tatarsky squeezed a slice of lemon between his gums and began nervously composing a phrase to suit the occasion, but the telephone rang again.
‘What’s that? What’s that?’ Khanin said into the receiver. ‘I don’t know. This is a very serious matter. You go straight round to the Institute of Apiculture… Yes, yes, to the tower.’
He hung up and looked intently at Tatarsky.
‘And now,’ he said, removing the tequila from the table, ‘let’s get to grips with your latest works, if you have no objection. I presume you’ve understood that Dima was bringing them to me?’
Tatarsky nodded.
‘Right, then. As far as Parliament is concerned I must admit, it’s good. But once you’ve latched on to a theme like that, why do you hold back? Relax! Let yourself go all the way! Put a Yeltsin on all four tanks with a glass in his hand.’
‘That’s an idea,’ Tatarsky agreed, inspired, sensing he was sitting opposite a man of real understanding. ‘But then we’d have to take out the parliament building, give each Yeltsin a rose and make it an advertisement for that whisky… What’s it called - the one with the roses on the label…’
‘Four Roses bourbon?’ Khanin said, and chuckled. ‘Why not? We could. Make a note of it somewhere for yourself.’
He pulled several sheets of paper held together by a paper-clip towards himself, and Tatarsky immediately recognised the project that had cost him so much effort for Tampako, a company that produced juices but for some reason intended to sell shares - he’d given it to Pugin two weeks before. It wasn’t a scenario but a concept, that is, a product of a somewhat paradoxical genre in which the author explains, as it were, to very rich people how they should earn their living and asks them to give him a little bit of money for doing it. The pages of the familiar text were covered with dense red scribblings.
‘Aha,’ said Khanin, glancing over the markings, ‘here I see you’ve got problems. In the first place, they took serious offence at one of your pieces of advice.’
‘Which one?’
‘I’ll read it to you,’ said Khanin, leafing through the pages, ‘where is it now… it was underlined in red… but almost all of this part is underlined… aha, here it is - triple underlining. Listen:
And so there exist two methods for advertising shares: the approach that shapes the investor s image of the issuing firm, and the approach that shapes the investor’s image of the investor. In the language of the professional these approaches are called ‘where to invest’ and ‘who to invest with’…
‘No, they actually liked that bit… aha, here it is:
In our opinion, before the campaign begins it would make good sense to think about changing the name of the firm. The reason for this is that Russian TV carries a lot of advertising for Tampax sanitary products. This concept is so firmly positioned in the consumers’ consciousness that displacing and replacing it would involve immense expenditure. The associative link Tampako-Tampax is exceptionally inappropriate for a firm that produces soft drinks. In our opinion, it is enough to change the penultimate vowel in the firm’s name: ‘Tampuko’ or ‘Tampeko’. This completely eliminates the negative association…’
Khanin looked up. ‘You’ve learned a lot of good words, can’t fault you there,’ he said. ‘But why don’t you understand you just don’t go making suggestions like that? Here they’ve
Khanin said goodbye and hung up the phone. Tatarsky looked up and was amazed to see a bottle of tequila, two glasses and a saucer of lemon slices standing on the desk - Khanin had deftly set everything up while he was talking.
‘One for the departed?’ he suggested.
Tatarsky nodded. They clinked glasses and drank. Tatarsky squeezed a slice of lemon between his gums and began nervously composing a phrase to suit the occasion, but the telephone rang again.
‘What’s that? What’s that?’ Khanin said into the receiver. ‘I don’t know. This is a very serious matter. You go straight round to the Institute of Apiculture… Yes, yes, to the tower.’
He hung up and looked intently at Tatarsky.
‘And now,’ he said, removing the tequila from the table, ‘let’s get to grips with your latest works, if you have no objection. I presume you’ve understood that Dima was bringing them to me?’
Tatarsky nodded.
‘Right, then. As far as Parliament is concerned I must admit, it’s good. But once you’ve latched on to a theme like that, why do you hold back? Relax! Let yourself go all the way! Put a Yeltsin on all four tanks with a glass in his hand.’
‘That’s an idea,’ Tatarsky agreed, inspired, sensing he was sitting opposite a man of real understanding. ‘But then we’d have to take out the parliament building, give each Yeltsin a rose and make it an advertisement for that whisky… What’s it called - the one with the roses on the label…’
‘Four Roses bourbon?’ Khanin said, and chuckled. ‘Why not? We could. Make a note of it somewhere for yourself.’
He pulled several sheets of paper held together by a paper-clip towards himself, and Tatarsky immediately recognised the project that had cost him so much effort for Tampako, a company that produced juices but for some reason intended to sell shares - he’d given it to Pugin two weeks before. It wasn’t a scenario but a concept, that is, a product of a somewhat paradoxical genre in which the author explains, as it were, to very rich people how they should earn their living and asks them to give him a little bit of money for doing it. The pages of the familiar text were covered with dense red scribblings.
‘Aha,’ said Khanin, glancing over the markings, ‘here I see you’ve got problems. In the first place, they took serious offence at one of your pieces of advice.’
‘Which one?’
‘I’ll read it to you,’ said Khanin, leafing through the pages, ‘where is it now… it was underlined in red… but almost all of this part is underlined… aha, here it is - triple underlining. Listen:
And so there exist two methods for advertising shares: the approach that shapes the investor s image of the issuing firm, and the approach that shapes the investor’s image of the investor. In the language of the professional these approaches are called ‘where to invest’ and ‘who to invest with’…
‘No, they actually liked that bit… aha, here it is:
In our opinion, before the campaign begins it would make good sense to think about changing the name of the firm. The reason for this is that Russian TV carries a lot of advertising for Tampax sanitary products. This concept is so firmly positioned in the consumers’ consciousness that displacing and replacing it would involve immense expenditure. The associative link Tampako-Tampax is exceptionally inappropriate for a firm that produces soft drinks. In our opinion, it is enough to change the penultimate vowel in the firm’s name: ‘Tampuko’ or ‘Tampeko’. This completely eliminates the negative association…’
Khanin looked up. ‘You’ve learned a lot of good words, can’t fault you there,’ he said. ‘But why don’t you understand you just don’t go making suggestions like that? Here they’ve
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