Truth in Advertising by John Kenney Page A

seen them. Always pulling up their pants.”
    It dawns on me that everyone in the room is white.
    Martin says, “When’s the meeting?”
    Babs says, “Thursday in Atlanta.”
    Martin says, “Knock ’em dead. If you don’t come back having sold it, kill yourself.”
    Babs laughs, but she’s not entirely sure Martin is joking.
    â€œFin!” Babs says as she walks out of Martin’s office smiling, her lips disappearing. I heard a rumor that her husband left her recently. Three children.
    â€œHey, Babs. How are you?”
    Babs begins crying for no reason I can discern.
    I say, “Are you okay?”
    And just as quickly she stops crying. Eyes wide, lunatic smile. “Sure am, Fin.” Machine-gun laugh out of nowhere, then gone.
    Babs says, “Did you hear we’re trying to get the Dalai Lama for Crest White Strips?”
    â€œWow. Does he do advertising?”
    â€œWho the fuck knows?!” she says, a giant smile still plastered on her face. I feel like she might explode.
    â€œSounds like a great meeting in there.”
    Babs says, “A great meeting. A great meeting. Leaving for Atlanta in about an hour. Hotlanta , they call it down there. More like Shitlanta . What a dump. Need to talk with you first thing after the New Year about the Doodles thing.” Her cell phone is ringing and she’s readjusting the folio she is holding to her birdlike chest in order to answer it.
    â€œBarbara Moss,” she says into the phone, nodding to me, smiling.
    I nod and smile.
    Merry Christmas , she mouths, and she’s off, a trauma surgeon heading toward the ER.
    â€œGood luck,” I shout, and see her bony arm come up and wave as she disappears down the hallway. God love her.
    â€œFin,” Martin says, from inside his office.
    There’s a Christmas morning atmosphere in Martin’s office. Boughs with white lights adorn his window with a view to Bryant Park and the skating rink below. Gifts from clients, vendors, editorial companies, music companies, production companies. New Patagonia jackets here, an engraved bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label there. This is my future. This office. This is what I’ve been working for. Though the chances of me ever getting here are comically slim. The simple truth is that there are far more talented people all around me. They possess a drive and passion for advertising that I lack. It’s not that I don’t work hard. I do. I enjoy work, enjoy accomplishing something, solving a problem, completing a thing. It’s just that, for me, lately (and more and more often) there is always another voice competing with my own internal monologue. One that questions and laughs a lot and makes comical grimacing faces at the work, the gravitas, the inanity of it. Take Glen and Barry’s idea, for example. Ilike it. It’s something I couldn’t come up with. It’s exactly the kind of thing—done right—that will garner five million hits on YouTube in a two-week span. It’s the kind of idea I used to get very excited about. But then the voice creeps in and says, “ Psst . Hey, pal. Are you out of your fucking mind? That’s the dumbest idea since the Chia Pet.” Cynicism is very dangerous in advertising. You must be a believer. If you stray, if you start questioning its worth and validity, its credibility, you are in for a very long day.
    This voice is not present, I am sure of it, in the heads of the other creatives who’ve achieved far more than I have. Take the team that just launched the “What’s the Question Because the Answer Is Soup” campaign for Campbell’s. The client called it “breathtaking.” I happen to know that each team member received a bonus and an expensive, handmade Italian bicycle. When I talk with them, when I run into them in the hallway or the cafeteria or at a company event, they speak with great intensity about their work,