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“So many products to sell, so many words. Lost faith in Great Books. Lived pure talk…Feared I’d advertise forever. No trivial concern.”

By Adam Engel

11/18/07

Straight from “MBS-in-hand” churned copy for Coolman & Associates Advertising and Image Management (AIM). Cool AIM.

Agency days bleak indeed. Frantic. Hive of urgency and desperation. Get Word to public. Word was product. Word and image. Factory of words images. Word-image-product proposal better be damn good or say “good-bye” to the account. Ready. AIM. Fire(d).

Didn’t mingle. All those stressed designers and copywriters stiffening in cubicles, dreaming words and patterns.

Meetings flushed us from our cubicles. Forced exodus to Conference Room, discuss strategy, pursue pure talk.

So many products to sell, so many words. Lost faith in Great Books. Lived pure talk.

Feared I’d advertise forever. No trivial concern.

Daily forgettable copy, slogans, agitprop. Cornucopia of prototypes marked time’s passing. Colorful presentations of Desire conjured by Department of Graphics and Design.

What was I doing, me and my false words? Degenerative lingua-phobia. Overexposure to corrupt grammar of “sell.”

Scored one big league victory. Winning copy for a winning campaign: the NUDE (Naja’s Urban Design Emporia) account.

NUDE meeting in the conference room so important Naja herself presided with two assistants. Grimly erotic. Gracefully coiffed and appareled in NUDE style.

Suave, hip, sexy hirelings projected NUDE image for suave, hip, sexy, clientele. Naja herself a model — in “the Day.” Now, fashion designer of The City. Naja in black.

NUDE was remaking itself in its own image, she said, and invoked its new slogan, “Designing the NUDE you.”

She expounded upon the company’s new mission.

“It’s more than the clothes on your back; it’s the fashion inside you. Lifestyle. NUDE doesn’t just put clothes on your body, but fashion in your soul. NUDE customers are more particular, more demanding of the very best in fashion.

“NUDE men, NUDE women. ‘When God created man and woman they were naked. Then they became NUDE,’ something like that. I forget the exact wording of the copy,” said Naja.

The clothes in my closet called me home: “New clothes replace old clothes people wear for a time until designers design new clothes and black is gray and gray is brown and garments of last season seasoned in closets, thrift shops, material waste or cover new bodies. Life stained seasons washed or dyed…”

Heard from the ear of my stomach. Not quite conventional discourse.

Naja instilled NUDE sense into the copywriters, unveiling “EARN,” inter-gender perfume. Fragrance of bodies in dynamic transition. Pheromone scent of rut. Human-all-too-human crest of concupiscence. Desire. Raw. Lust.

“EARN will enhance the natural aromas of male and female bodies, especially erogenous areas where glandular concentration is prime,” said Naja.

“Special blend of herbs and flowers tinctured to perfume by some of our finest perfumists overseas.’EARN’ the fragrance of the Nation,” she declared.

Poster by Graphic and Design Department held aloft:

Wedding party. Tree-lined field. The Big Park. In the offing gray black towers of The City like men in suits. Wedding guests beautiful. Friends, lovers, children, animals. No family no old no middle-aged — not the target-response action area for “EARN.”

“We want them young and horny,” Naja said.

Bride barefoot. Gauze frock translucent. Hair wild auburn. Copper tan. Groom’s torn denim, motorcycle boots, tuxedo jacket, top hat. Day’s growth of beard and wired eyes. “Fab cool hip man,” look. Authentic “check it out, man” (or “Gadzooks, friend!” — custom ‘ethnic/caste
alignment’ campaign for each consumer relative-age, peer-group and income bracket) gotta buy me some ‘EARN’ so I can [fill in blank],” look.

Time: Absolute Zero. Statue Zone. Marble Moment. Stasis: lovers’ arms outstretched short of embrace, each equidistant from the center. Idyll imposed over a green “EARN” amphora.

“I’m pleased with this,” said Naja. “The copy? There’s no copy.”

Silence.

Came out of me instantly, involuntarily, from the gut, resounded.

“EARN the moment,” I said. “Forever.”

“EARN the moment. Forever,” repeated all.

Naja pleased. My superiors pleased. A winning slogan for a winning campaign. Still used by NUDE, the copy. Default slogan for “EARN.” Wedding-in-the-Park graphic EARN’s enduring image. I saw it on the subway only days ago.

Adam Engel is a Contributing Editor for Cyrano’s Journal. Adam has published poetry, fiction, articles, and reviews in several web sites and magazines such as CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, Online Journal, Hudson Review, Accent, The Concord Journal, Beacon, Art World, Ward6 Review, CounterCurrents, LewRockwell.com, Literal Latte, Lummux, POESY, Chronogram, Press Action,and many others. Adam was a featured reader, along with Robert Creeley, Suzanne Pomme Vega, Robert Bly and others at the Woodstock Poetry Festival, August, 2001, where he read from his first book of poetry, “Oil & Water. He can be reached at , or at his partially completed (very partially) website at www.adamengel.com.

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