“They recently hired a new CMO, and he wants to see what other media agencies have to offer.”
“Don’t we have a contract with them?” Lucy asked.
“It’s up at the end of their fiscal in June.” Patricia stood up and walked over to their side of the desk. Her heels made her tower over Walker, which he suspected was not coincidental.
“So much for loyalty,” Walker said. “When we won the business six years ago, they had a four percent market share. Now they have seven.”
“A year ago, it was ten,” Lucy said.
“That’s not our fault. They have terrible creative.” Walker couldn’t watch a Radiance Shampoo commercial without rolling his eyes. They were as corny as a terrible ’80s sitcom. Not the way to lure a younger demographic. Unfortunately, the Berkwell Agency didn’t create the ads; they just decided where to place them.
“We haven’t lost the business yet. They’re letting us throw our hat into the ring to pitch.”
He remembered being promoted to Associate Media Director when they won the business. He couldn’t wait to craft a fresh media strategy and energize the brand. He forgot what it felt like to care that much about a job.
“There are plenty of agencies that have rewon their clients’ business,” Patricia said. “It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. This new CMO wants to show off. Now, it’s our time to prove to them just how valuable we are. It’s going to be all hands on deck for the next few weeks.”
“Are they putting their creative agency into review?” Walker asked. Patricia retreated behind her desk.
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. We need to come up with the most innovative, dynamic media strategy they’ve ever seen. Walker, I’m sending you a list of reporting I need pulled ASAP. I want to see how they’ve spent every ad dollar over the past ten years, and how this correlates to their share of voice. We’re going to dissect the strategies of all their main competitors, down to the commercial placement, to find commonalities that we can fight against. We’ve been doing the same thing year after year. That ends now.”
Walker groaned internally. Patricia’s cool façade was showing the tiniest of cracks and was bound to shatter during this process.
“What happens if we lose the review?” Lucy bravely asked.
Patricia gave Lucy a look saved for dramatic moments in action thrillers. She didn’t have to say it. They all knew if they lost the account, then they lost their jobs.
“Please send me the reporting and analysis by end of day, Walker.”
Lucy and Walker made a beeline back to his desk. “How’s that for a Wednesday morning?” she asked.
He really needed some more coffee.
CHAPTER THREE
Cameron
Over his tenure at Browerton, Cameron had done what he needed to do to get good grades. He had made the Dean’s List once or twice, mostly as a fluke, but he wasn’t like many of his classmates killing themselves for a perfect GPA. You didn’t need straight As to make it in Hollywood. Hell, some of the most successful people in the business didn’t even go to college. Yet for his screenwriting classes, Cameron applied himself like he was gunning for magna cum laude status.
He found himself walking extra fast to get to the first day of his final screenwriting class. The Radio-TV-Film department didn’t offer many screenwriting courses, and they filled up quickly. He would’ve rioted if he was denied entry to Advanced Screenwriting as a senior.
Cameron’s apartment was a ten-minute walk from campus. A sharp pang of sadness ripped through him. He felt so disconnected from campus life, from Browerton. So far away. He walked past underclassmen galavanting around their dorms and huddling in groups on benches. That used to be him and his friends. He was in this weird limbo where he was working at Starbucks and living off campus, yet had to remind himself he was still technically a student. He pushed past it. He was onto bigger and better things on the West Coast in a few months.
Most lectures for the Radio-TV-Film department were held at Flynn Hall, smack in the center of campus. It was one of the oldest buildings at Browerton, but had recently been remodeled to keep up with the twenty-first century. It kept its sweeping staircases intact, though. Cameron trudged up two elegant, but steep flights, to room 204.
The classroom was one long conference room table. Besides his love of writing, the other main reason he took this class was sitting at the head of the table. Professor Elizabeth Mackey didn’t just teach screenwriting; she lived it. She had a script produced into a successful movie in the early 2000s. She still was represented by one of the top talent agencies in Hollywood.
“Let’s talk dialogue,” she said from her chair. Cameron was instantly rapt. There was something about the carefree, but confident way she spoke that made him pay attention. “One of the big issues script readers see in Hollywood is that all of your characters sound the same. There should be subtle differences in how your characters talk, and those differences will define each of them. If you think about one of the talkiest movies ever,Pulp Fiction, one of the first scenes is John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson talking about burgers and TV pilots. But really, you pick up on who these characters are, what makes them tick.”
She played the clip from the movie. Cameron had thoughtPulp Fictionwas just a bunch of random conversations punctuated with gratuitous violence, but after Mackey’s explanation, he saw how the chitchat revealed character. He was loving this class already.
“We’re going to do a little exercise now. I want you to write a short scene, no more than two pages. Two characters max. One character is asking the other character to borrow five dollars.”
“Are they friends or family?” Robert asked, a student who Cameron had suffered through many a class with over the years.
“You tell me. Through dialogue. You can do whatever you want, set it wherever and whenever. But I want to get a sense who these characters are through this exchange of money and what they say and don’t say.”
The class spent the next half hour scribbling away on notepads and on laptops. Cameron clicked away on his computer, deleting half of what he wrote, then deleting the whole thing and starting over. He pictured the scene as if he were watching it on screen. Well-lit, cuts back-and-forth between the characters. He cast that hot, bearded Walker guy from Starbucks this morning as the main character. Stern, with hints of bubbly insecurity. His mind always imagined scenes as if they were in a movie or on TV, ever since he was a little kid. That’s how he knew he was destined for a career in Hollywood.
