1
Nina
Today was make-or-break at Dupont Digital Dynamics. I’d been orchestrating a full-scale rebrand and go-to-market strategy for a client whose name alone could shift our reputation overnight. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill project—it wasthecampaign. If I nailed the pitch, it wouldn’t just level up 3D’s, our firm’s, profile; it’d put me in the lead for associate creative director.
I wouldn’t level up. I knew it the second I saw those numbers and hashtags. Everything had gone swimmingly for the design team. We’d worked closely on the presentation and had a unified approach. Instead, the well-thought-out strategy we’d been grinding all day and night vanished when Natasha passed me the clicker and I hit its center button, and the deck flipped to my section. My stomach dropped.
Three top executives from our client’s team looked at me with the weight of their success behind them and with every intention to intimidate. Infinity Weddings was a legacy name in high-end event videography with brick-and-mortar offices in Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Indianapolis. They werethevideographers behind the scenes at nearly every weddingworth name-dropping in the Midwest. Landing them would’ve changed everything. Maybe I’d even position myself to leave this city.
Lincoln had taken the lead on graphics, his team handling the visual refresh: a sleek rebrand with mood boards in different palettes, fancy sensuous typography, and wedding reels that could make you cry. The social and digital ad strategy was mine to manage and present. Everything from the messaging to the rollout calendar was supposed to reinforce a single, nonnegotiable goal—position Infinity Weddings as the top luxury media in both Chicago and St. Louis within two quarters. The rebranding was flawless.
But slide seventeen onward…. Complete disaster.
The CTRs were all wrong, showing decreasing trends instead of the tailored projections I’d generated from our custom target keywords. The exposure metrics were blown out of proportion, suggesting an ad spend far beyond what the client had budgeted, and the projected number of conversions was abysmal. Even the campaign hashtags were off-brand—generic such as #WeddingSeason and #MidwestBride instead of the custom tags our data showed resonated with target audiences.
The entire presentation was, for a lack of a better word, aclusterfuck. I tried, I really did, to save the presentation, by pivoting on the spot to the strategies I had prepared, but I ultimately looked as an absolute unprofessional mess. Making jokes, like “This is what we wouldn’t do” had me cringing on the inside. It absolutely was not landing.
The Q&A was torture. Lincoln and Natasha, supportive coworkers they were, refused to throw me any kind of bone. They had seen my numbers,my real ones, and they simply nodded and shrugged, unwilling to come to the rescue. To the company’s rescue.
“Our rebrand was based on a different marketing strategy. Something more in line with what the client had requested,” Natasha explained when concerns about the cohesion between marketing and branding were raised.
“We are, of course, amenable to any changes, especially if Infinity Weddings would prefer this proposal. However, we would need to make significant ones. Our rebrand respected the brand as a high-end videography provider,” Lincoln contributed.
The three men from Infinity left and shook everyone’s hand but mine, assuring my boss we’d given them a lot to consider. “It’d be best to prepare a marketing plan that fully adheres to our interests and brand,” the grumpiest-looking man warned, casting a sour look in my direction before leaving.
Lincoln and Natasha shared a silent high-five when our boss wasn’t looking. Why wouldn’t they? Their design was a smashing success. If it wasn’t for their side of the proposal, 3D’s wouldn’t even get a shot at their contract. I should fangirl over their awesomeness.
“Nina.” Curt Dupont’s voice, my boss and the owner of the firm, cut through my thoughts, slicing away any hope that I might be okay. “Give me twenty minutes, then meet me in my office.” His head full of greasy gray hair disappeared as he slammed the door behind him. Glass doors and windows offered me no way of hiding from anyone’s shame. Much less my own.
Natasha and Lincoln attempted to hide their chuckles and smiles. Or maybe they didn’t. The dark, low notes of his voice and her throaty giggles shook the glass surrounding me, magnifying my embarrassment.
Lincoln Carter was as cruel as he was handsome. He’d been the bane of my existence since I was seventeen. Next-door neighbor. My cousin’s best friend. His blond wavy hair, blue eyes, and dimpled smile could charm anybody. Not me. No, Lincoln Carter had never charmed me. All I got were his twistedimpulses. Tripping me so I’d fall face-first into lunch. Insects in my locker—ants, spiders, you name it. Then came the lice. Or, according to him, I had lice because of my “poor hygiene.” But of course, he had been the one who started the wholeshe doesn’t bathething.
I would never forget when the girls went through my gym bag to check if I really still wore cartoon underwear. Or later when rumors had it I wore only black. According to the Lincoln-fueled gossip mill, I wasthatdesperate to lose my virginity. No one realized that if I’d supposedly hooked up with our AP Lit teacher, I couldn’t still be a virgin, could I? That rumor got me dragged into the counselor’s office.“There are many ways to prove one’s value, Nina. Sex is never the way.”
College earned me four years of Lincoln-free reprieve. Returning to Chicago, I kept a low profile working for small businesses until three years post-graduation—a year and a half ago—Lincoln and I ended up at the same marketing agency. I was supposed to work with him. Collaborate with him. Smile across the conference room table as if he hadn’t made it his life’s mission to make mine a living hell.
There was no “team culture” in this firm, though. With a promotion up for grabs, coworkers were thrilled I’d lost a client. It was “everyone for themselves” rather than “let’s get work done.”
My throat went dry as the whispers followed me, once again the object of gossip and the punch line of jokes. Hiding in my office for some fabricated privacy was as good a plan as any. I grabbed my iPad and pulled up the version history of the slides. If Curt wanted heads to roll, proving that I had done everything right would be the only way to save mine.
But the presentation showed no changes. Not since yesterday—when my supposed slides were added.
I felt the blood drain from my face.
I logged into my cloud to find the working file of the projections and targeting strategy I’d spent days building. Gone. Everything was gone. Nothing but the botched strategy and the fake numbers. Nothing to show.
My breaths quickened as I clicked through every folder, trying to find any version of the work I’d pored the last three weeks of my life into. Because I did the work. Excellent work. I projected a whole six months ahead. With pivotal numbers and alternatives. This proposal had consumed my entire existence.
My reflection on the screen betrayed everything I was feeling. My usually lightly tanned skin was flushed red. My long wavy black hair I’d spent hours curling this morning had frizzed where I’d run my fingers through. There was no hiding the stuffiness in my eyes, the red lines bleeding into the whites around my dark-brown irises. I was coming undone.
My twenty minutes were up. Time to confront my furious boss, without proof my work had been damn near brilliant. I could almost hear a pitiful march on the way to my professional funeral. The sudden, unnatural silence of the shared open floor didn’t help.
I knocked and let myself in.
Irma, our one-woman HR team, was sitting in the armchair next to Curt. That’s when I knew there was no saving this. The quirkiness of her cat-eye glasses did nothing to hide that this was not a friendly check-in. Not even a warning. I was completelyfucked.
“Please, Nina, take a seat,” Curt said, a waste of his Southern manners since his tone betrayed the pretense. I sat. “What was that clusterfuck, Nina?”
