Heidi was all tits and teeth, grinning like a mad thing. ‘I’ll do my slides, then leave the creative conversation to you.’
‘Great – thanks.’
‘Change the strategy slide to say we are focusing on new audiences.’
‘Mm-hmm.’ I clicked through to the strategy slide and quickly updated it. My hands were shaking as adrenaline coursed through my veins. We needed to be convincing with an entirely different approach. New audiences… Which new audiences? Young people, groups of friends, men. Anyone but old couples. I scanned our opening slides to check they still worked, and was deleting the creative at the back of the deck when everyone piled back in. I switched to the start of the presentation, showing our agency logo withWELCOMEin white letters on dark green.
Brooke clapped her hands together and made me jump. ‘OK, let’s crack on. Everyone got a coffee?’
‘Oooh…’ Heidi flashed me a look and I changed tack. ‘I’m cool with water.’
No coffee for us, then. Not that I needed the caffeine with all this panic pumping around my body.
‘Greg, Brooke, Mindy, Elizabeth, hello,’ Heidi said, with a maniacal grin on her face. ‘It’s a pleasure to be here today, talking about the account we love so much – and have loved for such a long time. To present our thoughts for its next phase of evolution. I’m sure you’ll agree that no one knows the marketing side of your business as well as we do.’
Sycophantic with a sinister undertone. Weird choice. I flicked to the next slide, where the two of us were beaming out from the screen.
‘We need no introduction – we’ve known you all forever. I’m Heidi Caddel, the owner of Northstar PR. Thirty years in business and have worked with the likes of P&O, Thomas Cook and Sandals, to name a few,’ she said with a modest smile.
‘And I’m Kat Brennan. Business director and client lead for the Excalibur account. Six years working at Northstar PR.’
Greg gave a little nod.
Heidi started waffling through her slides as my phone vibrated. Natalya,thank God. I surreptitiously clicked it open on the seat next to me and even from a distance, on my small screen, I could see the image was much better. A couple in shadow, close and intimate on deck. The background a vivid, blood orange as the Madeiran sun set on the horizon, with tiny boats in the distance and the silent disco in the background. A perfect balance of calm and chaos.
‘…and now I’ll hand you over to Kat to talk through our creative hook. We didn’t want to ambush you with executions as we really wanted your buy-in on the thinking at this stage, but we believe driving new-to-cruisingcustomers is the right strategy to take Excalibur into its next phase and build market share.’
I swallowed hard. Time to strap in.
‘We had hundreds of brilliant ideas – as you can imagine…’
‘Sounds like we’ll have to.’ Greg chuckled.
‘The team are always thinking aboutwhat’s nextfor Excalibur; that’s just the way we are with our clients: proactive, curious, one step ahead. But the pitch has given us all extra permission to go big on the creative.’ I fiddled around with the laptop to add the new slide into the deck, then blew it back up to full screen.
Mindy drew a sharp breath and Greg tutted, as I looked behind me.
‘Oh, er… hang on… sorry, that’s the wrong slide.’
‘Cruising for some boozing?’ Greg uttered in disbelief. ‘I have never in my life… seen anything like it.’
‘Is this what you think is next for us?’ Elizabeth added, her smile faltering.
‘No, not at all,’ I clicked onto the next slide. ‘I must have accidentally left one of the old ideas in…’
‘Modern technology is always a nightmare in these situations,’ Leo said, taking the attention off me, as all four clients turned in his direction. ‘It wasn’t so long ago everything was on paper or projector slides, so the presenter was always in control. The laptops are always trying to catch us out.’
‘So true,’ Brooke agreed, softening. ‘I was mid-presentation last week when an email flashed up reminding me of a waxing appointment.’ Everyone laughed while I put the correct slide in place.
‘Here it is,’ I said, giving Leo a grateful smile. ‘We believe Excalibur need A NEW GENERATION OF CRUISERSand we want to re-launch you to Gen Z as the ultimate way to travel.’
Brooke nodded encouragingly.
‘The TikTok crowd always seem to be on a countdown to death – do you know what I mean? You only get eighteen summers with your kids, you only get fifty summers yourself, you’ll be dead before you know it – that kind of thing.’
Zach sat completely still, like a bird of prey waiting to pounce.
‘We wanted to lean into that mentality.’ I was impressing myself with my own bullshit. ‘Cruising gives the young people exactly what they want. It’s the only mode of travel that allows them to easily work through their bucket list. You don’t have to wait a year between holidays; you can tick off several places at once and TikTok all about it.’
