Meet Me Halfway

By David Shelton

Jim Tyler reckons he is halfway through his life, and all he has to show for it is a stalled career, a failing marriage, a monster mortgage, and lost hope.
Martin Swift is a boyishly handsome playboy who has grown bored after making his fortune in the city.
Jim and Martin are best friends, and now they’re going into business together.
For Jim, the new venture is the last hurrah – a final chance to instill some sort of meaning into his life.
For Martin, it’s a chance to make money and have fun. After all, how hard can property development be?
As the two comically mismatched business partners lock horns, the company looks doomed.
But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and if Jim wants to break free from his old life for good, he is going to need all the strength he can get.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Shelton
• Release date: Oct 18, 2021

Book preview

1

‘HI, I’M JIM.’

I was the last person in the meeting to introduce myself.

‘Not just Jim,’ interjected Lucas, sitting to my right at the huge round table. ‘Jim Tyler is one of our best copywriters. Advertising may be a young people’s business, but Jim has the experience of three young people put together,’ he added, rather apologetically, I thought.

Or was I getting the ’noia?

At thirty-nine, I wasn’t the oldest person in the room. Not quite. Terry Cook, the flat faced Northerner sitting opposite me, beat me to that title by less than two months. He and his thick head of hair, which he wore in a quiff (wrong on so many levels), were due to retire as marketing director of Campbell’s Breakfast Cereals in less than two weeks!

Zoe, a severe looking account director with pinched lips, was seated to my left.

‘Now that we all know each other,’ she said, ‘I’d like to reiterate how lucky we are to be working on this project, how enjoyable the process has been so far, and how excited we all are about the new creative work.’

‘And can I say how lovely you all look,’ I added, trying to lighten the mood a little. I’m pretty sure there was a collective giggle, but Zoe shot daggers at me.

Zoe was one of an increasing number of people at SPTW and Partners who worked hardest at creating the impression that she worked really hard. Very little brainpower was applied to raising the standard of the agency’s creative work, which to me was tantamount to putting in the hours at a car factory that knocked out motors with only three wheels.

‘First item on the agenda,’ Zoe pressed on, ‘is a new commercial for Campbell’s Corn Flakes, so I’ll hand you straight over to Lucas Jones, our ECD.’

Executive creative director Lucas, dressed in expensive designer casuals, flashed one of his Cheshire Cat smiles. He had a lot more to show for his advancing years than I did, and at the grand old age of thirty-eight, he’d acquired some pretty cool privileges, one of which was the prerogative to pass the buck whenever he felt so inclined. This was one of those occasions.

‘Jim will take you through the idea,’ he announced to the room, teeth twinkling. ‘I’m sure you’re going to love it!’

I had my doubts. Lucas and I had been working with various incarnations of the marketing department at Campbell’s for almost three years now, and it had not been an easy ride. Not by a long shot. Campbell’s products were not very good by today’s standards. Manufacturing processes had moved on and people’s tastes in breakfast cereals had changed, but Campbell’s never had, and so it was down to us to figure out more and more inventive ways of hoodwinking the general public into thinking their products were still relevant. This inevitably blew up in all our faces and, as their agency, we generally took the flack. Lucas’s frustration was palpable. He often wanted to scream, ‘DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT! MAKE SOME IMPROVEMENTS AND GIVE US SOMETHING WE CAN TALK ABOUT IN THE ADS, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!’ But we all knew his clarion call would fall on deaf ears, and Campbell’s would keep on churning out the same old ‘family favourites,’ even though the families whose favourites they were had all long since died.

I shuffled a few papers and gave Terry’s team the once over, trying to work out whether they were in a receptive mood or not.

Brand Planner Elaine Baxter and Junior Brand Manager Tariq Umrani were the reasons for the awkward introductions. They were new to the Campbell’s marketing team and therefore difficult to read. Steve Shaw, Terry’s regular sidekick, was pulling a bunch of ominous looking documents out from his briefcase. I’d been sensing in Terry an increasing frustration with Steve. The new Corn Flakes campaign was to be Terry’s swan song, but this was the fourth round of work we’d presented, and it was looking more and more like he’d be long gone before we even had an approved script on the table.

‘I’d like everyone to have one of these,’ said Steve, dropping his pile of documents down on the table with a loud ferlump. ‘It’s just a few simple rules that all Campbell’s advertising should follow.’

He proceeded to hand out the A4 ring-bound documents, which had been crudely produced in PowerPoint. I picked up my copy. On the front page under the Campbell logo was the title:

HOW TO JUDGE CREATIVE WORK

This was not going to end well.

‘We want to avoid people’s personal thoughts and emotions getting in the way,’ said Steve, smiling like he’d just invented Harry Potter.

I glanced over at Lucas. He glanced back over at me.

‘Sorry, Steve,’ I said trying to keep calm, ‘but isn’t it people’s thoughts and emotions that we’re trying to appeal to? Nobody wants to watch an ad just because it ticks all your boxes. They’ll simply fast forward through it.’

Terry grimaced. ‘The manual is just a guide,’ he stuttered, trying to plaster the crack that had started to appear down the middle of the meeting. ‘An aide-memoire to help people who —’ his eyes flicked over to Steve ‘— are not particularly imaginative. It can be either helpful or ignored,’ he said, seeming to concur with Lucas and I that HOW TO JUDGE CREATIVE WORK was not going to be the answer to all our problems.

‘Carry on, Jim,’ he said with a dismissive wave of his chubby arm.

So I shuffled a few more papers, cleared my throat, and read out the script:

---

We open on a man having breakfast in his kitchen. He picks up a box of Campbell’s Corn Flakes and pours them into a bowl.

Then he adds ice-cold milk to the crispy golden flakes.

We hear a VO: To enjoy crispy, crunchy Campbell’s Corn Flakes at their very best, add ice-cold milk. Then eat immediately.

The man picks up a spoon and is just about to bring the first delicious-looking mouthful to his lips, when the doorbell rings.

Reluctantly, he leaves his bowl to answer the door.

It’s the postman.

Postman: Could you please sign here? -- And now sign here -- And could you take this for your neighbour at No 24? -- And here’s a parcel.

At this point, I threw in a bit of very bad acting. ‘Ooh, I wonder what this could be,’ I said in an annoying voice while holding an imaginary parcel up to my ear and shaking it.

The man can take no more. With thoughts of his lovely corn flakes getting soggier by the minute, he snatches the parcel and slams the door in the postman’s face.

Back at the table, he sits down to eat the corn flakes, but they don’t look as crispy and crunchy as they did earlier.

VO: Remember, they are at their best for a limited time.

The man puts the bowl to one side and pours another. Again, we see the iconic shots of the corn flakes being poured and the milk being added.

Then, just as he is about to eat his mouthful, the phone rings.

He throws down the spoon in frustration.

We cut to see a close up of a box of Campbell’s Corn Flakes with the end line:

EAT CAMPBELL’S CORN FLAKES IMMEDIATELY.

---

Not one of my best, I admit, but it would have been good fun to make. I looked up and saw a sea of non-committal faces.

Terry broke the silence. ‘Thank you for that, Jim. I’m sure we’ve got lots of feedback. Tariq?’

Tariq sat up in his chair. ‘I liked it,’ he said with a smile. ‘Very funny.’

Tariq may have been a very junior brand manager, but he was just as likely to buy the product as anyone else in the meeting. I imagined him putting on his ill-fitting suit and nylon tie in the morning before wolfing down a bowl of corn flakes and skipping off to his new job full of excitement and enthusiasm. Clearly he was still too green to know how these meetings — as far as Campbell’s was concerned — were supposed to work. Campbell’s always brought their whole team to every single meeting, and so, when the time came to give feedback on an idea, the most junior member of the team would go first. Most were under the misconception that their job was to find fault, and so they would usually try to second-guess any problems their more senior colleagues might have and try to mention it before they did. If they failed to spot something that was later picked up as a problem, it would not look good on them. The second to the most junior person would then repeat the process, and so on and so forth, until everyone had said their piece. We were usually left with a long list of ‘concerns’ from which the idea would never recover — death by a thousand cuts! I’d been in too many meetings where just one negative comment had sent everyone spiralling off on a tangent of nonsensical rationalisation. Great ideas had been lost forever simply because no one dared to stand up and say they liked them. Of course there’s an element of risk with any original idea, but suppose they attached themselves to it wholeheartedly and it failed! Much better to run no ad at all than take that chance — even if it had the potential to be campaign of the year!

But not our Tariq. Tariq liked the idea. And what’s more, he was brave enough to say so. I could have kissed him!

I glanced at Lucas again, hoping to share a short celebratory look, but he was also staring longingly at Tariq, and for a moment, I thought he might actually get up and plant one on Tariq’s lips!

Terry was smiling too. He turned to the next in line: Elaine.

Elaine’s face was like thunder.

‘I’m very worried,’ she said.

Now Lucas and I sat up in our seats.

‘Worried?’ said Lucas.

‘I’m disappointed with the amount of sunshine linkage,’ she said in all seriousness.

Here we go, I thought; this is going to be one for the book. I’d often considered writing a satirical exposé on advertising once I’d left the business. What would, say, a nurse think if she sat in on one of these meetings peppered with abbreviations like ‘USP’ (unique selling proposition) and ‘RTBs’ (reasons to believe), and phrases like ‘Out Of Home advertising’ (the latest silly way of describing a poster).

‘Corn flakes, for me, are all about sunshine,’ Elaine explained. ‘Sunshine represents health and vitality. Just like a beach represents fitness. Would it not be possible for the commercial to be set on a sunny beach? Or very near one?’

Sunshine linkage?

I pictured my hypothetical nurse, frozen with stupefaction, coffee cup inches from her mouth, as she looked round the room wondering what planet we were all on.

Lucas looked to Terry for some sort of human response.

‘I think it would be difficult to set this particular script on a beach,’ was all Terry could muster.

‘Let’s see what the manual says, shall we?’ said Steve, picking up his beloved document and flicking through it. I watched his lips move as he read bits out in his head.

Sunshine. Linkage.

I had to put a stop to this now, before it was too late!

‘Sunshine could be streaming in through the windows as the man eats his corn flakes,’ I blurted, desperate to get Elaine on our side.

No reaction.

‘Ah, here we are!’ announced Steve, relishing the moment as everyone turned and waited for the words of wisdom he was about to impart.

‘All jokes and visuals not connected to the eating and enjoyment of the product,’ he read, ‘are a distraction and should be removed.’

Silence.

I was the one to break it. ‘So anything that involves the actor doing anything other than eating a bowl of corn flakes is...’

‘... a distraction,’ said Steve finishing my sentence. ‘And should be removed. Do we really need the postman?’

More silence.

‘Excuse me for asking,’ said Lucas, ‘but who wrote these rules?’

Steve pushed his chin out. ‘I did,’ he said coldly.

‘I helped,’ said Elaine, turning the pages and looking for her bit.

‘All corn flakes should be eaten outside in the sunshine,’ she read, ‘preferably on a beach, with the sea in the background.’

Terry shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.

I turned to Tariq. ‘What about you, Tariq? You thought it was very funny.’

Tariq didn’t even get a chance to answer.

‘He’s only a junior brand manager,’ said Steve, shutting down the conversation. And that was the end of that as far as he was concerned. Terry could have overruled him; he had the authority, but he chose to do nothing and simply smiled a resigned smile.

‘Why don’t you have another go?’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure there are plenty more where that one came from? Then we can let research decide.’

I turned to Lucas but he simply held up his hands in surrender.

The rain ran down the windows of Lucas’s fourteenth floor corner office. From this high angle, I couldn’t quite see the pavement below, but I could sense people running around like wet ants. Where were they all going? What were they all hoping to accomplish?

‘What can I say?’ said Lucas, despondent. ‘I thought it was a great commercial and it could have turned into a long running campaign.’

Lucas and I were seated on either side of his big desk. On the desk were a small notebook, a pen, a tiny laptop, his phone, and our feet. All were positioned exactly parallel to the sides of the desk — except for our feet. Mine had gone to sleep. I was starting to worry about the nasty bout of pins and needles I was in for the minute I took them down, but I didn’t have the energy or the inclination to move them.

‘What about this new guy? When does he start?’ I asked, desperate to find any small vestige of hope.

For some time now, I’d been looking forward to Terry’s replacement joining Campbell’s, hoping against hope he was going to be a new broom, but in my heavy heart, I kind of knew he’d turn out to be another copy-and-paste marketing director — just like all the others before him.

‘Any day now,’ said Lucas, brightening slightly. ‘But Terry is our man until then.’

‘So what next?’ I asked.

Lucas turned his steely blue eyes towards me. ‘We have three hundred and