The Pitch: A novel about climate change, advertising, politics, love and a vertically challenged limo driver.

By Ben Welsh

This book is a light-hearted exploration of what Australia's 'Mad Men' and women get up to.
 
Its central character is Dan Atkins, Creative Director of advertising agency ADD, but the story revolves around something much more serious; a government pitch where the PM, threatened with defeat in the forthcoming election, needs a climate change campaign that buys his government essential green votes. While he is the ultimate climate change denier, he is also the consummate politician.
 
ADD is invited to pitch. We meet the advertising agency people. We discover how research groups are really ruling the world. And Dan goes from knowing very little about climate change to becoming aware and alarmed. This is thanks to Emma, who works at his local café and is doing a PhD in climate science. Dan starts falling in love.
 
Dan's life away from work is complicated. He has a close relationship with his ex-wife Rachel, and an even closer one with two characters that appear in his subconscious - a limo-driving dwarf and an Emperor penguin.
 
In the end the agency loses the pitch. The government loses the election, but Dan gets the girl – and not necessarily the one we think.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Nov 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781685830984

Book preview

Chapter 1

Vicky Smith sat watching the group in front of her. Eight people were gathered around a table eating chips and drinking soft drinks. Eight people who had nothing in common but for a socio-economic profile. Eight people who were being paid $70 for their time.

The views of these eight people were about to determine the fate of the nation.

Ok, that last bit was a little melodramatic. In truth, there were several groups of eight people, dotted around the country, whose views would determine the fate of the nation.

It never ceased to amaze Vicky that so many of the government’s decisions were the end result of focus groups just like this. She felt guilty. As a partner in one of the government’s preferred research companies, she had done well from this lot’s policy of focusing on focus groups. The Federal Government was by far and away their biggest account. And, with the need to get a view from every corner of the country, or electorate, she’d made it to Platinum on the Qantas Frequent Flyer program – Platinum One even.

But, as any good researcher knew, she was aware of the limitations of the format. Who were these people? She didn’t know anyone from her circle of friends who had ever sat at one of these tables and discussed their views for $50 and some stale chips. They’d share their views at a table in a pub, or restaurant, definitely, but not behind a two -way mirror with complete strangers.

Pubs and dinner parties. That’s where real views are talked about and formed. Where were the mavens, the salesmen and connectors among this lot? Malcom Gladwell would be disappointed. If you thought about it, how many people leading normal, busy lives could spare two hours a week to give their honest opinions in an environment that was so far removed from reality? To sit there knowing their words, beliefs and perceptions were being scrutinised by unseen faces? There was something exhibitionist about it. They were exposing themselves. Maybe that was the point? Maybe they were all single and this was a blind date? Why not? They’d get a good look at each other, they'd find out if they had shared values and who had a tendency to dominate.  Perhaps that should be a new venture?

From what she had seen that evening, this group could live happily ever after. A shared love of chips and opinions united.

To sum up the response:

Climate change was something they thought would affect them, and, even if they didn’t think that, they thought they should care about it (because change was usually a bad thing). As long as it didn’t cost too much.

Surprise, surprise.

Vicky was glad. She may have been professionally neutral, but with two small children growing up into a world where ... where, well, things could get really bad, and where governments should be doing something, the issue was certainly top of her mind. The fact that these people realised, and were prepared to pay a cost, had gone some way to restoring her faith in research groups.

Vicky had begun to develop another theory about research groups. It was based on Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. She’d never read Mackay’s seminal work, but she’d seen it quoted enough and checked it out on Wikipedia. It seems that at some point the individual gives up their individual moral conscience and hands over any decisions to a group. The group then acts, like a flock of starlings, – no, it wasn’t flock. What was the word? A murmuration, moving as one, without really understanding why or where it was going. The South Sea bubble and witch-hunts were what Mackay observed, but you could see it today. In riots people do things they would never do as individuals. The question really was, how many people constitute a crowd? This lot seemed to have retained their moral compass, and that could mean their strength of conviction was even greater than it appeared. Could there be such a thing as The Wisdom of Groups?

---

Jim Hudson absent-mindedly tugged at a coarse black hair growing from the bridge of his nose. It slipped between his nails. Damn. He tried again. The slight hint of pain, a pin-prick reversed, and he knew he’d got it. He held it up to the window. It was a big one, certainly visible to others. He was glad he’d got it. Nasal hairs, and those strange ones which insisted on growing out of his ears – not from the lobes, literally out of his earhole – were like swinging voters, in that he hadn’t had them before, and they made up for the ones he was continually losing from other parts. No, not swinging voters, it was more a gerrymander, the borders of his hair electorate had been redrawn. Vast, empty areas had sprung up and small pockets of persistence had emerged. But then almost everything could remind Jim of the electorate. He was the Prime Minister of Australia.

‘So PM, what are we going to do?’

Jim looked away from the window at the gardener mowing the lawns, then returned from his reverie to the woman seated on a green Chippendale sofa. Jill Todd was his right-hand man. Always had been, from the first election victory back in 1992. She didn’t usually address him so formally, but time was running out and she knew the mention of his title always snapped him back to reality. She had no role in government but was always the one he turned to when faced with a problem. And a problem was looming in the shape of a federal election. Once every three years really was a bit ridiculous, it meant that life was one long poll, and that nothing you really wanted to get done, got done.

Jim plucked another hair from his nose.

Jill looked at him.

‘We need an issue, Jill! Mrs T was a master of the issue – miners’ strike, Falkland’s War, Labour Isn’t Working...Genius.’

‘Mrs T’ was the late Margaret Thatcher, Jim Hudson’s political idol since as long as he could remember. She was up there with Menzies.

‘Yes, something like the boat people,’ Jill agreed. ‘You know, everyone says it was the children overboard incident that got us through, but to me, your notion of the queue was the key.’

‘Hmmm....’

The queue had been a brilliant way of combining two underlying Australian characteristics – a proud sense of fair play and a less proud, but equally prevalent, sense of xenophobia. ‘We have nothing against refugees. But they shouldn’t jump the queue. That’s cheating.’ was how it went.

No one, not in the public, or the predominately friendly media, not even those pinkos at the ABC, had ever asked where your Afghan fleeing the Taliban, or an Iraqi Kurd trying to avoid the harsh regime of Saddam, could find such a queue. No one, that is, until a billionaire, who was a generous contributor to Jim’s party and a refugee from the Holocaust, had asked him quietly over dinner, ‘where would the queue have been in Nazi Germany? The only queue we had was to the gas chamber.’

There really was no parallel, was there? But Jim had felt an unusual and uncomfortable sense of guilt, shame even. Childhood memories stirring of being ticked off. It was also embarrassing. So now he’d rather forget about the queue.

‘Surely the economy’s the thing? It affects everyone, and after 10 years of growth…’

‘After so many years of growth the economy is no longer an issue. Besides, the opposition’s policies aren’t that different.’ Jill said the last sentence quietly. It was a sore point.

‘Well, what is the big issue? Terrorism?’

‘That’s up there, but the big one….’

Jill paused. She knew the answer. She’d seen all the focus groups for the last few weeks and there was one clear issue. But she also knew Jim wouldn’t like the answer. Equally, she was aware that it was the only chance they had of winning a third term, so she had to convince him.

‘The big issue, and one we’ve been seeing for a few weeks in research, from all electorates…. particularly with young voters who wouldn’t have voted at the last election, is… climate change.’

‘Bullshit! Bull-fucking-shit.’

While the media referred to Jim Hudson as a climate change skeptic those who knew him better would say he was a denier. He considered the whole thing a greenie beat up, spread by left-wing scientists who were pissed off with right-wing governments for, quite rightly in his mind, cutting their research budgets.

‘I can’t believe it. You know POTUS told me that the whole thing is a massive PR exercise by the nuclear power industry.’

Jill had heard him say this before, and she was prepared to hear it again. Anything to get him to understand the significance of the issue.

‘Yes, after Three Mile Island and then Chernobyl, those guys were really stuffed,’ continued the PM. 

‘On top of that, more oil and gas were discovered. Estimates of reserves went up, prices went down, it looked like we’d never run out. And decommissioning power stations is frighteningly expensive, billions…What could they do?’ It all made complete sense to Jim,   ‘Making CO2 the enemy was a stroke of genius.  And climate change! I mean, when haven’t people been talking about climate change? ‘Summers aren’t what they used to be…’, ‘we used to be snowed-in for a week every Christmas’ – that was from a Pommie friend of mine. It’s all bullshit.’

‘Bullshit or not, it’s still the number one issue, and if you want to stand a chance, we’re going to have to do more than change a few light bulbs.’ 

Jill crossed her arms, a studied blend of defiance and deference. Jim looked out of the window. The gardener was doing a good job, nice neat rows just like a cricket oval. It was all bullshit, a media beat-up by those leftie journos at the ABC. But Jill was usually right. If that’s what people wanted to hear, they had to convince people they were doing something about it. And maybe, maybe that wasn’t quite so difficult. It was one of those soft issues like human rights. Important to say the right things at the right time, attend the odd protest, take the occasional photo with some leading dissident. But nothing that would upset trade.

‘Well, if that’s what it’s got to be, let’s get on with it.’

Jill breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Thank you, Prime Minister.’

Chapter 2

The beer was warm. Tepid. Room temperature. And that was in a room where the temperature was well over 28 degrees centigrade. But Dan didn’t mind. It was a welcome change from the diet of chilled Provence rosé he’d been following lately. That pale pink drink was dangerous. It looked so innocent. It started off so well - unlike most alcoholic drinks it made sense at 11am, a brunch-time bottle. It said bienvenue to the Côte D’Azur and diluted the foggy haze of jet lag. It united people of all persuasions – well, all drinking persuasions - here was a drink that defied your sexual orientation. It was the perfect drop for the South of France in late June. Up to a point.

He took another swig of his beer. Not only was it warm, it was also ridiculously expensive. He wasn’t sure how ridiculously expensive - the exchange rate was confusing at the best of times and, after 12 hours of Côtes de Provence rosé, it was definitely not the best of times – but he was pretty sure he’d seen a magnum of Champagne at the Monoprix supermarket for less.

It was said that the bar made so much money in the one week of the Cannes Lions Festival, that it didn’t really have to open for the rest of the year. Strategically placed on the promenade of Le Croissette, a short stumble from the Hôtel Martinez, and nestled between Bentley Continentals and Porsche Panameras, it was where everyone ended up. The bright lights in the night attracted advertising folk from all over the world, like a giant insect zapper.

Its latest victim was one Dan Atkins, Executive Creative Director of ADD Sydney, an advertising agency of some repute, in a global network of slightly less. The last time Dan had been in Cannes, he’d sworn he’d never return to this bar. But then, the last time Dan had been in Cannes, he’d sworn he’d never return to Cannes.

If advertising was an art that served capitalism, then Cannes was the MOMA of Mammon. Creative vanity ensured a constant supply of visitors and, though art was still very much in evidence, capitalism was increasingly the master. What had been a purely creative celebration was now a giant catwalk-cum-horse-fair. A giant brothel of business whoring, where agency networks were doing the corporate lap-dance to tempt the global marketers. It was perfectly placed on the Cannes calendar between the film and porn festivals.

Unlike the rest of the bar's clientele, who were enjoying the early hours of the morning, Dan was feeling sorry for himself. The rosé was just one contributing factor. The lack of any major awards was another, but the main problem was his drinking partners. Instead of staring into the eyes of… Kat? Ker..? (what was her name?) he found himself sharing the pavement - the tables had been cleared away long ago – with an irritated dwarf and a taciturn penguin.

‘Well?’ the dwarf challenged him. ‘What’s next? It’s an intriguing opening, some memorable characters and a tangible plot line, but you still have 80 plus minutes to fill. At least.’

No comment from the penguin, who gazed around like a bored child and scratched an itching shoulder with his beak. He was not sure why he was there, or when he’d be going somewhere more interesting.

Dan knew why they were there. He’d hoped he’d left them behind in Sydney and that the concentrated distraction of judging in Cannes would have stopped them turning up. It hadn’t. He tried ignoring them and looked around the bar at all the happy drunks. Fortunately, being figments of Dan’s fertile imagination, no one else could see them but he still hoped they’d go away.

‘Just because judging has finished, doesn’t mean I’ve got time for you two,’ Dan found himself saying.

The dwarf scowled impatiently.

Why were they there? Why was he there? Why wasn’t he with that German art director that he’d met earlier that evening? The one with innocent eyes and a wicked grin. Kirsten! - that was it - something.

It had started off so well. The chatter was effortless, lots of prolonged eye contact, hand and arm touching, that thing girls do when they stroke their neck and look at you; wasn’t that supposed to mean something? Then dinner, or was it lunch? He’d ended up sitting with someone else, until she came and found him. She found him! That was significant, surely? Dan was old enough to have some status in the ad-game and yet young enough to believe he could still be attractive to an ambitious young German art director. He’d been told he looked a bit like John Cusack, which was great if said young German art director found Mr Cusack attractive.

At some point a few of them had gone swimming, a quick dip in the sea to cool down. That would explain his damp clothes. And now he was outside a shit bar, drinking warm beer with a dwarf and a penguin. Fuck!

Where was she? She’d gone off with the Brazilian judge, Mr Three D&AD Black Pencils. The good-looking, trilingual, guitar-playing one. Who could blame her? Three Black Pencils was like winning three Gold medals at the Olympics in three different sports, like Carl Lewis in the 1984 LA games. The 100m, the 200m and the long jump (ok, so Mr Lewis got four if you include the relay). But Three Black Pencils was harder. Someone always got the gold medal, you just had to come first. Being the best didn't guarantee you a Black Pencil. You had to make ten of