Was he insane?
“Sure, there’ll be controversy,” Harry was saying dismissively, “but any publicity is good publicity, and that’s how you get the college crowd. The ones that won’t follow their dicks to us will be following us based on our stand on free speech. There’s nothing more like catnip to a college freshman than a banner-waving contest about—”
“I hope you’re not implying we’ll be marketing to underage drinkers,” Hunter cut in.
Harry blinked, derailed. “What?”
“College freshmen are eighteen years old,” Hunter Knox said patiently. “Marketing to them would not only be illegal, but downright immoral.”
“Well, obviously we wouldn’t be selling to them,” Harry said in his ‘I-have-to-say-this-for-the-lawyers’ voice. “But if we can get in there as early as possible, establish brand recognition, then we can create a desire in the marketplace for—”
“I’m afraid I’m not terribly interested in customers who—how did you so poetically put it—are led to us by their dicks. For one thing, it’s a terrible mental image that I may never be able to fully scrub from my mind.” Hunter’s voice had been dryly amused, but now it hardened, heated steel underlying his words. “For another, it pisses on everything I hold sacred about this company, which I’ll remind you is a family business, and the trust it has put in me.”
Harry gaped, as if he couldn’t comprehend a universe in which a man hadn’t decided to put a naked woman on his product. Around the table, the rest of the Douchebros sagged, deflating like balloons with day-old helium.
“Now hold up just a minute,” Chuck argued, leaning over to his boss. “We haven’t heard them out yet. Maybe they’re a little gung-ho, but new directions are why we approached this company. No sacred cows, remember? Not if we want the share price to go anywhere anytime soon. What else do you boys have in mind?”
The Douchebros immediately perked up, like Rottweilers who’d heard a dog whistle in the distance.
“You’re the one who said we needed new directions,” Hunter said with a dark look at Chuck. “I agreed because you’ve had good ideas in the past, but I’m the CEO here, and if I think something pisses all over the good work this company has done, then that’s the final word.”
Chuck looked like he wanted to argue, but Hunter didn’t give him a chance, turning to me instead. “What about you?” he asked, a slight smile quirking his lips, bringing a touch of playfulness to his stern face. “I’m guessing you have plenty of opinions.”
Oh, he definitely remembered every word I’d said. Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
Still, it didn’t seem like he resented it or anything. Maybe…
I stood, trying to project a confidence I didn’t feel.
“You don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” I said. “And you don’t throw away a proud history just because today’s market has become disconnected from it.” I clicked the remote, pulling up graphics and statistics. “And today’s market wants to connect with history, any history. Hipsters and millennials, they’re disenfranchised and dying to feel like they’re a part of something bigger. And when these corporations—” I gestured behind me—“played that angle, they saw a thirty-five to fifty-five percent rise in sales to the 21-34 demographic.”
Both Chuck and Hunter sat up visibly higher in their seats, intrigued, but Harry just sneered. “So your big idea is just to copy what other people have done? Guess this is what you get when you ask a woman for something original.”
Next to him, the other Douchebros shifted, clearly uncomfortable. It was one thing to insult me when I was on my own, with no way for me to back up any allegations I might want to make. It was apparently another thing entirely to do it in front of a potential client, who might decide not to go with our company at all if Harry kept this up. Poor Douchebros—they wanted to back up their alpha male, but they also wanted to keep their jobs. It must be so difficult being an asshole.
Meanwhile, Hunter’s glare could have frozen lava. “You’ve had your turn.” He directed his gaze back to me, dismissing Harry completely. “How would you suggest we implement your plan, Miss Bartlett?”
I smiled sweetly, forcing myself not to dwell on my nemeses. “Well, obviously we’d need to do in-depth research of your company, get a look at all the first-hand documentation we can find,” I explained. “This won’t work with just the info we can pull off Wikipedia. Of course, we will need to use the internet—basically, I’m thinking we begin to establish an online presence, reaching out to fans with fun messages while also creating a historical archive that we’ll be updating. Are you familiar with George Takei’s online presence? A good sense of humor mixed with some real feeling, plus a talented PR team that took him from ‘obscure original Star Trek actor’ to ‘Internet celebrity’ overnight. I really think we could take a page from his book.”
“I’m sorry,” Chuck interrupted, “but a historical archive? That’s just not sexy. That’s not going to sell.” The Douchebros murmured in agreement, but I refused to back down.
“With all due respect,” I said, setting my jaw. “If you go with the sex angle, you’ll only be drowning yourself in a sea of identical alcohol ads. You need something that stands out from the pack, something that’s at once both culturally relevant and timeless, something classic, something that says…” I paused, grasping for exactly the right word, every set of eyes in the room glued to me. And then, what Hunter mentioned earlier about Knox being a ‘family business’ came rushing back. “That says legacy,” I finished. The room went silent.