A Winter Dream

Chapter


One


Today I had my first big break. Funny term that. Only in business and theater is a break a good thing.

Joseph Jacobson’s Diary





I’m twenty-nine years old and the twelfth of thirteen children—twelve boys and one girl. My father was married three times before he married my mother, Rachel. Only my younger brother, Ben, is my full brother. Growing up, he was the only one of my brothers I was close to.

My father was a better businessman than he was a family man. He’s the founder and president of Jacobson Advertising, a successful Denver marketing firm specializing in retail advertising. If you’ve seen the Ski Heaven campaign for Vail, Colorado—the one where all the skiers have glowing halos—that was one of ours.

My father was not only the President and CEO of the agency, but the main creative force as well, garnering enough awards to cover the walls of our agency. Dad had that rare ability to cut right to the heart of consumer desire, divining what people really wanted and were buying. That’s not as simple as most people think. Most people don’t know why they buy the things they buy.

My father’s given name is Israel, but his friends call him Izzy. Or Ace. My father is an American hero. Before he was a successful adman, he was a decorated Air Force pilot during the Vietnam War—the first American conflict where living Medal of Honor winners outnumbered the dead. My father was one of them.

All thirteen of his children, including my sister, Diane, worked at the agency. I suppose the agency was my father’s way of keeping the children from three broken marriages together. I started as a copywriter, working under my stepbrother Simon, a taskmaster who thrived on impossible deadlines. I spent most of my time writing brochures and radio commercials for our smaller accounts. At that time, my father was still president of the agency, but he’d begun spending less and less time at the office to travel with my mother, leaving the company management in the hands of my eldest brother, Rupert—the agency’s general manager.

My stepbrothers were, understandably, loyal to their mothers—Leigh, Billie, and Zee Jacobson (all of them kept my father’s name)—and resented all the time my father spent with my mother. My mother was younger than my father by more than twenty years, beautiful and, as he often said, “the love of his life,” which pleased Ben and me, but grated on my stepbrothers’ feelings. On more than one occasion I had heard my stepbrothers refer to my mother as “the trophy,” when I was too young to know that it wasn’t meant as a compliment.

My stepbrothers’ jealousy extended deeper than their feelings toward my mother. My father had spent the early years of my stepbrothers’ lives working, building the agency at the expense of their childhoods. Only later in life, with his agency established, did my father begin to enjoy the fruits of his labors, which included spending more time with those still at home—my younger brother, Ben, and me. I really did understand their resentment, but it still didn’t make my life easier.



If I had to pick a day to start my story, I’d peg it at three years earlier on the Friday morning we pitched the Dick Murdock Travel Agency—a Denver-based travel company and one of the top-twenty travel agencies in America. Perhaps it was a test, but for the first time since he’d started the agency, my father sat on the sideline, leaving the pitch totally in his boys’ hands.

Sitting in on the pitch meeting were my brothers, Rupert, Simon, Judd, Dan, Gage, my father and me. On the opposite side of the table from us were three executives from Murdock: the tour coordinator, Bob; the marketing director, Marcia; and the president and company namesake, Dick Murdock, a barrel-chested man who wore ostrich-skin boots and a Bolle tie.

Our conference room had a table large enough to seat sixteen and the walls were decorated with the scores of awards we’d won, nearly all of them bearing my father’s name. We dimmed the lights, and on a pull-down screen we projected our proposed slogan.

Dick Murdock Travel

We’ll get you there

Murdock’s silence screamed. Finally, Marcia, a tall, thin woman with spiky black hair, said, “I don’t get it.”

Simon raised the lights. “We’ll get you there,” he said, taking on the tone of a radio announcer. “It’s a powerful phrase. Travel is a matter of trust. Your clients want to know that their families, their employees and they, themselves, are in good hands. No matter where they’re going, Dick Murdock Travel will get them there, safely, on time, on budget.”

His explanation was met with more silence. I glanced over at my father. He sat expressionless. This was a man who could maneuver a jet while surface-to-air missiles were shot at him—a crash-and-burn pitch was nothing.

“Where are you getting the ‘safely, on time, on budget’ part?” Bob asked.

Simon squirmed a little. “It’s implied.”

Bob nodded slowly, the way people do when they have no idea what you’re talking about but really don’t care to hear an explanation.

Rupert stepped in. “Let’s face it, for the business person, travel is exhausting, a necessary evil, a means to an end. Our end is getting them there so they can do what they really went to do.”

Crickets.

Murdock glanced at his two employees, then sat up in his seat. “There’s no zing,” he said bluntly.

After a moment Rupert said, “That’s just our first concept.” He nodded to Judd.

Judd stood. “Like Rupert said, travel is a necessary evil, getting from A to B. So I created a play on that principle.”

Dick Murdock Travel

From A to Z

More crickets.

Judd continued, “From Arizona to Zimbabwe, from Alaskan Cruises to the San Diego Zoo, from the Amazon to Zambia.”

“Where’s Zambia?” Bob asked Marcia facetiously.

Murdock said nothing. Worse. He looked annoyed.

“Too much like the amazon.com logo,” Marcia said. “From A to Z. It’s been done.”

Judd looked blindsided. “We’ve created a television spot,” he said meekly.

“Don’t bother,” Murdock said. “I’m not sure we’re broadcasting on the same frequency.” He turned to Rupert. “Unlike you, we don’t think of our business as a ‘necessary evil.’ From what I’ve heard so far, you’d think we were torturing our clients for a price.”

“That’s certainly not the message we intended to convey,” Simon said.

“Intent is irrelevant, it’s what’s perceived that matters. And that’s what I heard,” Murdock said. “Travel is evil.” He turned to my dad. “Is that the best you’ve got?”

I could only imagine what was going through my father’s mind. Mayday, Mayday, we’re going down. Pulling the eject cord. My dad looked at Simon, who looked more angry than dejected. Then he turned to Rupert. “Is that our best?”

Rupert glanced at my father, then said, “Actually, we have one more concept we want to show you. It’s a bit unconventional.”

“Unconventional?” Murdock said.

For Rupert, “unconventional” was a polite way of saying “out there.” Three days earlier I had had a dream of a suitcase bouncing around with excitement. The words came to me, Pack your bags!

Rupert turned to me. “J.J., show Mr. Murdock your idea.”

Truthfully, I hadn’t planned on sharing my idea. When I had shared my dream with Simon, he gave me that “nice try, kid, now get me some coffee” look. Every eye in the room fell on me. I lifted my portfolio and walked to the front of the conference room. I cleared my throat.

“I’m kind of new at this, so bear with me.”

“Nowhere to go but up,” Murdock said.

Simon’s jaw tightened.

“When I think of travel, I think of having fun—seeing exciting places, seeing people I care about. I think of the excitement and anticipation of getting ready. When I went to Italy a few months ago, I spent six months preparing for just ten days. So, to me, travel is more than just the time away from home, it’s the anticipation leading up to it . . . like Christmas. The fun of Christmas is the preparation, the secrets and wrapping and decorating. So I came up with this.”

Dick Murdock Travel

Pack Your Bags!

The slogan was inset over a cartoon drawing of a travel trunk plastered with colorful stickers from different countries.

Marcia nodded encouragingly. “Pack your bags.”

Bob also nodded. “I like that. I like the trunk. It’s iconic. We could use it on brochures, TV commercials, tour signage, Facebook, even luggage tags.” He looked at me. “What about electronic media?”

“Like Rupert said, my idea is a bit unconventional,” I said. “But when the competition zigs, you should zag. Since almost all travel commercials are really just video travel brochures, in order to stand out, I think we should create a campaign with a decidedly unique look—something different than what your competition is doing or has ever done. I envisioned our Pack Your Bags travel trunk reproduced in clay animation excitedly bouncing around. Then it falls open and something representative of one of your destination pops out, like the Eiffel Tower, or Big Ben . . .”

“. . . a pyramid for our Egypt tours,” Bob said, catching the vision.

“Or a gong for China,” said Marcia. “Or a panda.”

“No one’s done it before,” Bob said to Murdock.

“Isn’t that clay animation really expensive?” Murdock asked.

“It can be, but the bouncing effect is extremely simple and we’re producing doughnuts: the opening and closing of the spots will always be the same, just the middle needs to be changed, so for one spot it’s more expensive, but for three or four spots it will actually cost less than what you’re currently spending on production.”

Murdock looked pleased. “I like the sound of that. I like the idea. All of it.” He turned to my dad. “Holding out on us, Ace? Or just setting us up with the bad stuff first?”

“It was all good,” my dad said. “It just wasn’t right for you. But I agree, I like the Pack Your Bags concept.” He looked at me and nodded approvingly.

“All right,” Murdock said. “What’s next? Where do we start?”

Rupert clapped his hands together and leaned forward. “If you’re ready to sign on, we’ll sit down with Marcia and Bob and go over your promotional schedule and then we’ll get to work.”

“Make it so,” Murdock said. He stood, followed by the other two. “Keep me in the loop.” He turned and looked at me. “What’s your name?”

“Joseph.”

“Good work, Joseph.” We shook hands. Then he turned to my father. “How’s that pretty little wife of yours?”

“Rachel’s doing great.”

“She’s a beautiful woman. For the life of me I don’t know what she sees in a dusty old codger like you.”

“That makes two of us,” my dad said.

Murdock smiled. “See you on the course, Ace.”

On her way out Marcia said to Rupert, “Give me a call this afternoon and we’ll work out our scheduling.”

“Happy to. Thank you.”

They walked out of the room, escorted by Simon and Rupert. As I gathered up my things, I looked over at my father. His smile was lit with pride.