Fear and Loathing on La Croisette – Part 4
David Nobay, founder and creative chairman, Marcel, Sydney is sitting on the Outdoor Lions jury. In Gonzo style, he reports exclusively for Campaign Brief.
Part Four:
This entire gender-diversity fad is in perilous danger of swerving clean off the road, and taking all us testosterone-laden lemmings with it, straight over the edge to a dark, deep oblivion.
Over here on La Croisette, Lord Savage, with all the renegade zest of a teenage student activist, has had his vice-tight grip on the wheel and foot down hard on the pedal for months now; pronouncing a total shattering of the glass ceiling and surrendering extraordinary, so far unheard-of levels of percentage equality to the other side (some recent figures right up there in the high forties!). This screams truly precarious and terrifying trials ahead for the majority of us card-carrying admen who specifically got into this arch caper thirty years ago based on the express guarantee that THERE IS NO GENDER EQUALITY IN ADVERTISING??
Goddamnit, if it isn’t bad enough over half my clients are sassy, confident, independent-thinking women, now I have to fight off a fast-amassing battalion of creative storm troopers in cargo pants and comfortable heels, just to keep my frequent flyer status in top notch condition and my humidor bulging with Cuban gold? At this rate, I’ll be an Uber driver by Christmas.
Of course, ladies who can simultaneously walk, write, art-direct, chew gum and mercilessly ass-whip me in a global pitch are hardly a new phenomenon.
The first wave of attack-ready “Adman-Terminators” sent back from our femo-future came in the battle-ready form of the early T1 model ECDs…Hoffman, Credle, De Maupeou, Royer, Keenan, DeCourcy, Stanners and their whole super-focused and scarily articulate recon-patrol of powder-coated ninja assassins. From our protected slouch, few of us saw them coming and were frankly too smugly drunk on the cushy sag of our boardroom couches to cotton on to the stark reality we were about to get dramatically body-slammed and beaten down within a humiliating inch of our fairy tale, cock-sure lives.
Then, no sooner had we negotiated a pathetic but diplomatic detente to save witnessing our entire, sweet deal of a citadel sacked and burned around our ears, than the next model of She-minator was suddenly amongst us: this version more talented, lithe and cunning still; capable of morphing into a myriad of executive positions right across the C-Suite of our once wonderfully cushy creative industry.
Utter defeat was patently unavoidable: stared down and crushed by this fully loaded, merciless shape-shifter; bent on utter domination of any conceivable strategic brief and demonstrably wiser, brighter and more aesthetically palatable than we toothless, hairy mutts could hope to compete with.
The end is nigh. The iceberg is well upon the bow and the best we can pray for is a magnanimous and merciful conquest.
But losing the battle for inequality is far from front of mind, as I study the dark, panda shadows encasing my blood-shot eyes now glaring furiously back at me from the Louis the something gilt-edged mirror that centers the enormous salmon marble en-suite bathroom of the impressive Donnie Deutsche Rooftop Suite that has been my cell here at the reasonably priced Gray Albion Hotel for the last seven days.
That said, according to the debrief I received under a hot lamp just a few hours ago in Interview Room 2 of Nice’s Central Police HQ, perhaps I shouldn’t be quite so loose with the word “cell”.
From what I could grasp from the Inspector’s garbled impersonation of Peter Sellers alter ego, it’s a miracle I’m not currently being brutally sodomized by my inherited bunkmate at Hotel Du Cop.
It seems offering up a Grand Prix on the open market is frowned upon by the top-tier execs who run the Euro-printing machine that is the Lions Festival of Creativity.
Lord Savage was more than ready to throw the book hard in my specific direction, but mercifully I received a last minute reprieve from his head capo, the ever urbane Festival CEO, Phil Thomas.
In truth, his intervention was not altogether altruistic, nor entirely unexpected: the full, no-questions pardon from the Palais’s back office came through hot and fast, just as I predicted it would, moments after Thomas received my downloaded jpeg of said silky CEO and Jeremy “The Kraken” Craigen, knee deep and waist high in the twilight throws of an especially memorable naked slumber party cum DDB Global Creative Summit in room 724 of the Carlton Hotel back in the heady, humid Summer of Cannes ’04.
Back then, Craigen was, and presumably still is, an ardent and unapologetic nudist. His perfectly bronzed, hairless 360 degree tan can be clearly recognized in the photo, along with his exquisitely manscaped pubis. In fairness, little if any of Phil’s face can be seen, obscured as it is by the black, heavily-studded PVC mask. Indeed, no court in the land could or would conceivably convict based on this simple, blurry image. From a forensic POV, it would be aggressively argued that the crudely pixelated image simply suggests a middle aged, Caucasian man in his M&S underpants, demonstrating to Jeremy the gymnastic extent of his yoga training. Thank sweet Jesus, on this particular occasion, Phil was clearly in no mood to roll the dice and risk his own potential “Weinergate”. And so, seconds from impending incarceration, a love of anonymity saves the day and liberty is mine to spoil once more.
Not that I am remotely clear of the Branston Pickle. For one, my Samoan Attorney has been grounded in Doha and is undoubtedly already cutting savagely deep into my ill-gotten loot, physically isolated deep within its next-gen First Class terminal. In my experience, you can blow through a staggering amount of moolah within the perfumed bunker of your standard Arabic long-haul airport. Dubai, for instance, boasts duty-free Ferraris, along with all the mandatory extra-large Toblerone, soft toys and luxury luggage.
In Jay’s defense, even his jangled brain couldn’t have predicted that the Trump-inspired regional embargo of the tiny but cash-fat desert kingdom would result in his Qatar premium-economy flight from Sydney being forced to fly in ever-decreasing circles around its capital, strenuously banned by its three immediate neighbors from entering their hallowed air space, until the 747 finally ran out of juice and gently nose dived into a conveniently spongy sand dune just yards off the runway.
My best hope right now is that my loyal, if terminally racist Concierge Michel is successful in negotiating some much needed cash back from the area’s neighboring boutiques for the mountain of bags of pastel-inspired luxury togs that have survived the last 72 hours on this wretched stretch of beach relatively unsoiled.
Michel is promising 30 cents on the dollar, but after his cut, I’ll be lucky if I can afford a round at the Carlton bar.