Tropic Of Crapricorn

Mavericky Origin Story

Though none is offered, you can probably make up a pretty good one based solely on Neuron Syndicate's Sean Alatorre and his the two-foot-long mane he is still rocking in the year 2013.

Insufferable Executive

I'm concerned about Suzanne Marks of Pasadena Advertising and the fact that her response to every setback is this extremely fake, painful-looking grin. Here she is presiding over a meeting between her creative director David Ensz and Tommy Bahama SVP of Marketing Rob Goldberg, as David presents an idea that Suzanne didn't look at until seconds before the meeting and which she hates.

More to come in this series.

Self-Consciously Quirky Office

In addition to the bright-orange accent walls and generally meaningless catchphrases, Neuron Syndicate features a courtyard with a sculpture of its dumb logo.

The Fear?

Suzanne tells us that Pasadena had to downsize a lot during the recession a few years ago, going from around 100 employees to "a handful"; landing Tommy Bahama would allow her agency to staff up again. But she's not the only fearful one! Neuron has just brought on John Fox, a bizdev guy who plainly does not conform to the agency's culture, by which I mean he doesn't blindly co-sign all of Sean and agency founder Ryan Cramer's dumb ideas. Sean and Ryan hired John to try to help the agency expand beyond the entertainment clients that it's mostly worked with in the past, but since he's come on, he has yet to bring in any new business.

What The Client Says It Wants

Tommy Bahama's women's apparel is "on fire," and that's what they want this campaign to focus on. They're looking for mock-ups for print ads and catalogues, with a unifying idea that can run through both of those as well as other media. The customer the campaign should be aiming for is "dynamic," "worldly," "family-oriented," and "likes to travel"; Tommy Bahama is what she wears when she wants to relax. What they don't want to see in the campaign strategies: "Gilligan's Island...coconuts...Tiki huts...grass skirts."

Cringily Unearned Moment Of Self-Congratulation

Ryan tells us that sometimes Neuron's best ideas come to him and Sean when they're just out having a drink after the client meeting. And what do you know, when the two of them and John stop off for champagne, they're musing about the idea of Tommy Bahama as a "lifestyle" brand, as Rob had said in the meeting, Sean says, "Rather than being a lifestyle--" Me: "It's a style for life?" Sean: "It's a style for life!" PS Until you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you'll never deliver a balanced attack. Ryan calls this idea -- the very first idea anyone at the agency has had, by the way -- "amazing." John is like, "You're...running with this? You're not going to entertain ideas from the other people you employ? Cool." Sean and Ryan think "style for life" is so incredible that when Rob comes by the office a couple of days later to check in on their progress, they won't show him anything so that they can really blow his mind at the actual pitch -- and continue refusing to give him any sense of where they're going even when he asks three times.

The...Uh, Pitch

So Neuron is proud as fucking punch to drop "It's How You Style Your Life" at the pitch meeting. They've focused so much on marketing the "lifestyle" of Tommy Bahama that none of the art they offer actually shows...the clothes? But their strategy does include large-scale outdoor advertising, not just on the sides of buildings and phone booths and stuff but an ambitious subway station idea involving a wrap of the floor and the train. VP of Creative Services Ferdinand Van Alpern says that the art they've shown reminds him of an old ad campaign for a cruise line. Stephen Cirona, the SVP of Women's Sportswear, agrees that it's too generic. (If you want to see just how generic, do what no one at Neuron evidently bothered to do and Google the phrase "style your life." OH, HI, DILLARD'S.)

Pasadena comes in with a stronger slogan: "Where to next?" Unfortunately, before we get to it, we have to sit through a video montage they've created that literally starts with "I'm a woman who loves going places." Wait, I'm lost. How does Webster's define "places"? And "woman"? At least the montage shows lots of photos of the clothes. Then Sarah, another Pasadena employee, tries to pull up their next video presentation and can't get it to display on the big monitor in the conference room. Suzanne:

David takes over to talk through what went into their print ad concept, and then Sarah says the computer's fixed and Suzanne excitedly says they can show off the "new technology" they've come up with that's "3D": it's a display that will go in store windows, capture his or her image, and put Tommy Bahama clothes on him or her. So, not 3D. "There's a small little XBox -- literally the same camera that's on an XBox," Suzanne explains. Me: "XBoxes have cameras?" Dave: "She means Kinect." Everyone from Pasadena clearly thinks this is the SHIT. Rob:

The Tommy Bahama guys grant that Pasadena has touched on some stuff that's important to the brand, but that they're not sure how their ideas will get people into stores. They seem especially dubious about the "XBox camera," and rightly so, because it's jank as fuck. "First the brand, then the tools," says Ferdinand. Suzanne:

The Winner

The business goes to Neuron (the company that wasn't headed by two AARP members and represented by only one Young Person who couldn't work her computer), though the Tommy Bahama guys make it very clear that it's not on the strength of that terrible slogan: "We didn't buy the idea. We bought the agency." Suzanne: