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I take another drink of the wine and finish the bottle. “And on that note, our hour is up. I have a pool party to go to, and you have calamine lotion to apply. I wish your butt a swift recovery. Seeing it once was a fluke, but seeing it twice guarantees I’ll see it a third.” I give her a wink as she blushes.
“You’re an ass, Emery. You know that, right?”
I chuckle as I sling my laptop bag over my shoulder. “Truer words have never been spoken. Then again, you’re an ass, too, which means I’m in good company.”
I wave at Madison as she chuckles. I don’t want to leave, but I learned a long time ago that overstaying your welcome is the fastest way for people to become tired of you. No one gets excited by the man who shows up early and stays late. They want the one that graces them with a few special moments and then flies away, leaving them wondering what is so much more interesting than their event.
Chapter 10
Madison
Today feels so different at the office. Instead of the normal complete focus on work, I’m having to deal with the fact that I’m not seeing my boss quite the same as I have for the past few days.
Before last night, he was a very smart and frustrating man, but more than that, he was the person who decided whether I kept my job or I was fired. There was some distance between us, and no matter what happened, he was the boss and I was the intern.
Now… Well, things are a bit more complicated. Strangely enough, not because my boss saw my ass for the second time. No, that’s embarrassing, but it’s not complicated. It’s that there’s more to him than the judge and jury for my performance. There’s a person behind those sexy eyes of his.
How do you interact with a person who you’d like to get to know more while still treating him like your boss? I know that he’s still the man that decides my fate, but he’s also someone that I might enjoy a good late night chat with.
Brandon has a list of ideas for scripts in front of him while Stephanie has picked out some amateur models and Shonda is talking about outfits. They’re all ready to make a commercial, and we haven’t even nailed down the idea yet.
I’ve just sat down, and they’re already throwing their ideas at me, and I just wave my hand. “No. This is the wrong way of doing things.”
“What do you mean?” Stephanie asks. At least she’s not trying to sell me on professional models again.
“Look, the person doesn’t matter that much, and the outfit matters even less. Maybe the script matters some, but that’s something we can throw together last minute. What we need is a solid vibe.”
Brandon looks like he’s talking to his mother about chores. “Vibe? What the hell do you mean?”
I sigh. “We need this to look like Jane Smith in Salt Lake City made this because she wanted to tell the world about this cool new thing she found. But it has to be sensational at the same time. People want social proof from a real person, not from advertisers. That means we have to create a vibe for everything we do. The model, the script, and the outfit all have to fit this persona we create.”
Brandon twiddles his pen against the notebook, and Shonda leans back, frowning. Surprisingly, it’s Stephanie who seems to get it. “We need a dramatic change in someone who’s obviously never used tanner before. We need you to do it. Some nerdy bookworm who hasn’t seen the sun in ten years suddenly becoming a bronze goddess. That’s sensational and if it works for you, it’ll work for anyone.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do it. I’m definitely allergic.”
“No, you’re not,” Brandon says. “We’d all know if you’d tried it.”
I chuckle as I think about the deep brown of my reverse tan lines. “I promise that there is a section of my skin that is both bronzed and sore from my experimentation last night.”
He cocks an eyebrow, and for the first time since I’ve met him, he grins at me. “Fine, but Stephanie’s right. We need a copy of you. Someone who can be nervous and awkward but still kind of hot in that girl-next-door way.”
I nod, finally liking the way things are going. “We need to have dozens of videos, so we’ll need different people for each one. We’ll market them to the different demographics, and hopefully at least a few of them will hit. This is where we need all of your information because we have to build these personas to connect with the viewers as closely as possible. Each video needs to have the right vibes, and they all need to use separate scripts.”
All three of them are nodding their heads as we dig into the different demographics. It all makes sense, and the team is really getting into it. It’s almost like we actually know what we’re doing. Maybe Emery was right, and this is all going to work out.
***
The blinds are closed, and the door’s shut as I sit in Emery’s office for the third time this week. I try to remember that he’s wearing his boss hat right now, and I shouldn’t call him Peter or make any of the other sassy comments that might run through my mind.
It’s a difficult task, to say the least.
“Are you going to have everything figured out by the end of tomorrow?” he asks as he leans back in his chair.
I nod. “I think so. I had a question, though. Brandon said that the cost of production isn’t important, and we can choose any location we want. Is that true?”
Emery drums his fingers on the wooden desk as he chews his lip. “I’m hesitant to say yes. Knowing you, you’ll pick something ridiculous. We’re not going to film on the moon, if that’s what you want. But filming in Miami is fine.”
I frown. “Well, what about Barcelona?” I’ve thought a lot about it, and it fits better than most others with the ideas we have for the sales pitch hidden in the videos.
