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‘I know, we’ve just sent him a reworked suggestion. Timon’s been hard at that.’ He smiled smugly.
Timon Cavendish, one of Jeremy’s managers. The one who falsely claimed credit for herNutbush. No Limitsslogan. If good ideas had been dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to stir his nasal hairs.
‘I mean change that reworked one. You can’t possibly use it.’
‘Why? Not trying to throw a spanner in Timon’s works are you, Polly?’ said Jeremy, looking at her with the amused suspicion of one who thought she had the temerity and shallowness to be jealous.
‘Not at all, but it’s way too similar to Warburtons, the exact colour palette in fact. They’ll sue.’
‘It’s a homage,’ he threw back, rhyming the word withfromage.
‘It’s a rip-off, Jeremy. And it smacks of following, not leading.’
Jeremy, however, was not about to let Polly win theargument. ‘The lettering isn’t the same, is it? It’s much bolder than theirs. The eye is drawn to that before anything else.’
‘Yes, I know. He’s changed all the capital letters to lower case.’
‘Inspired. No one else is using lower case.’
‘And coupled with the font he’s used, that giant “A” in Auntie now looks like a “C”.’ She tried not to gloat too much.
Jeremy pulled his keyboard over and started tapping while looking at his computer screen. When his face registered horror, Polly knew he’d seen it. And once seen, it couldn’t be unseen.
‘Not a prob,’ he remarked, though the muscle twitching in his jaw said different.
‘They’re trying to compete with the quality market and they aren’t quality,’ she went on.
‘Well, that’s what they want to be. That’s what we’re going to make happen.’
‘Won’t happen. He went full pelt without market testing his new products and there are better for the same price. He’s got too many variations, he needs to streamline not add to his range. And no, Timon’s dictat that I be sure to endorse his “The Biggest In Bread” as a slogan is not going to happen for reasons that are more than obvious. Anyway, as you asked for, those are my initial thoughts. Arthur Peach won’t like them but he will have to adopt them if he wants to compete with the quality big boys, or he can revert to being cheap and high volume and not spend his money with us, which would be my recommendation because he can’t have both worlds and I suspect he’ll want the one that brings him the most revenue. I don’t mind telling him.’
‘Not sure about that,’ said Jeremy, as expected, because saying ‘keep your cash, we can’t help you’ wasn’t an optionCharles Butler would approve of. ‘And while we are on the subject, talking of Arthur Peach… he’s not what I’d call a modern man.’ He pulled a cringey face.
‘Meaning?’
‘Well, he’s already made overtures that… he’d prefer dealing with… someone… male.’
Polly’s disbelief manifested in a series of rapid blinks. ‘In this day and age?’
‘Sadly, yes. So I’m going to ask you to involve Brock from the off on this one, okay?’ Jeremy tilted his head, like a confused Alsatian. ‘He could do a lot of the talking, man to man.’
Brock was on the first rung. He should be sitting in meetings, taking notes, observing, learning, not ‘involved’ when he didn’t know the first thing about putting a failing business back on its feet. She had absolutely no intention of being shoved to one side just because she was female and Arthur Peach preferred talking to a bloke, especially not by a novice too young to grow anything but bum fluff on his chin. She felt her cheeks register an angry heat because Jeremy wasn’t asking, he was telling. If she said no, Jeremy would override her. Wasn’t happening and she needed to say so. Sabrina definitely would have.
She began. ‘I really don’t think—’
He cut her off. ‘And, then I need to discuss something with you that is a little more sensitive,’ he continued.
He reached into his drawer and pulled out a stapled group of papers. ‘The test you did on Wednesday.’ He flipped through it, refamiliarising himself with the results, and then flashed an awkward smile before speaking again.
‘I’m very concerned about what was… uncovered.’ He slid it across the desk towards her. ‘This is your signature on the back isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Polly, confused.
‘The thing is…’ said Jeremy, licking his non-existent lips, ‘the results of this test are quite… quite worrying, I have to say.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s no other way of putting this, Polly. I’m afraid you have a personality disorder.’ Jeremy raised his eyebrows, newly overplucked, and kept them high as he waited for that information to sink in.
