Up and Down (7 page)

When the coast was clear, we descended on the security guard. He obviously wasn’t used to competitive pitches by aggressive, ambitious
PR
agencies. I watched as Amanda took a little longer than most to enter her name on the sign-in sheet. While the guard was occupied untangling a lanyard, she scanned the paper quickly and even flipped back a page in what I assume was an attempt to identify any of the other agencies pitching. She looked at Crawford and shook her head.

By the time we’d all been issued our visitors security passes, a youngish man was awaiting us wearing a nondescript grey suit with a very “descript” tie of a colour that seemed to swirl at least five different shades of phlegm. Diane was eyeing the tie with undisguised admiration, while nausea seemed the general reaction from the rest of us.

“Turner King, I presume,” phlegm tie said.

“We’re all here,” Crawford replied. “Lead on.”

We piled into two different elevators and headed for the executive boardroom on the top floor. We were still ten minutes early. The room was empty of people but clearly had been occupied shortly before. It looked as if the fire alarm had sounded in mid-meeting. Papers, file folders, half-filled coffee cups, pens, and the odd BlackBerry were scattered around the far end of the board table, suggesting an audience of six
NASA
execs. When
phlegm tie left us and we began to hook up Amanda’s laptop to the ceiling mounted projector, Crawford actually slipped around to
NASA
’
S
end of the table and cast his eye on some of the paperwork visible.

“Anything?” Diane asked, keeping a weather eye on the boardroom door.

“Standard scoring sheet. Blank. No sign of the Tupper tally or any other firm’s,” Crawford whispered, moving safely back to our end of the table before the
NASA
jury returned.

After a few minutes of increasingly agitated fiddling and cursing, Amanda got our presentation up on the screen and ready to go. We’d been just about to break out our own projector, which of course we had brought with us as a hedge against incompatible technology. But because we had lugged it to the pitch, we did not require it. Murphy’s Law.

As agreed in our planning session, we placed the business cards of each pitch team member in six neat stacks where the
NASA
folks would soon be sitting. We thought this preferable to attempting a round of one-on-one introductions that would have consumed the entire time allotted. Shortly thereafter, we were milling about our end of the table when the double doors to the boardroom swung open and the
NASA
squad entered – five older men in suits led by a very fit-looking younger woman with shortish dark hair. She was in her late thirties, or perhaps her early forties, or maybe even her late forties. I’ve never really been very good at guessing a woman’s age, dicey practice that
it is. I immediately assumed that she was a communications exec because she was wearing what I’d come to accept as the “women in PR” uniform – black pants, a white shirt of some description, and a black jacket. A
NASA
pin in her lapel completed the ensemble. She had a commanding presence that kept the focus on her.

“Turner King, welcome to
NASA
,” she said as she stood behind her chair. Her colleagues had all dropped into theirs. “Sorry for the brief delay. We were just finishing up our discussion next door about one of your competitors that I’m sure you passed in the lobby. We had built in a half-hour break between pitches so that the firms wouldn’t be tripping over each other coming and going but these folks gave us such a creative presentation that we let them slip into overtime.”

If she thought she was going to intimidate me at my first
PR
new business pitch by singing the praises of the agency that had just left … she was dead on the mark. I felt a little queasy.

Crawford offered a saccharine smile and was about to speak, but the
NASA
woman clearly wasn’t quite ready to yield the floor.

“I’m Kelly Bradstreet, chief information officer and head of
NASA
’
S
Office of Communications. I’m in charge of this selection process and the relationship that will follow with the winning firm. I’ve only been with
NASA
a short time but my mission is the same one the successful
PR
firm will be living and breathing, day in and day out. In short, our job is to get the public excited again about space. It’s as simple to say as it will be challenging to
accomplish. But I have no doubt it can be done, and that’s why I came to
NASA
in the first place.”

Kelly Bradstreet, Kelly Bradstreet. I knew that name. It took me a minute to place it but eventually I remembered. I was blessed with the gift of forgetting instantly where I’d put my wallet five minutes earlier while being able to recall nearly everything I’d read in the preceding six weeks or so. Eventually, I remembered a profile piece about Bradstreet in
Time
magazine. Snippets of the article came back to me. She was a marketing hotshot who had been hired a few years ago to rebrand the U.S. Army, which at the time was still saddled with the image of an aging and arthritic Uncle Sam. So she had rebranded one of the oldest institutions in America and triggered lineups at recruiting offices that hadn’t been seen since Pearl Harbor. It made her a marketing superstar. How did we not know she’d moved to
NASA
?

“Now let me introduce the panel before turning the floor over to you.”

Kelly’s presence had been so dominating that I hadn’t even yet looked at the grey-haired contingent of
NASA
execs seated next to her. It turned out to be the entire senior management team, including the administrator, deputy administrator, CFO, chief scientist, and chief of astronaut training.

I hadn’t recognized him until she introduced him, but then it was obvious. The chief of astronaut training was Scott Chandler, the youngest of the twelve Apollo astronauts to walk on the moon. This meant that he was now quite old. I had their faces locked
in my head from reading all I could find about the Apollo program when I was just a kid. But they were ageless in my mind, never growing a day older than they were when they walked on another world. I looked at him closely and thought I could just discern faint traces of the astronaut cockiness swagger, not so much in his face, but in his eyes and in the way he held his head. It was very cool to be in the same room as one of the six humans who had actually driven that most expensive of dune buggies, the lunar rover, on that most exotic of beaches.

While seated, Crawford then introduced the Turner King team, having to glance down at his notebook just once when he’d worked his way around the table to where I sat. I was the new guy.

“Thank you, Mr. Blake. Now that we have met one another, the floor is yours. You know how much time you have, so please don’t overshoot the clock.”

Kelly sat down, looking comfortable and confident but a little out of place alongside her geriatric colleagues. Crawford Blake stood, paused, then began to walk slowly behind the chairs of his team. His southern drawl was wistful, his cadence measured, as he spoke. He wasn’t looking at the
NASA
panel but rather somewhere in the distance. This wasn’t what we’d rehearsed.

“My older brother tells a powerful story that has stayed with me all my life. I only regret I was too young to have been there with him. In July of 1969, he was just seven years old, away from home for the first time at a Christian summer camp on Twin
Lakes. It was as remote as you can get in central Mississippi. On the evening of July 21, about ninety campers congregated in the main lodge. The younger boys, like him, wore pyjamas and spread their sleeping bags on the floor. After singing some favourite camp songs and finishing with a handful of spirituals, an old black and white
TV
set that belonged to the elderly couple who ran the kitchen at the camp was brought out, plugged in, and turned on. The reception was very fuzzy until tinfoil was applied to the rabbit ears. Then, as my older brother puts it, the snow on the screen miraculously parted and the picture took shape.”

Crawford paused for effect but kept pacing behind the
TK
delegation. I had the feeling that if he’d thought he could get away with it, he would have been delivering his soliloquy against the dramatic backdrop of orchestral strings and theatrical lighting. I’d been watching Kelly the whole time and she was beginning to fidget. It started with drumming her fingertips on her yellow pad. Then when I figured her fingers were tired and tender, she escalated to drumming her pen. Crawford didn’t notice and almost seemed to be lost in some kind of nostalgic reverie. Or perhaps he was just lost.

“Eventually he could see the nine-rung ladder running down the insect-like leg of the lunar module to the circular landing pad resting on the moon’s surface. And he watched, spellbound, as Neil Armstrong stepped down onto the dusty surface and uttered those now-famous words, ‘That’s one small step …’ ”

“Thank you, Mr. Blake, but I can assure you, the people at this
end of the table are very familiar with what Astronaut Armstrong said all those years ago. I wonder if we might move on to hear about the program you are proposing we adopt to fulfil our goals.”

Kelly Bradstreet said it calmly but with an edge to her tone that suggested resistance was futile.

I saw anger flash before Crawford could recover and re-plaster the obsequious smile onto his face.

“I can assure you, Miss Bradstreet, we were just about to start into the program. I was just doing a little scene-setting,” Crawford replied, remarkably clearly for a man with a clenched jaw and gritted teeth.

“Well, please consider the scene set. Thank you.” She smiled back at him as he returned to his seat.

Diane rose, and we were off and running through the PowerPoint slides as we’d rehearsed them the day before. We had not yet distributed the coil-bound copies of the presentation for fear the
NASA
folks would promptly flip ahead of us in the deck and stop listening. We had decided to hand out the decks at the end.

Diane was a very good presenter and, among other things, managed to put Canada on the map, as it were. I worried that her glasses would be such a distraction that the panel would not be able to focus but they seemed to be with her. Perhaps it was just as a contrast to Crawford’s thespian overtones, but Diane spoke well but simply while standing in her place at the table. Bridget and I did the same and made it through our piece on
the state of public opinion in both countries. I was nervous. When I’d initially opened my mouth, I thought I sounded like I’d inhaled a shot of helium. But after a few phrases, my voice loosened and seemed to return to its normal register. Bridget was also good and our hand-offs to one another were natural without any of the contrived “… and now David will walk you through …” transitions. I was pleased just to have gotten through it without a face-plant onto the board table.

After we finished our part, Amanda, who was wearing a “Put me in, coach” look on her face, stood to present the bulk of the program with Michael. She was keyed up and spoke slightly more loudly than anyone else had thus far. But she spoke clearly and not too fast, as did Michael. They worked well together. Amanda even mustered what looked like a smile at one point, unless it was anxiety-induced acid reflux. Now that I was done, I was able to relax and watch the faces of our judges as Amanda and Michael worked their way through the deck. Four of the five
NASA
men seemed to be either just waking up from or just falling into a deep sleep. The fifth man, Scott Chandler himself, was actually in a deep sleep, his face deformed by the fist jammed under his jaw. But Kelly Bradstreet was very much awake and kept increasing the pace of her pen percussion. I figured if we waited a few more minutes she’d be very close to playing
Wipe Out
. She seemed to be willing Amanda and Michael to get to the point. It was all too much for Kelly when they moved from program activities to program measurement.

“Excuse me,” Kelly interrupted. “I’m sorry to cut in but you seem to have finished outlining the tactics and have moved on to evaluation. I don’t mean to be rude but if you’re simply suggesting we step up our media relations efforts to drive more of the same old coverage we’ve been generating for fifty years, there’s really no point in continuing your presentation.”

Amanda was paralyzed with a look that suggested she was standing with a family of deer in the middle of a highway, all of them blinded by high beams. I glanced at Michael and his expression was very much like Amanda’s.

“Now just a minute here,” Crawford snapped as he leapt to his feet, loaded with invective and with the safety off. “We have worked very hard to develop a program that will achieve your objectives and remain true to the spirit, character, and traditions of
NASA
. I know you just said that you don’t mean to be rude, but I have to say that you really …”

Suddenly Amanda regained consciousness and saw the ground racing up to meet us. Just before we hit, she fired our retrorockets and changed course.

“Ahhh, thank you, Crawford. I’ve got this one. Thanks, thanks,” Amanda soothed as she motioned for him to sit down, palming the air in front of her with both hands.

“Well, I was just about to say …” Crawford persisted.

“I know, but we’re all good here,” Amanda pushed back, holding her hand up like a stop sign. “I’ve got this one, Crawford, if I could just continue. Thanks. Thanks so much.”

Unaccustomed to being interrupted, Crawford slowly settled into his chair with a perplexed look on his face – and on the rest of his body, for that matter. Diane had her hand to her mouth with her eyes opened so wide, it made me forget about her glasses. Yes, that wide. Scott Chandler lifted one lid to see what he’d missed. Amanda closed her eyes for just a second, sighed deeply, and then turned back to all of us. For some reason, she looked once at me and then focused on Kelly.