Advertising and IMC Principles and Practice 10th Edition Moriarty Solutions Manual
Advertising and IMC Principles and Practice 10th Edition Moriarty Solutions Manual
Advertising and IMC Principles and Practice 10th Edition Moriarty Solutions Manual
Advertising and IMC Principles and Practice 10th Edition Moriarty Solutions Manual
Advertising and IMC Principles and Practice 10th Edition Moriarty Solutions Manual
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Chapter 8: TheCreative Side
Copyright@2015 Pearson Education, Inc. 185
Part 3
PRACTICE: DEVELOPING BREAKTHROUGH IDEAS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
The new century has created a huge challenge for brand communication creatives who
have to develop breakthrough messages that will not get lost in the media explosion of
the 21st
century. As Professor Karen Mallia explains, “We are in a second creative
revolution that challenges creative thinkers to reimagine the way they work.”
The Second Creative Revolution: Magical Thinking Meets Bits and Bytes
• New brand communication can be anything from sponsored tweets to a
charmingly retro 30 second television spot. Increasingly, campaigns consist of
media channels that are layered and interwoven in clever and complex ways.
• The entire process of making brand communication has undergone a massive
shift, the likes of which the industry has never seen before. Digital tools and
emerging platforms disrupt the creative department paradigm, now that creative is
married to technology.
• However, the underlying principles behind making brilliant work have not
changed much.
Enduring Creative Truths
• Professor Mallia lists nine enduring creative truths in the textbook. The new
creative truth is that great work now takes a village – not just one or two
geniuses. Creating for digital media requires diverse talents of more than just a
writer and art director. The key is collaboration.
Chapter 8
The Creative Side
◆CHAPTER CONTENT
CHAPTER KEY POINTS
1. How do we explain the art and science of creative strategy as well as the logic and
important parts of a creative brief?
2. What are some key message strategy approaches?
3. How is creative thinking defined, and how does it lead to a Big Idea?
4. What characteristics do creative people have in common, and what is their typical
creative process?
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5. What issues affect the management of creative strategy and its implementation?
CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Effective advertising is both an art in its creativity and a science in its strategy. This
chapter explores how the two of those come together as creative strategy, which is the
logic behind the message. We’ll also examine a planning tool called a creative brief,
which provides direction for the execution of the Big Idea and for the evaluation of the
creative strategy. Next, we explore the characteristics of creative people and the process
of creative thinking, with the aim of showing how you can become a more creative
thinker. We end with a discussion of extension, adaptation, and evaluation as a means of
managing creative strategies.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
SCIENCE OR ART?
• Effective marketing communication is a product of both logic and creativity. The
logic is built on fresh insight that comes from research. The message itself translates
the logic of the planning decisions into a creative idea that is original, attention
getting, and memorable.
• Effective advertising is successful because the right media delivers the right message
to the right target audience at the right time. Like two hands clapping, media and
message need to work together to create effective advertising. In fact, planning the
message usually happens simultaneously with planning the media. Figure 8.1
diagrams this relationship.
Who Are the Key Players?
• All agencies have copywriters and art directors who are responsible for developing
the creative concept and crafting the execution of the advertising idea. They often
work in teams, are sometimes hired and fired as a team, and may work together
successfully for several years.
• Broadcast producers can also be part of the team for television commercials. The
creative director manages the creative process, plays an important role in focusing the
strategy of ads, and makes sure the creative concept is strategically on target. Of
course, the account planner originally put the strategy together in the form of a
creative brief, so that person may also be involved in providing both background and
direction to the creative team.
• The agency environment is particularly important. Agencies represent the perfect
“think tank” to inspire creativity and infuse research into creative thinking. Sasser’s
research has found that agencies are natural incubators in terms of the 3P’s of
innovation: place, person, and process.
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• Although agencies offer an environment designed to stimulate creative thinking,
professionals working on their own find that the varied nature of their management
assignments and projects create their own challenges, as Jennifer Cunningham
describes in this chapter’s A Day in the Life feature.
What is the Role of Creativity?
• The art and science of advertising come together in the phrase creative strategy. A
winning marketing communication idea must be both creative (original, different,
novel, and unexpected) and strategic (right for the product and target and meeting the
objectives).
• Advertising creativity is about coming up with an idea that solves a communication
problem in an original way. Professors Stuhlfaut and Berman remind us that
creativity is directed at achieving objectives. Creative strategy solves problems and
problem solving demands creative thinking – the mental tools used in figuring things
out. Both Big Ideas and Big Plans both call for creative thinking.
• Media planners, market researchers, copywriters, and art directors are all searching
for new ideas. Creative people are found in business, science, engineering,
advertising, and many other fields. But in advertising, creativity is both a job
description and a goal. Figure 8.2 contains a mini-test to evaluate your own creative
potential.
The Creative Brief
• The creative brief (or creative platform, worksheet, or blueprint) is the document
prepared by the account planner to summarize the basic marketing and advertising
strategy. It gives direction to creative team members as they search for a creative
concept.
• Creative strategy, or message strategy, is what the advertisement says. Execution is
how it is said. The following outline summarizes the key points in a typical brief:
▪ A problem that can be solved by communication.
▪ The target audience and key insights into their attitudes and behavior.
▪ The brand position and other branding decisions, such as personality and image.
▪ Communication objectives which specify the desired response to the message by
the target audience.
▪ A proposition or selling idea that will motivate the target to respond.
▪ Media considerations about where and when the message should be delivered.
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▪ Creative direction that provides suggestions on how to stimulate the desired
consumer response. These aren’t creative ideas but may touch on such execution
or stylistic direction as the ad’s tone of voice.
• Different agencies use different formats, but most combine these basic advertising
strategy decisions. The point is that advertising planning—even planning for the
creative side—involves a structured, logical approach to analysis, which may leave
out the intuitive, emotional message effects.
Message Objectives
• What do you want the message to accomplish? What message objectives would you
specify? Below is a review of some of common advertising objectives that relate to
the Facets Model of Effects.
▪ See/hear - Create attention, awareness, interest, recognition
▪ Feel - touch emotions and create feelings
▪ Think/learn/understand - deliver information, aid understanding, and create recall
▪ Connect - establish brand identity and associations, transform a product into a
brand with distinctive personality and image
▪ Believe - change attitudes, create conviction and preference, stimulate trust
▪ Act - stimulate trial, purchase, repurchase or some other form of action, such as
visiting a store or website
Targeting
• The target decision is particularly important in planning a message strategy. It is
essential to understand what moves this group.
Branding and Positioning
• The demands of the brand are also important considerations. Brand positions and
brand images are created through message strategies and brought to life through
advertising executions. Finding the right position is difficult enough, but figuring out
how to communicate that position in an attention-getting message that is consistent
across multiple executions and various media further heightens the challenge.
The classic “Think Small” campaign that launched the VW Beetle shown in the
textbook is an example of advertising that created a powerful brand name at the same
time as it carved out a unique position in a cluttered auto market.
• Advertising and other forms of marketing communication are critical to creating what
brand guru Kevin Keller calls brand salience, that is, the brand is visible and has a
presence in the marketplace, consumers are aware of it, and the brand is important to
its target market.
• In addition to brand salience – measured by top-of-mind awareness – another
objective for branding and positioning campaigns is to create trust. We buy familiar
brands because we’ve used them before and we trust them to deliver on their
promises.
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MESSAGE STRATEGIES
• Once you have objectives stated, how do you go about translating those goals into
strategies? Remember, there is no one right way to do advertising—in most cases
there are a number of ways to achieve a communication objective.
• Planners search for the best message design – the approach that makes the most sense
given the brand’s marketing situation and the target audience’s needs and interests.
Which Strategic Approach to Use?
First, let’s review some simple ways to express a strategic approach—head or heart and
hard or soft sell. Then we’ll look at some more complex models that get a little deeper
into the complexities of message strategy.
Head and Heart
• In the Facets model the cognitive objectives generally speak to the head and the
affective objectives are more likely to speak to the heart. However, sometimes a
strategy is designed to inform the mind as it touches the emotions.
• Another way to refer to head and heart strategies are hard- and soft-sell approaches. A
hard sell is an informational message that is designed to touch the mind and create a
response based on logic. The assumption is that the target audience wants information
and will make a rational product decision.
• A soft sell uses emotional appeals or images to create a response based on attitudes,
moods, and feelings. The assumption with soft-sell strategies is that the target
audience has little interest in an information search and will respond more favorably
to a message that touches their emotions or presents an attractive brand image. A soft-
sell strategy can be used for hard products.
• However, there are examples of ads designed to stir emotions that did not work
because they were too manipulative or raised inappropriate emotions. It is possible to
manipulate emotions in a way that viewers and listeners resent. But sometimes high
emotion works.
Systems of Strategies
• Head or heart, hard sell or soft sell—these terms all refer to some basic, simple ideas
about message strategy, but creative strategy is often more complex. Frazer’s Six
Creative Strategies and Taylor’s Strategy Wheel offer more complex approaches.
• Professor Charles Frazer proposed a set of six creative strategies that address various
types of message situations. Although not comprehensive, these terms are useful to
identify some common approaches to strategy. They are preemptive, unique selling
proposition, brand image, positioning, resonance, and affective/anomalous.
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• A description of each strategy and its uses is detailed in a table in the textbook. The
preemptive strategy shows up in competitive advertising where one competitor tries
to build a position or lay a claim before others enter the market. We saw an example
of this when the coffee wars between Starbucks and McDonald’s erupted after
McDonald’s introduced its McCafe line of fancy coffees at lower prices.
• Professor Ron Taylor developed a model that divides strategies into the transmission
view, which is similar to the more rational “head” strategies, and the ritual view,
which is similar to the more feeling-based “heart” strategies. He then divides each
into three segments: rational, acute need, and routine on the transmission side and
ego, social, and sensory on the ritual side. In the A Matter of Principle feature in this
chapter, Professor Taylor explains his model in detail.
Strategic Formats
Even though advertising is a search for a new and novel way to express some basic truth,
there are also some tried and true approaches that have worked over the years. These
tried and true approaches are outlined below.
Lectures and Dramas
• Most advertising messages use a combination of lecture and drama to reach the head
or the heart of the consumer. A lecture is a serious instruction given verbally. The
speaker presents evidence and uses a technique such as an argument to persuade the
audience. Lectures are relatively inexpensive to produce, and are compact and
efficient. The phrase talking head is used to refer to an announcer who delivers a
lecture about a product.
• Drama relies on the viewer to make inferences about the brand. Usually the drama is
in the story that the reader has to construct around the cues in the ad. Through
dramas, advertisers tell stories about their products; the characters speak to each
other, not to the audience. Viewers learn from commercial dramas by inferring
lessons from them and by applying those lessons to their everyday lives.
Psychological Appeals
• The psychological appeal of the product to the consumer is also used to describe a
message that primarily appeals to the heart. An appeal connects with some emotion
that makes the product particularly attractive or interesting, such as security, esteem,
sex, and sensory pleasure. Although emotion is at the base of most appeals, in some
situations, appeals can also have a logical dimension. Appeals generally pinpoint the
anticipated response of the audience to the product and the message.
Selling Strategies
• A selling premise states the logic behind the sales offer. A premise is a proposition
on which an argument is based or a conclusion is drawn. To have a practical effect on
customers, managers must identify the product’s features or attributes in terms of
those that are most important to the target audience. Another type of selling premise
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is a claim, which is a product-focused strategy that is based on a prediction about
how the product will perform.
• Here is a summary of rational customer-focused selling premises:
▪ Benefit. The benefit emphasizes what the product can do for the user by
translating the product feature or attribute into something that benefits the
consumer.
▪ Promise. A promise is a benefit statement that looks to the future and predicts
that something good will happen if you use the product.
▪ Reason why. A type of benefit statement that gives you the reason why you
should buy something, although the reason sometimes is implied or assumed.
▪ Unique selling proposition (USP). A USP is a benefit statement that is both
unique to the product and important to the user. The USP is a promise that
consumers will get this unique benefit by using this product only.
• Most selling premises demand facts, proof, or explanations to support the sales
message. The proof, or substantiation, needed to make a claim believable, is called
support. In many cases, this calls for research findings. With claims, and particularly
with comparisons, the proof is subject to challenge by a competitor as well as
industry review boards.
Other Message Formulas
• In addition to the basic categories of selling premises, some common message
formulas emphasize different types of effects. The planner uses these terms as a way
to give direction to the creative team and to shape the executions. Here are some of
them:
▪ A straightforward factual or informational message conveys information
without any gimmicks, emotions, or special effects.
▪ A demonstration focuses on how to use the product or what it can do for you.
▪ A comparison contrasts two or more products to show the advertiser’s brand
superiority. The comparison can be either direct or indirect.
▪ In a problem solution format, also known as product-as-hero, the message
begins with a problem and the product is the solution. A variation is the
problem avoidance message format, in which the product helps avoid a
problem.
▪ Advertisers use humor as a creative strategy because it is attention-getting
and they hope that people will transfer the warm feelings they have as they are
being entertained to the product.
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▪ The slice-of-life format is an elaborate version of a problem solution staged in
the form of a drama in which “typical people” talk about a common problem
and resolve it.
▪ In the spokesperson or endorser format, the ad features celebrities, created
characters, experts we respect, or someone “just like us” whose advice we
might seek out to speak on behalf of the product to build credibility. A recent
FTC rule makes endorsers as well as advertisers liable for false or
unsubstantiated claims, so spokespersons have to be very careful about what
they say about products they advertise.
▪ Teasers are mystery ads that don’t identify the product or don’t deliver
enough information to make sense, but they are designed to arouse curiosity.
These are often used to launch a new product.
• The use of celebrities as spokespersons, endorsers, or brand symbols is an
important strategy because it associates the brand positively – or negatively – with
a famous person and qualities that make that person a celebrity. In the past,
celebrities were often reluctant to appear for a brand because they feared it might
tarnish their image. More recently, advertisers have worried about celebrities
they have signed who tarnish the brand’s image.
• There are a number of ways to measure a celebrity’s appeal or influence, such as
the E score, the Q score, and the Davie Brown Index. These scores are not just
related to conventional celebrities. In social media, anyone who attracts a lot of
followers can be identified as an ‘influencer.’ Klout and PeerIndex are rating
services for social media.
Matching Messages to Objectives
What types of messages deliver which objectives? The Facets Model can be helpful in
thinking through objectives and their related strategies.
• Messages that get attention. To be effective, an advertisement needs to get
exposure through the media buy and get attention through the message. Getting
consumers’ attention requires stopping power. Creative advertising breaks
through the old patterns of seeing and saying things—the unexpectedness of the
new idea creates stopping power. Intrusiveness is particularly important in
cluttered markets, and curiosity is particularly important for teaser strategies.
• Messages that create interest. Keeping attention reflects the ad’s pulling power.
An interesting thought keeps reader or viewer attention and pulls them through to
the end of the message. Ads that open with questions or dubious statements are
designed to create curiosity.
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• Messages that resonate. Ads that amplify the emotional impact of a message by
engaging a consumer in a personal connection with a brand are said to resonate
with the target audience.
• Messages that create believability. Advertising sometimes uses a credibility
strategy to intensify the believability of a message. Using data to support or prove
a claim is critical.
• Messages that are remembered. Not only do messages have to stop (get
attention) and pull (create interest), they also have to stick (in memory), which is
another important part of the perceptual process. Most advertisements are
carefully designed to ensure that these memory traces are easy to recall.
• Principle: A message needs to stop (get attention) and pull (create interest. It also
has to stick (be memorable).
• Repetition is used in both media and message strategy to ensure memorability.
Jingles are valuable memorability devices because the music allows the advertiser
to repeat a phrase or product name without boring the audience. Clever phrases
are useful not only because they grab attention, but also because they can be
repeated to intensify memorability.
• Brand communication uses slogans for brands and campaigns, such as “Get Met.
It Pays” (MetLife) or Nike’s slogan “Just Do It.” Taglines are used at the end of
an ad to summarize the point of the ad’s message in a highly memorable way.
Many print and interactive ads and most television commercials feature a key
visual, a vivid image that the advertiser hopes will linger in the viewer’s mind.
Color may be a memory cue, as with Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum.
• Messages that touch emotions. Emotional appeals create feeling-based responses
such as love, fear, anxiety, envy, sexual attraction, happiness and joy, sorrow,
safety and security, pride, pleasure, embarrassment, and nostalgia. Appetite
appeal uses mouth-watering food shots to elicit feelings of hunger and craving,
like the photo in the Quaker Trail Mix Bar print ad. A more general emotional
goal is to deliver a message that people like in order to create liking for the brand.
• Messages that inform. Companies often use news announcements to provide
information about new products, to tout reformulated products, or even let
consumers know about new uses for old products. The news angle, which is often
delivered by publicity stories, is information focused. Comparison ads are often
heavy on information and used to explain a product’s point of difference and
competitive advantage.
• Messages that teach. People learn through instruction so some advertisements are
designed to teach, such as demonstrations that show how something works or how
to solve a problem. Educational messages are sometimes designed to explain
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something. Learning is also strengthened through repetition, which is why
repetition is such an important media objective.
• Messages that persuade. Persuasive messages are designed to affect attitudes and
create belief. Endorsements by celebrities or experts are used to intensify
conviction. Conviction is often built on strong, rational arguments that use such
techniques as test results, before-and-after visuals, testimonials by users and
experts, and demonstrations to prove something. Celebrities, product placements,
and other credibility techniques are used to give the consumer permission to
believe a claim or selling premise.
• Principle: When advertising gives consumers permission to believe in a product,
it establishes the platform for conviction.
• Messages that create brand associations. The transformative power of branding,
where the brand takes on a distinctive character and meaning, is one of marketing
communication’s most important functions. Image advertising is used to create
a representation of a brand, an image in a consumer’s mind through symbolism.
Advertising’s role is to provide the cues that make these meanings and
experiences come together in a coherent brand image.
• Messages that drive action. Even harder to accomplish than conviction is a
change in behavior. It often happens that people believe one thing and do another.
Sales promotion, for example, works in tandem with advertising to stimulate
immediate action using sampling, coupons, and free gifts as incentives for action.
• Most ads end with a signature of some kind that serves to identify the company or
brand, but it also serves as a call to action and gives direction to the consumer
about how to respond, such as a toll-free number, a website URL, or an e-mail
address.
• Ultimately, advertisers want loyal customers who purchase and repurchase the
product as a matter of habit or preference. Reminder advertising, as well as
distributing coupons or introducing a continuity program, is designed to keep the
brand name in front of customers to encourage their repeat business.
CREATIVE THINKING: SO HOW DO YOU DO IT?
• Professor Mark Stuhlfaut has identified the significant elements of creativity,
which begins with novelty but include appropriateness as well as authenticity and
relevance. He adds that, “if it’s creative, it is also generative; in other words, it
leads to other new ways of thinking.” So creativity can be defined as generating
novelty or uniqueness that makes something ring true.
• Marketing communication and advertising are creative idea businesses. An idea is
a thought or a concept in the mind. It’s formed by mentally combining pieces and
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fragments of thoughts into something that contains a nugget of meaning.
Advertisers creatives sometimes use the term concepting to refer to the process of
coming up with a new idea. Big Ideas are also called creative concepts.
• To understand what creativity is, it may be helpful to understand what it is not.
What’s the opposite of creative? In advertising, clichés are the most obvious
examples of generic, non-original, non-novel ideas. To help you understand how
creative people think about strategy and advertising ideas, ten tips are offered by
Professor Tom Groth.
Big Ideas
• What we call a Big Idea or creative concept becomes a point of focus for
communicating the message strategy. But Big Ideas can be risky because they are
different and, by definition, untested. So risky is good for edgy Big Ideas, but
how far on the edge is a difficult question.
• Principle: Big Ideas are risky because, by definition, they are new, unexpected,
and untested.
• Where do Big Ideas come from? James Webb Young, a founder of the Young &
Rubicam agency, explained in his classic book that that an idea is a new or
unexpected combination of thoughts. He claims that “the ability to make new
combinations is heightened by an ability to see relationships.” An idea, then, is a
thought that comes from placing two previously unrelated concepts together.
The ROI of Creativity
• A Big Idea is more than just a new thought because in advertising it also has to
accomplish something—it has a functional dimension. According to the DDB
agency, an effective ad is relevant, original, and has impact—which is referred to
as ROI of creativity. In traditional business ROI stands for return on investment,
but it means something very different here. According to DDB’s philosophy,
ideas have to relevant and mean something to the target audience. Original
means one of a kind – an advertising idea is creative when it is novel, fresh,
unexpected and unusual. To be effective, the idea must also have impact, which
means it makes an impression on the audience.
• The essence of a creative idea is that no one else has thought of it. Thus, the first
rule is to avoid doing what everyone else is doing. In an industry that prides itself
on creativity, copycat advertising—that is, using an idea that someone else has
originated—is a concern.
• Principle: An idea can be creative for you if you have not thought of it before, but
to be truly creative it has to be one that no one else has thought of before.
• We know that many ads just wash over the audience. An idea with impact,
however, breaks through the clutter, gets attention, and sticks in memory. A
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breakthrough ad has stopping power and that comes from an intriguing idea—a
Big Idea that is important and relevant to consumers.
The Creative Leap
• Divergent thinking is a style of thinking that jumps around exploring
possibilities rather than using rational thinking to arrive at the “right” or logical
conclusion. The heart of creative thinking, divergent thinking, uses exploration
(playfulness) to search for alternatives. Another term for divergent thinking is
right-brain thinking, which is intuitive, holistic, artistic, and emotionally
expressive thinking in contrast to left-brain thinking, which is logical, linear
(inductive or deductive), and orderly.
• How can you become a more creative thinker? First, think about the problem as
something that involves a mind-shift. Instead of seeing the obvious, a creative
idea looks at a problem in a different way, from a different angle. That’s called
thinking outside the box. Second, put the strategy language behind you. Finding
the brilliant creative concept entails what advertising giant Otto Kleppner called
the creative leap—a process of jumping from boring business language in a
strategy statement to an original idea. This Big Idea transforms the strategy into
something unexpected, original, and interesting.
• Principle: To get a creative idea, you must leap beyond the mundane language of
the strategy statement and see the problem in a novel and unexpected way.
• Since the creative leap means moving away from the safety of a predictable
strategy statement to an unusual idea that has not been tried, before, this leap is a
creative risk.
Dialing up Your Creativity
• Creative advertising people may be weird and unconventional, but they can’t be
eccentric. They still must be purpose driven, meaning they are focused on creating
effective advertising that’s on strategy. Coming up with a great idea that is also on
strategy is an emotional high. Advertising creatives describe it as “one of the
biggest emotional roller coasters in the business world.”
• Principle: Getting a great advertising idea that is also on strategy is an emotional
high.
• Research has found that most people can sharpen their skills and develop their
creative potential by understanding and strengthening certain personal
characteristics. Research also indicates that creative people tend to be
independent, assertive, self-sufficient, persistent, self-disciplined, curious, and
possess a high tolerance for ambiguity. They are also risk takers with powerful
egos that are internally driven. Here are a few of the key characteristics of
creative people who do well in advertising:
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▪ Problem solving. Creative problem solvers are alert, watchful, and observant,
and reach conclusions through intuition rather than through logic.
▪ Playful. Creative people have fun with ideas; they have a mental playfulness
that allows them to make novel associations.
▪ The ability to visualize. Most of the information we accumulate comes
through sight, so the ability to manipulate visual images is crucial for good
copywriters, as well as designers.
▪ Open to new experiences. Over the course of a lifetime, openness to
experience may give you many more adventures from which to draw. Those
experiences would, in turn, give a novelist more characters to write about, a
painter more scenes to paint, and the creative team more angles from which to
tackle an advertising problem.
▪ Conceptual thinking. It’s easy to see how people who are open to experience
might develop innovative advertisements and commercials because they are
more imaginative.
The Creative Process: How to Get an Idea
• Only in cartoons do light bulbs appear above our heads from out of nowhere when
a good idea strikes. In reality, most people who are good at thinking up new ideas
will tell you that it is hard work. The unusual, unexpected, novel idea rarely
comes easily—and that’s as true in science and medicine as it is in advertising.
• However, most experts on creativity realize that there are steps to the process of
thinking up a new idea. The classic approach to the creative process is portrayed
by the following series of steps:
▪ Step 1: Immersion. Read, research, and learn everything you can about the
problem.
▪ Step 2: Ideation. Look at the problem from every angle; develop ideas;
generate as many alternatives as possible.
▪ Step 3: Brainfag. Don’t give up if, and when you hit a blank wall.
▪ Step 4: Incubation. Try to put your conscious mind to rest to let your
subconscious take over.
▪ Step 5: Illumination. Embrace the unexpected moment when the idea comes,
often when your mind is relaxed and you’re doing something else.
▪ Step 6: Evaluation. Does it work? Is it on strategy?
• Another approach comes from Professor Linda Correll, who developed Creative
Aerobics. This four step idea-generating process opens new doors and windows
for ideas to enter your mind.
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Brainstorming
• As part of the creative process, some agencies use a thinking technique known as
brainstorming in which a group of 6 to 10 people work together to come up with
ideas. One person’s idea stimulates someone else’s, and the combined power of
the group associations stimulates far more ideas than any one person could think
of alone. The group becomes an idea factory.
• The secret to brainstorming is to remain positive and defer judgment. Negative
thinking during a brainstorming session can destroy the informal atmosphere
necessary to achieve a novel idea.
• The following list builds on our previous discussion of creative thinking. It can
also be used as an outline for a brainstorming session. To create an original and
unexpected idea, use the following techniques:
▪ What if? To twist the commonplace, ask a crazy “what if” question— for
example, what if wild animals could talk?
▪ An unexpected association. In free association you think of a word and then
describe everything that comes into your mind when you imagine that word.
▪ Dramatize the obvious. Sometimes the most creative idea is also the most
obvious.
▪ Catchy phrasing. Isuzu used “The 205-Horsepower Primal Scream” for its
Rodeo headline.
▪ An unexpected twist. A road crew usually refers to people who work on a
road project, but for the Road Crew campaign, the phrase was twisted to refer
to limo drivers who give rides to people who have had too much to drink.
▪ Play on words. For example, under the headline “Happy Camper,” an ad for
cheese showed a picture of a packed sports utility vehicle with a huge wedge
of cheese lashed to the rooftop.
▪ Analogy and metaphor. Used to see new patterns or relationships,
metaphors and analogies by definition set up juxtapositions. Harley-
Davidson compared the legendary sound of its motorcycles to the taste of a
thick, juicy steak.
▪ Familiar and strange. Put the familiar in an unexpected situation: UPS
showed a tiny model of its familiar brown truck moving through a computer
cord.
▪ A twisted cliché. They may have been great ideas the first time they were
used, but phrases such as “the road to success” become trite when overused.
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But they can regain their power if twisted into a new context. The “Happy
Camper” line was twisted by relating it to an SUV.
▪ Twist the obvious. Avoid the predictable, such as a picture of a Cadillac on
Wall Street or in front of a mansion. Instead, use an SUV on Wall Street
(“fast tracker”) or a basketball hoop in front of a mansion (“slam dunk”).
▪ Exaggeration. Take a common situation and exaggerate it until it becomes
funny.
• To prevent unoriginal ideas, avoid or work around the following:
▪The look-alike. Avoid copycat advertising that uses somebody else’s great idea.
Hundreds of ads for escape products (resorts, travel, liquor, foods) have used the
headline “Paradise Found.” It’s a play on “Paradise Lost” but still overused.
▪The tasteless. In an attempt to be cute, a Subaru ad used the headline, “Put it
where the sun don’t shine.” An attempted twist on a cliché, but it doesn’t work.
• Getting the Big Idea for marketing communication campaigns has always been the
province of creative teams in agencies. Recently, however, with the development of
new crowdsourcing practices, marketers are finding ways to enlist the collective
ideas of thousands to come up with great ideas.
MANAGING CREATIVE STRATEGY
Next, let’s look at three management issues that affect the formulation of creative
strategies: extension, adaptation, and evaluation.
Extension: An Idea with Legs
• One characteristic of a Big Idea is that it gives legs to a campaign. By that we
mean that the idea is strong enough to serve as an umbrella concept for a variety
of executions in different media talking to different audiences. It can be endlessly
extended. Extendibility is a strength of the Chick-fil-A, Geico, and Frontier
Airlines’ talking-animal campaigns.
Adaption: Taking an Idea Global
• The opportunity for standardizing the campaign across multiple markets exists
only if the objectives and strategic position are essentially the same. Otherwise a
creative strategy may call for a little tweaking of the message for a local market or
even major revision if there is a great deal of cultural and market difference.
• In a case in which core targeting and positioning strategies remain the same in
different markets, it might be possible for the central creative idea to be universal
across markets. Although the implementation of this idea may vary from market
to market, the creative concept is sound across all types of consumers. Even if the
campaign theme, slogan, or visual elements are the same across markets, it is
“No,” he answered,“I didn’t lunch with Lucinda, as it happened.
When I took a step up to her, she seemed absolutely lost in her own
thoughts, hardly aware of my being there, at least realizing that I
was there with a sort of effort; her eyes didn’t look as if they saw me
at all. ‘You must let me off to-day, Mr. Frost,’ she said in a hurried
murmur. ‘I—I’ve got something to do—something I must think
about.’ Her cheeks were still rather red; otherwise she was calm
enough, but obviously entirely preoccupied. It would have been silly
to press her; I mean, it would have been an intrusion. ‘All right, of
course,’ I said. ‘But when are we to meet again, Donna Lucinda?’
“‘I don’t know. In a few days, I hope. Not till I send you word to
the hotel.’
“‘Try to make it Sunday.’ I smiled as I added, ‘Then I shall see
you in the blue frock; that’s the one I like best.’
“‘The blue frock!’ she repeated after me. Then she suddenly
raised her free arm—she’d been holding that infernal bandbox all the
time, you know—clenched her fist and gave it a little shake in the air.
‘If he’s really done that, I’ll have no more to do with him in this
world again!’ she said. And off she went down the road, without
another word to me or a glance back. I believe she’d forgotten my
very existence.”
“Did she turn up on Sunday—in the blue frock?”
“I’ve never set eyes on her since—nor on Arsenio either. They
both appear to have vanished into space—together or separately,
Heaven only knows! I hunted for Valdez in all the likely places. I tried
for her at the hotel at Cimiez, at her shop, at her lodgings. I’ve
drawn blank everywhere. I got thoroughly sick and out of heart. So I
thought I’d run up here and see what you thought about it.”
“I don’t know why I should make any mystery about it,” said I.
“Anything that puzzles you will be quite plain in the light of that
letter.”
I took the letter from Arsenio Valdez, which Nina had given me,
out of my pocket, and flung it down on the table. “Read it—and
23.
you’ll understand whyshe repeated after you ‘The blue frock!’ That
was what gave her the clew to Nina’s meaning!”
24.
T
CHAPTER XVII
REBELLION
HERE wasthe situation; for Godfrey was quick enough to see
what had happened as soon as he had read Arsenio’s letter;
he finished it, which was more than I had done, and so found
more lies than I had. We discussed the situation far into the
night, Godfrey still doing most of the talking. He had come to Paris
to see me about it, to ask my advice or to put some question to me;
but he had not really got the problem clear in his mind. On
subsidiary points—or, perhaps, one should rather say, on what
seemed such to him—his view was characteristic, and to me
amusing. He thought that most of Nina’s anger was due to the fact
that she had been “done” by Arsenio, that he had got her money for
Lucinda and for himself on false pretenses; whereas Nina was really
furious with Lucinda herself for not having consciously accepted her
charity, and made comparatively little of friend Arsenio’s roguery. He
was much more full of admiration of Lucinda for not minding being
discovered carrying a bandbox—and for laughing at her encounter
with Lady Dundrannan while she was doing it—than of appreciation
of her indignation over the blue frock; he thought she made a great
deal too much of that. “Since she didn’t know, what does it come
to?” he asked. And he wasted no reprobation on Arsenio. He had
known Arsenio for a rogue before—a rogue after his money, and
willing to use his wife as a bait to catch it; that he now knew that
25.
Arsenio was morecompletely a rogue all round—towards Nina as
well as towards him—was merely a bit of confirmatory evidence; he
saw nothing in the fact that Arsenio had, after all, given Lucinda the
blue frock, though he would have been quite safe—as safe, anyhow
—if he had given her nothing. His whole analysis, so far as it
appeared in disjointed observations, of the other parties to the affair,
ran on lines of obvious shrewdness, and was baffled only where they
appeared—as in Lucinda’s case—to diverge from the lines thus
indicated. Lucinda was a puzzle. Why had she hidden herself from
him? She could “have it out” with Valdez, if she wanted to, without
doing that!
But he was not immensely perturbed at her temporary
disappearance; he could find her, if he wanted to. “It’s only a matter
of trouble and money, like anything else.” And if she were furious
with Valdez, no harm in that! Rather the reverse! Thus he gradually
approached his own position, and the questions which he was
putting to himself, and had found so difficult that he had been
impelled to come and talk them over. These really might be reduced
to one, and a very old one, though also often a very big one; it may
be variously conceived and described as that between prudence and
passion, that between morality and love, that between will and
emotion, between the head and the heart. For purposes of the
present case it could be personified as being between Nina and
Lucinda. As a gentleman, if as nothing more, he had been obliged to
own up to his engagement to lunch with Lucinda and to stand by it.
But that act settled nothing ultimately. The welcome of a returning
Prodigal would await him at Villa San Carlo, though the feast might
perhaps be rather too highly peppered with a lofty forgiveness; he
was conscious of that feature in the case, but minded it less than I
should have; Nina’s pupil was accustomed to her rebukes, and rather
hardened against her chastisement. But if arms were open to him
elsewhere—soft and seducing arms—what then? Was he to desert
Nina?
Her and what she stood for? And really, in this situation, she
stood for everything that had, up to now, governed his life. She
26.
stood (she wouldnot have felt at all inadequate to the demand on
her qualities) for prosperity, progress, propriety, and—as a climax—
for piety itself. Godfrey had been religiously brought up (the figure of
the white-haired Wesleyan Minister at Briarmount rose before my
eyes) and was not ashamed to own that the principles thus
inculcated had influenced his doings and were still a living force in
him. I respected him for the avowal; it is not one that men are very
ready to make where a woman is in question; it had been implicit in
his reason for knowing nothing of women, given to me a long time
ago—that he had not been able to afford to marry.
Piety was the highest impersonation which Nina was called upon
to undertake. Was it the most powerful, the most compelling? There
were so many others, whose images somehow blended into one
great and imposing Figure—Regularity, with her cornucopia of
worldly advantages, not necessarily lost (Godfrey was quite awake to
that) by a secret dallying with her opposite, but thereby rendered
insincere—that counted with him—uneasy, and perpetually
precarious. He was a long-headed young man; he foresaw every
chance against his passion—even the chance that, having first burnt
up all he had or hoped for, it would itself become extinct. Then it
was not true passion? I don’t know. It was strong enough. Lucinda
impersonated too; impersonated things that are very powerful.
He spoke of her seldom and evasively. In the debate which he
carried on with himself—only occasionally asking for an opinion from
me—he generally indicated her under the description of “the other
thing”—other (it was to be understood) from all that Nina
represented. Taken like that, the description, if colorless, was at least
comprehensive. And it did get Lucinda—bluntly, yet not altogether
wrongly. He saw her as an ideal—the exact opposite of the ideal to
which he had hitherto aspired, the ideal of regularity, wealth,
eminence, reputation, power, thirty per cent., and so on (including,
let us not forget, piety). So seen, she astonished him in herself, and
astonished him more by the lure that she had for him. Only he
distrusted the lure profoundly. In the end he could not understand it
in himself. I do not blame him; I myself was considerably puzzled at
27.
finding it inhim. To say that a man is in love is a summary, not an
explanation. Jonathan Frost—old Lord Dundrannan—had been a
romantic in his way; Nina too in hers, when she had sobbed in
passion on the cliffs—or even now, when she cherished disturbing
emotions about things and people whom she might, without loss of
comfort or profit, have serenely disregarded. There was a thread of
the romantic meandering through the more challenging patterns of
the family fabric.
Half a dozen times I was on the point of flying into a rage with
him—when he talked easily of “buying Valdez,” when he assumed
Lucinda’s assent to that not very pretty transaction, when he hinted
at the luxury which would reward that assent, and so on. But the
genuineness of his conflict, of his scruples on the one hand, of his
passion on the other, made anger seem cruel, while the bluntness of
his perception seemed to make it ridiculous. Perhaps on this latter
point I exaggerated a little—asking from him an insight into the
situation to which I was helped by a more intimate knowledge of the
past and of the persons; but at all events he was, as I conceived,
radically wrong in his estimate of the possibilities. At last I was
impelled to tell him so.
It was very late; in disregard of his “Don’t go yet, I haven’t
finished,” I had actually put on my coat, and taken my hat and stick
in my hand. I stood like that, opposite to where he sat, and
expounded my views to him. I imagine that to a cool spectator I
should have looked rather absurd, for by now I too was somehow
wrought up and excited; he had got me back into my pre-Paris state
of mind, the one in which I had been when I intimated to Nina that I
must hunt the Riviera for Lucinda and find out the truth about her at
all costs. The Conference on Tonnage was routed, driven pell-mell
out of my thoughts.
“You can’t buy Valdez,” I told him, “not in the sense that you
mean. He’ll sell himself, body and soul, for money—to you, or me, or
Nina, or all of us, or anybody else. But he won’t sell Lucinda. He sells
himself for money, but it’s because of her that he must have the
money—to dazzle her, to cut a figure in her eyes, to get her back to
28.
him. He usedher to tempt you with, to make you shell out—just as
he did, in another way, with Nina. But he knew he was safe; he
knew he’d never have to deliver what he was pretending to sell.
She’s not only the one woman to him, she’s the one idea in his head,
the one stake he always plays for. He’d sell his soul for her, but he
wouldn’t sell her in return for all you have. You sit here, balancing
her against this and that—now against God, now against Mammon!
He doesn’t set either of them for a moment in the scales against
her.”
If what I said sharpened his perception, it blunted his scruples.
The idea of Valdez’s passion was a spur to his own.
“Then it’s man against man,” he said in a sullen, dogged voice. “If
I find I can’t buy her, I’ll take her.”
“You can try. If she lets you, she’s a changed woman. That’s all I
can say. I need hardly add that I shall not offer you my assistance.
Why, hang it, man, if she’s to be got, why shouldn’t I have a shot at
her myself?”
He gave a short gruff laugh. “I don’t quite associate the idea with
you, but of course you’d be within your rights, as far as I’m
concerned.”
I laughed too. “There’s fair warning to you, then! And no bad
blood, I hope? Also, perhaps, enough debate on what is, after all,
rather a delicate subject—a lady’s honor—as some scrupulous people
might remind us. By way of apology to the proprieties, I’ll just add
that in my private opinion we should neither of us have the least
chance of success. She may not be Valdez’s any more—as to that I
express no opinion, though I have one—but I don’t believe she’ll be
any one else’s.”
“What makes you say that?” he grumbled out surlily.
“She herself makes me say it; she herself and what I know about
her. And, considering your condition, it seems common kindness to
tell you my view, for what it’s worth. Now, my friend, thanks for your
dinner, and—good-night!”
“Are you staying here—in Paris—much longer?”
29.
“I shall befor a week—possibly a fortnight—I expect.”
“Then good-by as well as good-night; I shall go back to-morrow.”
“To Villa San Carlo?”
“No, I don’t know where I shall go. It depends.”
“To where you can test the value of my view, perhaps?” He had
now risen, and I walked across to him, holding out my hand. He took
it, with another gruff laugh.
“This sort of thing plays hell with a man; but there’s no need for
us to quarrel, Julius?”
“Not at present, at all events. And it looks as if you had a big
enough quarrel on your hands already.”
“Nina? Yes.” It was on that name, and not on the other, that at
last we parted. And I suppose that he did “go back” the next day; for
I saw him no more during the rest of my stay in Paris.
But a week later—our “labors” being “protracted” to that extent
and longer—I had an encounter that gave me indirect news of him,
as well as direct news of other members of the Rillington-cum-
Dundrannan family. To my surprise, I met my cousin Waldo in the
Rue de la Paix. Nina and he—and Eunice—were on their way home.
In the first place, Sir Paget had written that Aunt Bertha was seedy
and moping, and wondering when they would be back. In the
second, Nina had got restless and tired of Mentone, while he himself
was so much better that there was no longer any reason to stay
there on his account.
“In fact, we got a bit bored with ourselves,” Waldo confessed as
he took my arm and we walked along together, “after we lost you
two fellows. Dull for the ladies. Oh, I know you couldn’t help
yourself, old fellow; this job here was too big to miss. But we lost
Godfrey too.” His voice fell to a confidential pitch, and he smiled slyly
as he pressed my arm. “Well, you know, dear Nina is given to
making her plans, bless her! And she’s none too pleased when they
don’t come off, is she? I rather fancy that she had a little plan on at
the Villa—Eunice Unthank, you know—and a nice girl she is—and
that Godfrey didn’t feel like coming up to the scratch. So he tactfully
30.
had business atthe works that kept him away from the Villa. Do you
see what I mean?”
“Well, I suppose he was better away if he didn’t mean to play up.
If he’d stayed, it might have put ideas in the girl’s head that——”
“Exactly, old chap. Though we were awfully sorry he went, still
that was the view Nina took about it. I think she was right.”
Facts had supplied a sufficient explanation of my disappearance
from Villa San Carlo; here plainly was the official version of
Godfrey’s. In order to cover a great defeat, Lady Dundrannan, with
her usual admirable tactics, acknowledged a minor one. It was a
quite sufficient explanation to offer to unsuspecting Waldo; and it
was certainly true, so far as it went; the Eunice-Godfrey project had
miscarried.
“I liked the girl and I’m sorry,” said Waldo. “But there’s lots of
time, and of course, the world being what it is, he can always make
a good marriage.” He laughed gently. “But I suppose women always
like to manage a man’s future for him, if they can, don’t they?”
His ignorance of the great defeat was evidently entire; his wife
had looked after that. But it was interesting to observe that—as a
concomitant, perhaps, of his returning physical vigor—his mind gave
hints of a new independence. He had not ceased to love and admire
his wife—there was no reason why he ever should—but his smile at
her foible was something new—since his marriage, I mean. The limit
thus indicated to his Dundrannanization was welcome to me, a
Rillington. What the smile pointed to was, the next moment,
confirmed by the sigh with which he added, pursuing what was to
him apparently the same train of thought, “Nina’s against our living
at Cragsfoot when I succeed.”
“Well, if you will marry thumping heiresses, with half a dozen
palaces of their own——”
“Yes, I know, old man. Still—well, I can’t expect her to share my
feeling about it, can I?” He smiled again, this time rather ruefully. “In
fact, she’s pressing me to settle the matter now.”
31.
“What do youmean? Sir Paget’s still alive! Is she asking for a
promise, or what?”
“She wants me to sell my remainder—subject to my father’s life-
interest. Nina likes things definitely settled, you see. She doesn’t like
Cragsfoot.” To my considerable surprise, he accompanied these last
words with a very definite wink. A smile, a sigh, a wink—yes, Waldo
was recovering some independence of thought, if not of action. But
in this affair it was his action that mattered, not his thoughts. Still,
the fact remained that his wink was an unmistakable reference to
the past—to Lucinda.
“Sir Paget wouldn’t like it, would he?” I suggested.
“No, I’m afraid not—not the idea of it, at first. But a man is told
to cleave to his wife. After all, if I have a son to inherit it, he
wouldn’t be Rillington of Cragsfoot, he’d be Dundrannan.”
“Of course he would. I’d forgotten. But does it make much
difference?”
“And amongst all the rest of it, Cragsfoot wouldn’t be much more
than an appendage. I love Nina, Julius, but I wish sometimes that
she wasn’t quite so damned rich! Don’t think for an instant that she
ever rams it down my throat. She never would.”
“My dear chap, I know her. I’m sure she’d be incapable of——”
“But there the fact is. And it creates—well, a certain situation. I
say, I’m not keeping you? My ladies are shopping, and I’ve an hour
off, but if you——”
“I’ve time to hear anything you want to say. And you’re not
tired?”
“Strong as a horse now. I enjoy walking. Look here, old chap. Of
course, there are lots of these ‘new rich,’ as the papers call them,
who’d pay a long price for Cragsfoot, but——”
“Thinking of anybody in particular?” I put in.
“Never mind!” He laughed—almost one of his old hearty laughs.
“Well, yes. Have you ever had any reason——? I mean, it’s funny you
should ask that.”
“Something a certain friend of ours once let fall set me thinking.”
32.
“Well, if thatidea took shape, if Nina wanted it——”
Perhaps in the end she wouldn’t! I was thinking that possibly the
course of events might cause Lady Dundrannan not to wish to see
her cousin—and his establishment—at Cragsfoot.
“If she did—and he did,” Waldo went on, “well, I should be in a
tight corner. Because, of course, he could outbid practically
everybody, if he chose—and what reason for objecting could I give?”
“You seem to have something in your mind. You’re looking—for
you—quite crafty! Out with it!”
“Well, supposing I’d promised that, if I sold, I’d give you first
offer?”
Waldo had delivered himself of his idea—and it seemed nothing
less than a proposal to put a spoke in the wheel of his wife’s plans as
he conceived them! Decidedly rebellion was abroad—open and
covert! It worked mightily in Godfrey; it was working even in Waldo.
“I don’t like your selling,” I said. “You’re the chief—I’m a cadet.
But if you’re forced—I beg your pardon, Waldo! If you decide”—he
pressed my arm again, smiling at my correction, but saying nothing
—“to go, there’s nothing I should like so much as to settle down
there myself. But I can’t outbid——”
“A man doesn’t ask his own kinsman more than a fair price, when
the deal’s part of a family arrangement,” said Waldo. “May I speak to
my father, and write you a proposal about it? And we’ll let the matter
stand where it does till we know what he thinks and till you’ve had
an opportunity of considering.”
“All right,” said I, and we walked on a little way in silence. Then I
felt again the slight pressure on my arm. “Well, here’s where we’re
staying. I promised to meet them at tea. Will you come in?”
I shook my head, murmuring something about business. He did
not press the point. “We’re off again early to-morrow, and dining
with some friends of Eunice’s to-night. See you again soon at
Cragsfoot—we’re going to Briarmount. Good-by!”
But that was not quite his last word. He gave my arm a final
squeeze; and he smiled again and again a little ruefully. “I rather
33.
think that, inhis heart, the old pater would prefer what I’ve
suggested even to our—to any other arrangement, Julius.”
It was quite as much as it was diplomatic to say about his father’s
feelings on that point. Like the one which had been discussed by
Godfrey and myself, it might be considered delicate.
34.
T
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WINNINGTICKET
HEN came the astonishing turn of fortune’s wheel—that is
almost fact, scarcely metaphor—which seemed to transform
the whole situation. It came to my knowledge on the very day
on which those protracted labors of ours reached a conclusion
at last.
We had had a long and tedious final session—for this time there
was not only business to wind up, but compliments to be exchanged
too—and I came out of it at half-past six in the evening so exhausted
that I turned into the nearest café at which I was known, and
procured a whisky-and-soda. With it the waiter brought me a copy of
Le Soir, and, as I sipped my “refresher” and smoked a cigar, I
glanced through it, hoping (to be candid) to find some
complimentary notice of the achievements of my Conference. I did
not find that—perhaps it was too soon to expect it—but I did find
something which interested me a great deal more. Among the
miscellaneous items of “intelligence” I read the following:
“The first prize in yesterday’s draw of the Reparation Lottery Loan has
been won by M. Arsenio Valdez of Nice. The amount of the prize is three
million francs. The number of the winning ticket was two hundred and
twelve thousand, one hundred and twenty-one. We understand that the
fortunate winner purchased it for a trifling sum from a chance
acquaintance at Monte Carlo.”
35.
I re-read thewinning number; indeed, I took my pencil out of my
pocket and wrote it down—in figures—on the margin of the
newspaper. I believe that I said softly, “Well, I’m damned!” The
astonishing creature had brought it off at last, and brought it off to
some tune. Three million francs! Pretty good—for anybody except
the Frosts of this world, of course!
Aye, Arsenio would buy that ticket from a chance acquaintance
(probably one of the same kidney as himself) if he had the coin, or
could beg, borrow, or steal it! Number 212, 121! There it was three
times over—21—21—21. He would have seemed to himself
absolutely mad if he had let that ticket escape him, when chance
threw it in his way. It was, indeed, as though Fortune said, “I have
teased you long enough, O faithful votary, but I give myself to you at
last!” And she had—she actually had. Arsenio’s long quest was
accomplished.
What would he do with it, I pondered, as I puffed and sipped. I
saw him resplendent again as he had been on that never forgotten
Twenty-first, and smiling in monkeyish triumph over all of us who
had mocked him for a fool. I even saw him paying back Nina and
Godfrey Frost, though possibly this was a detail which might be
omitted, as being a distasteful reminder of his days of poverty. I saw
him dazzling Lucinda with something picturesquely extravagant, a
pearl necklace or a carpet of banknotes—what you will in that line. I
heard him saying to her, “Number twenty-one! Always twenty-one.
Your number, Lucinda!” And I saw her flushing like a girl just out of
the schoolroom, as Godfrey had seen her flush at Nice.
Ah, Godfrey Frost! This event was—to put the thing vulgarly—one
in the eye for him, wasn’t it? He had lost his pull; his lever failed
him. He could no longer pose, either to himself or to anybody else,
as the chivalrous reliever of distress, the indignant friend to starving
beauty. And Nina’s gracious, though sadly unappreciated, bounty to a
fallen rival—that went by the board too.
These things were to the good; but at the back of my mind there
lurked a discontent, even a revolt. Godfrey had proposed to buy
Valdez; to buy Lucinda from Valdez, he had meant. Now Arsenio
36.
himself would buyher with his winning ticket, coating the transaction
with such veneer of romance as might still lie in magic Twenty-one,
thrice repeated. One could trust him to make the most of that,
skillfully to eke it out to cover the surface as completely as possible.
Would it be enough? His hope lay in what that flush represented, the
memories it meant, that feeling in her which she herself, long ago,
had declared to be hers because she was a primitive woman.
I did not, I fear, pay much attention to the speeches—though I
made one of them—at the farewell dinner of our Conference that
night; and next day, my first free day, was still filled with the thought
of Arsenio and his three million francs; my mind, vacant now of
pressing preoccupations, fell a prey to recollections, fancies, images.
A restlessness took possession of me; I could not stay in Paris. I was
entitled to a holiday; where should I pass it? I did not want to go to
Cragsfoot; I had had enough of the Riviera. (There was possibly a
common element, ungallant towards a certain lady and therefore not
explicitly confessed to myself, in my reluctance to turn my steps in
either of those directions.) Where should I go? Something within me
answered—Venice!
Why not? Always a pleasant place for a holiday in times of peace;
and one read that “peace conditions” were returning; the pictures,
and so on, were returning too, or being dug up, or taken out of their
sandbags. And the place was reported to be quite gay. Decidedly my
holiday should be passed at Venice.
Quite so! And a sporting gamble on my knowledge of Arsenio, of
his picturesque instinct, his eye for a situation! As a minor attraction,
there were the needy aristocrats, his father’s old set, whom he had
been wont to “touch” in days of adversity; it would be fine to flaunt
his money in their eyes; they would not sniff, Frost-like, at three
million francs. Here I felt even confident that he would speak
gracefully of repayment, though with care not to wound Castilian
pride by pressing the suggestion unduly. But the great thing would
be the association, the memory, the two floors at the top of the
palazzo. Surely she would go there with him if she would go
anywhere? Surely there, if anywhere, she would come back to him?
37.
That, beyond allothers, was the place to offer the pearl necklace, to
spread the carpet of bank notes. If the two were to be found
anywhere in the world together, it would be at Venice, at the
palazzo.
So to Venice I went—on an errand never defined to myself, urged
by an impulse, a curiosity, a longing, to which many things in the
past united to give force, which the present position sharpened. “I
must know; I must see for myself.” That feeling, which had made me
unable to rest at Villa San Carlo, now drove me to Venice. Putting
money in my pocket and giving my Paris bankers the name of my
hotel, I set out, on a road the end of which I could not see, but
which I was determined to tread, if I could, and to explore.
In spite of my “facilities”—I had them again, and certainly this
time Lady Dundrannan, if she knew my errand, would not have
offered to secure them—my journey was slow, and interrupted at
one point by a railway strike. When I arrived at my hotel on the
Grand Canal—Arsenio’s palazzo was just round the corner by water,
to be reached by land through a short but tortuous network of alleys
with a little high stone bridge to finish up the approach to its back
door—a telegram had been waiting forty-eight hours for me,
forwarded from Cragsfoot by way of Paris. In it Waldo told me of
Aunt Bertha’s death; influenza had swooped down on the weakened
old body, and after three days’ illness made an end. It was hopeless
to think of getting back in time for the funeral; I could have done it
from Paris; I could not from Venice. I despatched the proper reply,
and went out to the Piazza. My mind was for the moment switched
off from what I had come about; but I thought more about Sir Paget
than about poor old Aunt Bertha herself. He would be very lonely.
Would Briarmount allay his loneliness?
It was about eleven o’clock on a bright sunny morning. They
were clearing away the protective structures that had been erected
round the buildings—St. Mark’s, the Ducal Palace, the new
Campanile. I sat in a chair outside Florian’s and watched. There on
that fine morning the war seemed somehow just a bad dream—or,
rather, a play that had been played and was finished; a tragedy on
38.
which the curtainhad fallen. See, they were clearing away the
properties, and turning to real ordinary life again. So, for a space, it
seemed to a man seduced by beauty into forgetfulness.
They came and went, men, women and children, all on their
business and their recreations; there were soldiers too in abundance,
some draggled, dirty, almost in rags, some tidy, trim and new, but all
with a subtle air of something finished, a job done, comparative
liberty at least secured; even the prisoners—several gangs of them
were marched by—had that same air of release about them.
Hawkers plied their wares—women mostly, a few old men and young
boys; baskets were thrust under my nose; I motioned them away
impatiently. I had traveled all night, and uncomfortably, with little
sleep. Here was peace; I wanted peace; I was drowsy.
Thus, half as though in a dream, half as if it were an answer to
what my mood demanded,—beauty back into the world, that was it
—she came across the Piazza towards the place where I sat. Others
sat there too—a row of them on my left hand; I had taken a chair
rather apart, at the end of the row. She wore the little black frock—
the one she had worn at Ste. Maxime, the one Godfrey had seen her
in at Cimiez, or the fellow of it. On her left arm hung an open
basket; it was full of fine needlework. I saw her take out the pieces,
unfold them, wave them in the air. She found customers; distant
echoes of chaff and chaffering reached my ears. From chair to chair
she passed, coming nearer to me always.
I had upon me at this moment no surprise at seeing her, no
wonder why she, wife of the now opulent Don Arsenio Valdez, was
hawking fine needlework on the Piazza. The speculation as to the
state of affairs, with which my mind had been so insatiably busy, did
not now occupy it. I was just boyishly wrapped up in the anticipation
of the joke that was going to happen—that must happen unless—
horrible thought!—she sold out all her stock before she got to me.
But no! She smiled and joked, but she stood out for her price. The
basket would hold out—surely it would!—As she came near, I turned
my head away—absorbed in the contemplation of St. Mark’s—just of
St. Mark’s!
39.
I felt herby me before she spoke. Then I heard, “Julius!” and a
little gurgle of laughter. I turned my head with an answering laugh;
her eyes were looking down at my face with their old misty wonder.
“You here! I can’t sit down by you here. I’ll walk across the
Piazzetta, along to the quay. Follow me in a minute. Don’t lose sight
of me!”
“I don’t propose to do that,” I whispered back, as she swung
away from me. I paid my account, and followed her some fifty yards
behind. I did not overtake her till we were at the Danieli Hotel.
“Where shall we go to talk?” I asked.
“Once or twice I’ve done good business on the Lido. There’s a
boat just going to start. Shall we go on board, Julius?”
I agreed eagerly and followed her on to the little boat. She set
me down in the bows, went off with her basket, and presently came
back without it. “I’ve left it with the captain,” she explained; “he
knows me already, and will take care of it for me. No more work to-
day, since you’ve come! And you must give me lunch, as you used to
at Ste. Maxime. Somewhere very humble, because I’m in my working
clothes.” She indicated the black frock, and the black shawl which
she wore over her fair hair, after the fashion of the Venetian girls; I
was myself in an uncommonly shabby suit of pre-war tweeds; we
matched well enough so far as gentility was concerned. I studied her
face. It had grown older, rather sharper in outline, though not lined
or worn. And it still preserved its serenity; she still seemed to look
out on this troublesome world, with all its experiences and
vicissitudes, from somewhere else, from an inner sanctum in which
she dwelt and from which no one could wholly draw her forth.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her, as the little
steamboat sped on its short passage across to the Lido.
“Oh, about a fortnight or three weeks. I like it, and I got work at
once. I’d rather sew than sell, but they sew so well here! And they
tell me I sell so well. So selling it mainly is!”
“Then you came before the—the result of the lottery?”
40.
“Oh, you’ve heardabout the lottery, have you? From Arsenio, or
——?”
“No. I just saw it in the papers.”
The mention of the lottery seemed to afford her fresh
amusement, but she said nothing more about it at the moment. “You
see, I wanted to come away from the Riviera—never mind why!”
“I believe I know why!”
“How can you? If you’ve not heard from Arsenio!”
“I’ve been in Paris—and there I saw Godfrey Frost.”
“Oh!” The exclamation was long drawn out; it seemed to
recognize that my having seen Godfrey Frost might explain a good
deal of knowledge on my part. But she went on with her
explanation. “Since the air raids have stopped, Arsenio has managed
to let one floor of the palazzo—the piano nóbile; and I suggested to
him that I might come and live on the top floor. I’d saved enough
money for the journey, and I pay Arsenio rent. I’m entirely
independent.”
“As you were at Ste. Maxime—and at Nice—or Cimiez?”
“I believe you do know all about it!”
“Shall I mention a certain blue frock?”
She flushed—for her, quite brightly—and slowly nodded her head.
Then she sat silent till we reached the Lido, and had disembarked.
Now she seemed unwilling to talk more of her affairs; she preferred
to question me on mine. I told her of Aunt Bertha’s death.
“Ah, she liked me once. Poor Sir Paget!” was her only comment.
“I think he likes you still,” I suggested. She shook her head
doubtfully, and insisted on hearing about what I had been doing in
Paris.
It was not till after we had lunched and were sitting drinking our
coffee—just as in old days at Ste. Maxime—that I brought her back
to her own affairs—to the present position.
“And you’re alone here—on the top floor of the palazzo?” I asked.
41.
“Yes,” she answered,smiling. “Alone—alone on the top floor. I
came here alone; we had had a quarrel over—over what we’ll call
the blue frock. Arsenio promised not to follow me here unless I gave
him leave—which I told him I never should do. ‘Oh, yes, you will
some day,’ he said; but he gave me the promise. Oh, well, a promise
from him! What is it? Of course he’s broken it. He arrived here the
day before yesterday. He’s now at the palazzo—on the floor below
mine. It’s just like Arsenio, isn’t it?”
She spoke of him with a sharper bitterness than she had ever
shown at Ste. Maxime, though the old amusement at him was not
entirely obscured by it. Her tone made me—in spite of everything—
feel rather sorry for him. The dream of his life—was it to come only
half true? Was the half that had come true to have no power to bring
the other half with it? However little one might wish him success, or
he deserve it, one pang of pity for him was inevitable.
“Well, perhaps he had some excuse,” I suggested. “He was
naturally—well, elated. That wonderful piece of luck, you know!”
“Oh, that!” she murmured contemptuously—really as if winning
three million francs, on a million to one chance or something like it,
was nothing at all to make a fuss about! And that to a man who had
spent years of his life, and certainly sacrificed any decency and self-
respect that he possessed, in an apparently insane effort to do it.
Her profile was turned to me now; she was looking over the
sands towards the Adriatic. I watched her face as I went. “And he
won on his favorite number! On twenty-one, three times repeated!
That must have seemed to him——” There was no sign of emotion
on her face. “Well, he called it your number, didn’t he?”
She knew what I meant, and she turned to me. But now she did
not flush like a girl just out of the schoolroom. There was no change
of color, no softening of her face such as the flush must have
brought with it.
“You’re speaking of a dead thing,” she told me in a low calm
voice. “Of a thing that is at last quite dead.”
“It died hard, Lucinda.”
42.
“Yes, it livedthrough a great deal; it lived long enough—
obstinately enough—to do sore wrong to—to other people,—better
people than either Arsenio or me; long enough to make me do bad
things—and suffer them. But now it’s dead. He’s killed it at last.”
At the moment I found nothing to say. Of course I was glad—no
use in denying that. Yet it was grievous in its way. The thing was
dead—the thing that so long, through so much, had bound her to
Arsenio Valdez. The thing which had begun with the kiss in the
garden at Cragsfoot, years ago, was finished.
“He put me to utter shame; he made me eat dirt,” she whispered
with a sudden note of passion in her voice. She laid her arm on
mine, and rose from her chair. “It spoils my meeting with you to
think of it. Come back; I can do some work before it’s dark, and you
can go and see him—he’ll be at the palazzo. There’s no reason you
shouldn’t be friends with him still.”
“I don’t quite know about that,” I observed cautiously.
“I’m willing enough to be friendly with him, for that matter. But
that’s—that’s not enough. Come along, we shall just about catch a
boat, I think.”
We began to walk along to the quay where we were to embark.
“So he says he’s going to kill himself!” Lucinda added with a
scornful laugh.
43.
S
CHAPTER XIX
VIEWS ANDWHIMS
UCH, then, was Lucinda’s state of mind with regard to the matter.
Her encounter with Nina at Cimiez had opened her eyes; after
that, no evasions or lies from Arsenio could avail to blind her.
The keys of the fort had been sold behind her back. The one
thing that she had preserved and cherished out of the wreck of her
fortunes, out of the sordid tragedy of her relations with her husband,
had been filched from her; her proud and fastidious independence
had been bartered; Arsenio had sold it; Nina Dundrannan had bought
it. It was in effect that wearing of Nina’s cast-off frocks which, long
ago at Ste. Maxime, she had pictured, with a smile, as an
inconceivable emblem of humiliation. Arsenio had brought her to it,
tricked her into it by his “presents” out of his “winnings.”
A point of sentiment? Precisely—and entirely; of a sentiment
rooted deep in the nature of the two women, and deep in the history
of their lives, in the rivalry and clash that there had been between
them and between their destinies. The affair of the blue frock (to sum
up the offense under that nickname—there had probably been other
“presents”) might be regarded as merely the climax of the indignities
which Arsenio had brought upon her—the proverbial last straw. To her
it was different in kind from all the rest. In her midinette’s frock, in
her Venetian shawl, she could make or sell her needlework
contentedly; if on that score Nina felt exultation and dealt out scorn,
Nina was wrong; nay, Nina was vulgar, and therefore a proper object
44.
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