James Joyce, David Ogilvy, Dorothy Parker and a pirate walk into a bar...

The Hoffbrau is not my favorite place to work.  It smells, a peculiar combo of pine disinfectant and onion rings that stays on your clothes.  It is especially funky here, in the Hoffbrau’s euphemistically named banquet room.  Odor or no, many of Smugglers’ Inn’s most famous (infamous?) ad campaigns can trace their origins to this long table flanked by velvet paintings of chivalric crests.  With so much riding on this comeback, I couldn’t afford not to be superstitious.  Plus, the ‘Brau gives us a hospitality industry discount.  A dollar on pitchers and fifty cents on shots and mixed drinks.   Hey, it ads up.

An entire year has passed since Smugglers’ Inn created so much as a brand manifesto for money.   Before that, Smugs’ profits had been split more-or-less evenly between serving plates of surf ‘n turf and providing marketing advice and advertising for clients as diverse as a mom-and-pop amusement park, a network of hospitals  and the State of New Mexico, whose Department of Children, Youth and Families came to us in response to an ugly spike in domestic violence on its Indian Reservations. 

“I move we swap this American piss for some Guinness,” said Scotty, the bartender, as he contemplated the plastic pitcher of Pabst Blue Ribbon in front of him.   The suggestions was met with a hail of bar peanuts and cocktail napkins from Scotty’s coworkers around the long table, many of whom shouted insults in “Arrgh-speak”, the made-up pirate language  of Smugglers’ Inn employees.   Basically, it’s just whatever you want to say with “argh!” at the front and the back, like, “Argh! Go back to Scotland, you poncy skirt-wearing, short-pouring molester of sheep.  Argh!”  Scotty laughed, maybe because he’s not really Scottish, but probably because he was just giddy at the prospect of doing honest-to-McElligott advertising again.  We all were.

   

“Everybody, shut yer pie-holes! “  Carol, my day manager and enforcer, said as she rose to her full five-foot-three. “You want to get 86’d before you hear what this great, wonderful project is that April is going to explain to everybody?”  

There were a couple more peanuts thrown and many furtive “argh!”s, but the gang settled down, eager to get to the brief.   I loved seeing our guys so amped.   I took inventory of the talent seated before me and thought that there was no way that we were not going to hit something out of my park.  Everyone had skills. Take Carol. A great creative director and surprisingly patient with young creatives.  Assassin in a presentation.  Going clockwise around the table, Pongo, our former dishwasher, now our planning department.  The little Sumatran may not have grown up wearing shoes, but he understands the hopes and fears of American consumers better than any book-publishing “marketing psychologists” on LinkedIn.    Next to Pongo, Scotty, real name “Ian”.  Despite the nickname, he’s from Dublin and can talk anyone into anything, especially when he’s dialing up the brogue.   Erin, who alone brought a notebook and something to write with, is another Irish import.  She claims a degree in English literature from a college in Galway and I have no reason to doubt her.  She’s wicked smart, as they say in the movies. I have her pegged as our copywriter.  April, our newest employee, may prove the most important.    After her involvement in the unfortunate  corpse-customer incident (see previous blog entry), a contrite April  had come  to me with the news that  her uncle was, like, an entrepreneur and that he might be, like, looking for help with marketing and, like,  social media for his latest business,  you know?

I did know.  I knew that Smugglers’ Inn could stop being a theme restaurant with an improbable past as an ad agency and go back to being a hot creative boutique that served food and booze for giggles. 

   

“Thank you, April!” I said when the girl had finally gotten around to explaining the nature of the business  that her uncle wanted us to promote. “So here’s the deal.  I have this room booked for two hours.  If we can’t come up with an idea for the Lempke-McKray family of funeral parlors and cemeteries in two hours, we aren’t trying.”

Of those allotted two hours, my staff spent an hour and forty-five minutes learning a filthy rugby song and inventing a drinking game that involved tossing onion rings on middle fingers.  It is my sad duty to report that as of this writing, no more than two Smugglers’ Inn employees may congregate inside the Hoffbrau at one time and neither April nor Scotty are welcome at that establishment, with or without an accompanying adult.  The bill for the damaged paintings is forthcoming.

(Sigh!)  I blame myself.  I should have booked the room for fifteen minutes, because that was all it took for my band of miscreants to come up with an elegant, multi-platform solution to the “How do you market funerals and burial plots to millennials?” problem. The must-check boxes of website, social media, PR and partnership were ticked off in one lightning round of weaponized creativity.  This will be one epic presentation.   Erin had the good sense to record the entire session on her iPhone, just in case what seemed brilliant one night in a faux-Bavarian bar looked less so with  the beer glasses off.   Argh!  It’s the next day, argh!  There’s puke on my Chuck Taylor’s and my head feels like JFK’s in ‘63!  Argh!  I’m looking at Erin’s phone and, if anything, (argh!) this campaign looks BETTER in the light of day.  Arrgh!  We’re back ARRR! IN THE ARRR! SADDLE!

Next:  The campaign that made dying cool.  Smugglers’ Inn! ARR! ARR!  ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!