A week later I was drinking beer on a patio in Little Hungary with Dieter –a rogue business man involved in marketing a number of obscure German and Polish products. He was a robust, ruddy sort of German with beady, darting eyes and a slightly crooked nose. Whenever we talked he would burst out into utterly maniacal laughter at regular intervals. And lately we had been talking quite a lot because he was my sole contact point with Gretel’s Bavarian Style Spaetzle and Uber Senf.
On this particular day, Dieter was in fine foaming-at-the-mouth form. Early in our conversation I made an off-the-cuff remark that my wife had recently threatened to shrink my head because I had systematically avoided cleaning our toilet for over a year. Dieter’s eyes lit up like Christmas lights at the mention of head shrinking and he launched into a biographical yarn about an ex-Nazi mercenary named Siegfried Müller, totally derailing our meeting. At the outset of the second round of pints he was still ranting: “After zi war, Müller was hired as a mercenary by the Kongo government to squash resistance groups. He perfected zi ancient art of shrinking heads. He shrunk hundreds, thousands. He brought a German tool and die maker’s meticulousness to the craft. You need to Google him. Everyone in Germany knows Kongo Müller.” He leaned back in his chair, an inexplicable glow emanating from his countenance, self-satisfied at having illuminated me on the psychopathic exploits of his countryman. “Google him, Mike. Trust me.”
I shifted anxiously in my chair in response to the German’s pronunciation of ‘Google’. “Sounds like Kurtz, sounds like the German version of Heart of Darkness,” I said.
He scoffed and shot back, “Kurtz iz like Mickey Mouse compared to Kongo Müller. Müller is not a fantasy or a figure in world literature.”
I nodded in agreement, took a sip of beer and gazed out across a section of C_ St. that snakes organically, an asphalt river in a concrete jungle of right angles. Then I turned to Dieter, “Don’t worry, I’ll Google Congo Müller — tonight. Anyway, how was the Gretel’s Spaetzle copy received?”
He stroked his chin meditatively, and said, “… ‘an enchanting taste of zi Black Forest’. Clients liked this. They liked zi Brothers Grimm reference, too. You successfully communicated that spaetzle is more than mere egg noodles.”
“Spaetzle is intrinsically more exotic to North Americans than ‘egg noodles’ – it’s in the name. I just had to tease out the difference between the two. Differentiate. I actually ate the stuff for eight consecutive meals.”
“That’s a most excellent technique,” he interjected.
Nodding thoughtfully, I elaborated, “It’s an approach that works when it comes to this kind of thing. Let the product infiltrate your digestive system – so you can approach it not just on a conceptual level, but also physiologically, on the cellular level. It’s like the method acting of copywriting.” I took another sip of beer and sighed heavily, I knew I was talking complete horse shit.
“Yes, you got to feel zi spaetzle, in every cell in your body,” he pondered.
We ordered another pitcher of beer. A moment of silence descended and my thoughts strayed to the previous week’s encounter with Ping. Dieter was absent-mindedly staring at a young woman walking approximately seven dogs at once, clearly a professional, when finally I interrupted, “Dieter, do you perceive your career path as a ladder you ascend, rung by rung?”
“I think it’s a good metaphor,” he replied.
“A friend of mine, Ping – you’d like this guy because he communicates almost solely in obtuse business jargon – he tried to tell me that the move from Gretel’s to Uber Senf is strictly lateral. That the two projects exist on the same rung. And then he said that the work I’ve been doing has more in common with smoking chickens – like in a meat smoker – than the sales and marketing work he’s been doing in the pharmaceutical industry.”
Dieter burst out in that characteristic maniacal German laughter, beer spraying out of his flared nostrils. “Smoking chickens!”, he wailed.
I continued, wiping flecks of beer from my cheek with the back of my hand, “He said that of course it wouldn’t make sense to me given my position on the lower rungs. And what seems like contradictory nonsense becomes coherent once you begin to scale the ladder.”
He was going red in the face with laughter, gasping for air and drawing stares from other tables on the patio. I looked around, a taut grin plastered on my face, and said, “I mean, would he say the same thing if I was writing copy for one of your sauerkraut brands? What the fuck does it take to get to that next rung?”
The laughter finally settled in Dieter, he pinched his nose, looked at me dead in the eyes and said, “If it was a certain leading German sauerkraut brand, it’s extremely doubtful he’d say that.”
“Am I missing something?” The tide of alcohol was slowly coming in, that expansive, oceanic feeling that both disarms and comforts the ego. I pushed on, “You really think there’s that kind of qualitative difference between marketing tubed German mustard and marketing anti-anxiety pills?”
“In principle no, but I know what your friend iz saying … and I think he’s trying to help you. Zi higher rungs can only be attained after a series of revelations and awakenings,” he said. “It iz hard for me to explain in English. How do you say? But these seemingly contradictory forces can only be synthesized after a certain level of experience.” He leaned over and slapped me hard on the thigh, “Perhaps you are not focused enough, my friend!”
I considered his words a moment, which seemed like nothing more than mere cheeping and chirping, phonetic sounds stringed together haphazardly and signifying nothing. I ran my hands through my hair, partly out of a sense of exhaustion, partly out of a desire to stimulate my scalp, to refresh my sense of being half-drunk on a patio with a crazy German.
Dieter pressed on, “Speaking of Uber Senf – how are you progressing?
“There’s issues, Dieter,” I confessed. “To be honest, I’ve been doing a lot of preliminary research and I have my doubts about the viability of tubed mustard in the North American market. It’s not personal. I’m a huge fan of the tube, myself. For me, there’s a very straight forward transference from the convenience and logic of, say, a tube of toothpaste to any number of condiments, mustard included.”
Dieter looked at me solemnly, “Yes, as is the case for toothpaste … The tube is clearly zi most effective delivery system. You’d have to be a fucking idiot not to see zhis.”
“I know, I know all of this. The Kool-Aid has been drank,” I said.
I could see his blood pressure rising, his face taking on the texture and colour of an overripe plum. He barked, “There iz no argument here. It has been proven scientifically in Europe! The tube radically limits oxidization. Preserving flavour and ensuring sterility.”
I interrupted, “That’s not the point. The point is that Canadians are under the delusion that the jar and the wretched squeeze bottle are perfectly fine receptacles for mustard. We’re dealing with a radical disconnect here.”
Dieter shot back, “Remember when we talked about changing zi minds?”
I nodded as he calmly retrieved a Black & Mild cigarillo and lit it with a match. Within seconds a plume of blue smoke enveloped his square head. Cryptically, he continued, “This is a problem of mass psychology, I know. But zi minds can be changed, Mike. And my research shows zhat they can be manipulated quite easily.”
I compulsively drained roughly half my pint in four robust gulps, carefully put my glass back down and asked, “What do you got?”
He pulled out a folder from his briefcase and tossed it onto the table. He said, “I’ve done a SWOT analysis, and vhut iz clear iz that there iz a whole new market out there for us. Itz not zi current mustard market as you conceive it, which iz an unformed mess. It’s a potential market, it has not yet been articulated. It’s vhut some business minds refer to as a Blue Ocean. The market needs to be created. That’s where your work comes in. Zi magic of words to create new realities … new dreams.”
I placed my hand on top of the folder, inspired by the gravity and confidence of Dieter’s words. I asked, “What about your market-entry strategy? Are you thinking Waterfall, Wave, Sprinkler?”
Dieter slammed his hand down on the table, “Are you fucking kidding me? These are zi strategies of a ballet company or a purveyor of organic papayas. No, no. Uber Senf calls specifically for zi Blitzkreig strategy.”
In that moment I felt myself ascending, stepping up and moving forward. My regrets diluted in the sea of beer sloshing and circulating in my body. I had forgotten, momentarily, that I’d ever wanted to be a fireman. The prospect of Uber Senf creating a Blue Ocean market, and that my handiwork would play an integral part in the process felt like a soul-redeeming revelation, an intervention of supernatural proportions. I would dispel my doubts and throw myself into the project anew, singularly and whole-heartedly, with the rabid focus and determination of an Olympic curler. I thought of a short film we were shown in our grade five class entitled The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon and the line that is repeated like a mantra throughout: You can do it, Duffy Moon. It was an educational film, designed to build confidence and get kids thinking about what they wanted to do with their lives. We scoffed at it in our prematurely sarcastic ten year old minds, and for years afterwards it was the butt end of jokes – an icon of the ridiculous tendencies of the education system. Suddenly, over twenty years later and after many thousands of beers, I was receptive to its message.
