The Advertising Agency
Praise the triumph of the mind
Over existential matter,
Which Advertising Agents scatter
About the fringes of the green
Pastures of the Business Scene.
By which, as client fortunes roll,
Inexorably down the hole,
They winkle, from the waiting hearses,
Ever mounting media purses,
For one more advertising burst,
Before the ashes are dispersed.
No words wax eloquent enough
To match the brilliance of their bluff;
Nor adequately to explain
How businessmen of average brain,
Enter Advertising Houses,
And leave without their shirts and trousers.
The Agency Director who
Peerlessly performs the coup
Conjures, for these rich commissions,
Unique Selling Propositions;
Based, as kosher ad-men should,
On Odours, Sex or Motherhood.
These are, to the Image Makers,
The Freudian Factors which should shake us,
From our apathetic tellies,
To buy yet more to fill our bellies;
And grab, to satiate our greed,
Still more junk we do not need.
Fresh in pinkish shirt and sneakers,
He bounds across the floor to tweak us;
While, busy at his heels, attends a
Retinue of unknown gender,
Heaped with story-boards and charts
And promissory works of art.
And soon the client’s senses tingle
To some orchestrated jingle
Guaranteeing, tests aver,
The boosting of his market share;
Which, by subliminal recourse,
To some Oedipean force,
Will open, through the hidden eye,
The full capacity to buy.
This time round he cannot fail
To find at last his Holy Grail.
And, though the budget may seem high,
Just watch the sales graph hit the sky!
So on – through dinner at Le Beau;
Perhaps a little girlie show; –
Until our innocent of brain
Is popped discreetly on the train,
Not quite knowing, through the fun,
Who has lost and who has won!
His customers may prove to be
A bit less gullible than he;
And more resistant to the guys
Who pull the wool across his eyes