The Sell Out

(or how to get ahead in advertising)

When I was a kid, my Mum worked in advertising, as a copywriter, just like Salman Rushdie. She was forever impressed with his line “It’s the air in your Aero that makes you say OHHH”. In fact, Salman was a copywrighter for a decade (and his memoir ‘Knife’ is my favourite book so far this year). So I had no qualms at all the one and only time I was asked to write an ad.

I’d been working on a screenplay for the director Joe Wright, when he mentioned he was shooting Brad Pitt for a Chanel No 5 Commercial and wanted him to recite a poem to camera, in the style of Paul Eluard’s Liberte (sorry I can’t figure out accent a gauche on my keyboard). Would I be up for writing the poem? It was the first time a man had ever fronted a Chanel no 5 campaign. I said YES because I needed money, I thought the hot streak I was on due to Your Voice In My Head would soon end (it did) and I believed that Joe was a brilliant director. It was as glamorous an advertising gig as you could be offered and honestly, I do believe the only people who never sell out are the ones with nothing anybody wants to buy.

The problem is I was, particularly a decade ago, really poor at following instruction, a “skill” honed by leaving school at fifteen (or just the reason I felt I had no option but to go do things on my own). I did what I thought Joe was asking, and it wasn't at all what he was asking, but they paid me anyway and not one word I wrote made it into the ad. In later life I’ve realised I have an information processing issue, which is a better name for a band than a scent.

I found the poem I wrote in one of my ancient Hunter Biden laptops I’ve told you about (that I just hide from myself like kryptonite because I don’t know how to dispose of them and I’m scared one day the contents will be used against me). Before Twitter became X there was a whole parody account that satirised the bizarre copyrighting in perfume ads and I loved it, totally forgetting I’d written this, the Chanel no 5 poem Brad Pitt didn’t speak:

I waited

Before I knew what I was waiting for

I built you

Before I knew what I was building

I’ve lived in you

A statue people can visit

The poor, the tired, the addicts

Liberty

What is she like inside?

The hardest things in my life

That I have ever had to describe are

Music

Madness

language

Scent

The top note of your sadness

The base note of your softness

There is no known antidote

I’m scratching out my days

On the wall

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Don’t make me say it out loud.