the commerce of sex

I remember a few years ago working on the formidable Nike account with a small boutique advertising agency in Toronto Canada. The president of said agency had just seen my latest version of a client presentation for hockey, and he looked over at me quite seriously and asked, 'Francesca, where is the orgasm?'. Luckily I wasn't drinking or eating anything as I would have choked, at the time it struck me as the type of think you would only hear an ad exec utter aloud in the company of others. Brother, I remember thinking to myself, what am I doing here. I don't do orgasms or titillation during presentations. I just present the core ideas.

It is somewhat ironic to find myself today working within the foresight unit of a large engineering and design company, and to some extent be relied on to deliver against this same expectation. An engineer, let alone an English one, would never ask you point-blank to deliver an orgasm in your presentation, but they might replace such shock-factor words with 'buzz' or excitement, maybe even inspiration.

So while I would like to distance myself from the advertising community I left behind, I have to admit I am still peddling some of the same tricks. The mystique of what we do remains important to promote with our clients. To some extent clients don't want to believe they are only buying a steel bridge in Kansas, what they want to buy is a vital connection between the small farming communities and the thriving metropolis to the north.