article of 29
31 July 2002
‘The names have been changed to protect the guilty’
Frederic Beigbeder
We were in the South Kensington basement of London’s Institut Francais for a conversation between Matt Beaumont, author of e (not ecstasy, but e-mail; an extremely funny novel about the public relations industry), and French writer Frederic Beigbeder. The latter’s book, first published under the title 99 francs (subsequently republished as 14.99 euros) was a huge success in France. It hit UK bookshelves as £9.99.
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Frederic Beigbeder – Are you sure it’s my evening? Oh great! Well, I apologise for my accent, but if you hate the French accent, then you shouldn’t be here! Okay, I’m drunk. [Takes up book, which has been provided and begins to read without a noticeable change of tone.]
My name is Octave and I’m dressed from head to foot in Tom Ford. I’m an advertising executive; yup, that’s right, I pollute the universe. I’m the guy who sells you shit [‘Sorry!’] Who makes you dream of things you’ll never have. The sky’s always blue, the girls are never ugly, perfect happiness touched up on Photoshop. Immaculate images, in-yer-face music. When, after painstaking [‘painstaking? painstacking’] saving, you manage to buy the car of your dreams (the one I shot in my last campaign), I will already have made it look out of date.
I’m three trends ahead [‘As you can see’], and I make sure you’re always frustrated. Glamour is a country that no one ever gets to. [‘Except me of course!’] I intoxicate you with new things, and the advantage with the new is that it never stays new for long. There are always new things to make the last lot look old. I want to make you drool. [‘What does it mean…drool? Ah! baver…baver. Thank you Adriana – she’s a very good translator! Where is this shy translator? Ah! A BIG ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR THE TRANSLATOR’. Applause.] I want to make you drool – that’s my vocation. No one in my profession actually wants you to be happy, because happy people don’t spend.
Your suffering boosts sales. In our own jargon we call this the ‘post-purchase downer’. There’s some product that you just have to have, but as soon as you’ve got it there’s something else you have to have. Hedonism isn’t humanism; it’s cash flow. What does it say? ‘I spend, therefore I am.’ But in order to create a need I have to arouse jealousy, pain and dissatisfaction: they are my weapons. And my target…is you. [‘Do I continue, or is it boring?’ I’m fishing for compliments.’ Cries of ‘No, no!’ and ‘yes, yes!’ ‘Beg me if you want me to continue. Okay, okay, no more of that!’ Beigbeder continues.]
I spend my life lying to you, and I’m paid a shed-load for it. I earn around £12K a month (excluding the expenses, the company car, the stock options and the golden parachute). I should say 19,440 euros really, because I would look richer. Still, do you know many guys earning this much at my age? I manipulate you and they give me the new Mercedes SLK (the one with the roof which slides automatically into the boot) or the BMW Z8 or the Porsche Boxster or the Mazda MX5. (Personally, I’m a sucker for the BMW Z8 roadster: the aerodynamic aesthetics of its bodywork combined with the grace and power of its straight six-cylinder engine producing 400 bhp and giving a 0 to 60 time of 5.4 seconds. Better still, the thing looks like a giant suppository, just right for giving the world one up the arse). [‘Very sorry for this vulgar bit.’]
I interrupt your films on TV to bombard you with my logos, and they give me a holiday in St Barths or Phuket or St Moritz. I bang on and on at you with my slogans in your favourite magazines, and they offer me a chateau in the Perigord or a manor house in Gloucestershire [‘I think it isn’t pronounced like this?’ To murmurs of approval, his pronunciation is corrected.] …or a villa in Tuscany or a condo in Aspen or a palace in Morocco or a catamaran in the Caribbean or a yacht in St Tropez. I’m everywhere. [‘Mmm – I’m everywhere; in French, je suis partout, is the name of a collaborationist newspaper during the war.’]
You’ll never get away from me. Wherever you look, you’ll find one of my ads centre stage. I forbid you to be bored. I stop you thinking. The terrorist cult of the new helps me to sell empty space. Ask any surfer: to stay on the surface you have to have a gap, a pocket of air, underneath you. Surfing is just sliding over an abyss (whiz-kids on the Internet know that as well as the Malibu champions). I decree what is True, what is Beautiful and what is Good. I cast the models who’ll be giving you a hard-on in six months’ time. I plaster their images in so many places that you call them supermodels; these young girls of mine will traumatise every woman over fourteen. You idolise my choices. This winter, you’ve got to have breasts up above your shoulders and a seriously underpopulated pussy. [‘Sorry, I’m not laughing at my work. I’m laughing because it is the first time I read it in English, in front of people…I’m laughing at myself, in fact.’] The more I play with your subconscious, the more you obey me. If I sing the praises of a new yoghurt on the walls of your town, I can guarantee that you’re going to buy it. You think you’ve got your own free will, but sooner or later you’ll recognise my product on a supermarket shelf and you’ll buy it, just like that, just to taste it. Believe me. I know my job.
Believe me I know My Job