The YOU NEED THIS Marketing Firm, YNT for short, had not long been established.
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David Dwight, the founder and CEO, decided to take a direct approach to the marketing industry.
Unlike competitors who tried subtle tactics and campaigns, YOU NEED THIS asserted that its clients and customer base literally needed their service.
They would brow beat, harangue, belittle, and betray to win accounts and would then saturate the market with a barrage of approaches that ensured the products and services got bought up and that the results were clear, YOU NEED THIS was in fact needed.
They were the emerging industry leaders.
In addition to the traditional marketing avenues of advertising in print media, outdoor signage, television commercials and sales call pitches, YOU NEED THIS also engaged in guerilla marketing and various revolutionary insurgency-like tactics.
These aggressive campaigns included grassroots efforts lead by indoctrinated individuals being installed into communities to organize uprisings and stimulate a forced demand for whatever YOU NEED THIS’s clients needed selling.
These institutes went under several different guises, such as book clubs, PTA meetings and backyard barbeques.
Once the unsuspecting masses attended such events, the planted YOU NEED THIS operatives innocently and nonchalantly used their psychological trainings to get inside the guests heads and lay foundations that were stimulated by the traditional advertising avenues.
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Andrews’s job included the scheduling and dispatching of his regions operatives and then collecting that data to analyze the impact of their endeavors.
Although initially suspicious of the company’s aims, Andrew felt that he was not doing anything inherently wrong himself and that morally he did not cause any harm.
Also being jobless and having to deal with that again was his alternative.
Andrew had graduated from Oklahoma State University at the age of twenty-three with his B.A. in Engineering.
He never really knew what he planned to do once he graduated or where he would work. He only stuck out the program because he had already committed so many hours and student loan dollars to the cause that he felt like he could not back out of it so late in the game.
It wasn’t until his junior year that he realized that he had no passion for engineering at all.
Once he walked off the stage with his diploma he hit the job search hard and tried to find a job whose needs he fit.
However, in the last six fiscal quarters the DOW Jones had tanked to a new low of the decade and the S&P 500 had been staggering downwards as the retail industry continued to report that sales had fallen below expectations.
The politicians kept claiming that the country was in a crisis and there was a lack of leadership by the new administration which failed to provide any real solutions.
All the while companies were laying off older workers to save on labor costs through clearly blatant age discrimination and hiring in new young workers who were desperate for a job in this economy.
These young workers were willing to accept low wages and long hours because they were led to believe they had to do it to keep their job.
The YOU NEED THIS firm had exploded from this economic trend; for one, they had a willing supply base of workers who would do almost anything to keep their jobs, people who questioned authority little out of fear for their survival, and pacified themselves with their reasoning that although the firm promoted unusual practices, that they were “just following orders”.
Additionally, with companies struggling to justify advertising costs that had no hard results, the YOU NEED THIS Marketing Firm had had a proven track record of boosting sales at an unbelievable high rate of return.
And for David Dwight, his ultimate end game was not so sinister at all.
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Mr. Dwight had had his own vices, sure enough, but ultimately he had a deep seated drive to exercise the extent of his egotistical driven influence.
The manipulation of the masses for his amusement and because he could is what kept him working so hard at being the head of the corporation and pushing to be the industry leader.
Devilishly charming, genuinely and sincerely amiable, David towered above most people with a striking six foot eleven stature.
He maintained a trim and sculpted figure to keep a subconsciously superior advantage over weaker men whom he had always outpaced academically as well as in his pursuit of sports.
He favored a choir boy combed look to his mahogany brown hair and could always be seen clothed in custom designed tailored suites of the highest caliber.
His driving desire for the unattainable kept him deeply devoted to aggressively demanding YOU NEED THIS’s success.
It was not infrequently that David spoke at company meetings and he held himself equal in task (but not influence) as his institute operatives.
David could be seen at social affairs as often as his employees, but he ran in the higher circles, often entertaining world leaders on a whim.
However, today’s event happened to be at the Oklahoma District office located in Tulsa, which was the very same office in which Andrew toiled.
Andrew’s email IM came up annoyingly abrupt onto his screen with a beep demanding his immediate attention.
He clicked it open and quickly scanned it reading that Mr. Dwight would be in the office later that afternoon to provide a mandatory training session in person.
Andrew rolled his eyes and felt a tinge of disdain for his corporate boss’ self-inflated importance that long ago crossed the line into narcissistic arrogance.
Andrew loathed training meetings most of all because they concerned him the least.
When he was an entry level employee he had to take them seriously to keep the job, but now he had to attend to make sure those under him did exactly as they were told and to oversee their progress; progression was the goal.
For or to what they were always progressing had never been explained to Andrew or anyone else for that matter.
“The words that you use are important,” that was how the training always began reiterating that need for conformity to the company rhetoric.
How you talked about your endeavors, how you spoke to influence the customers, how you phrased and promoted subtly and with guile, your dedication to appease and ultimately to choose your words carefully to never offend, to never be perceived wrong on any issue and to always be the emotional hope for progress was of supreme importance.
This was what every YOU NEED THIS employee was required to avow.
It was all to gain the trust and power in which later you could do anything you wanted as long as you said what your listeners wanted to hear, this was what David and YOU NEED THIS was all about.
And with proven success it was hard pressed for anyone to disagree.
That is where Andrew’s mind would not settle, on what was defined as “success” by his company.
He read a book once on successful dating and by “success” the author, although never explicitly mentioned, meant sexual intercourse at the end of the date.
One tactic the author endorsed was having no one certain female as your goal to date.
That idea that no single girl in particular was what you were after to be successful at dating and that you should have no concern for her or any whimsical notions about her personality or beauty was what made it possible to date more (and to score).
The crude expression, “they are all pink on the inside”, applied in the means so that you should not waste your time with any hard to get girl in the end.
The book directed that you should target the girls who were desperate, ugly, overweight, had low self-esteem or dying for physical attention and then once you conceded that your goal was to get some, that once you accepted this aim, you should discard any previous notions and get the low hanging fruit, ou know the easy pickings.
Andrew did not agree with this meaning for “success” in dating.
In the same way Andrew did not agree with YNT’s stated mission statement and definition of success.
These YOU NEED THIS ideas of success were not the ones that Andrew desired.
The plainly exposed vanity was repulsive to his cognitions, but what it was he was after was where Andrew’s thoughts were lacking.
That was the root of his depression he decided.
What were his aims and by what means was he willing to operate to achieve them and in what capacity? These are the unanswered questions that swirled around in his mind.
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