Introduction
The average American is supposed to be, first and foremost, a citizen of the most democratic country on earth-a person who, within reasonable limits, can choose exactly what he wants to be and what he wants to do. At the same time, our huge and highly successful commercial establishment has succeeded admirably in its self-appointed task of turning us into a nation of consumers-a captive audience whose choice is not whether to buy, but which product among a sea of colorfully advertised, heavily promoted items we will actually pay our money for.
Commenting on this situation from her reasonably objective vantage point as writer for The Sunday Times of London, the perceptive critic Germaine Greer had the following to say:
"Imagine, your job is to persuade folk to munch more of a particular brand of, say, codeine tablets. Yours not to fuss about whether they need the tablets, or whether the tablets can do them any good. Cheerfully the problem is posited: 'How to sell more of Xanadun?' And pat comes the answer: 'We must stimulate a demand for regular, repeated and if possible escalating dosages.'
"In this spirit the advertising campaigns are organized; all problems of the organism are mustered under the heading tension. A logo is devised-perhaps a line drawing of the human (female usually) head and shoulders gripped in cruel bands of tension.
"The most sinister aspect of the chatty, amoral style of the professional persuaders is that when they are forced to refer in a pronoun to the helpless, psychoanalyzed, dopey buyer of anything that is sold, that pronoun is usually she.
"A habit-forming drug is a perfect commodity, and heroin, of which very few doses are enough to ensure the need for regular, escalating consumption, is the paragon. In the New York subways one may see beautifully designed, five-foot high posters showing in four colors, back-lit and immaculately photographed, all the beautiful drugs one may buy in any school playground. And above or below, that infallible sales gimmick, 'Don't.'
"It is hard to believe that the New York antidrug campaign has been organized by an agency unaware of the persuasive power of their graphics and the perversity of their wording.
"The machinery of advertising is geared to sell-it cannot be applied to extinguish an existent demand. It operates automatically in the same old way-'Buy, buy,' the heroin posters are really saying, 'and you too may be the possessor of this larger-than-life brawny arm, and this snazzy tourniquet. You too can be a hero and get your picture in the subway. Dig my gleaming syringe.'"
This is very trenchant thinking, and an important message in itself. It treats seriously the important problem of how consumers are being influenced to buy things they don't need or even really want-things, indeed, that may be harmful to them. It considers the further complication that any advertising message will influence its recipients in a positive way; i.e., that they will go out and buy something, not resist buying it. But it ignores, to a large extent, the people who are creating those advertising messages, who are after all fallible human beings themselves.
The Very Private Secretary is a novel-and, we feel, an important one-about the advertising business and the living, breathing people who work in it. Its protagonist is Reid Hartley, who enjoys an enviable reputation in the profession but lately has been in a severe slump. Somehow, the old glibness which enabled him to devise highly successful ad campaigns in the past has deserted him... and, perhaps, he has begun to question some of his own basic assumptions. Because of this, he has decided to take a three-week "working vacation" at Malibu Beach, where he hopes to come up with acceptable ideas for the Wonder-Lift bra and Gibbons toothpaste accounts. The work does not go well, however.
The situation does not improve when he meets Mona Seagram, with whom he had a highly romantic affair when she was only fifteen years old. In fact, he starts to think of her constantly, and finds himself completely unable to concentrate on his work. But when Reid and Mona finally achieve a relationship that is both romantic and sexual, he suddenly begins to enjoy miraculous success again. Even so, there are human problems and conflicts that have to be ironed out, and therein lies a highly intriguing story....
There have been other important novels about the advertising business before this one: The Hucksters by Wakeman and Aurora Daunt by Wouk to name only two that come immediately to mind. But we, as publishers of Dansk Blue Books, think that this one stands on its own feet. It has some new insights to reveal about the people who work in advertising-and it shows those people as fully fleshed, three-dimensional human beings with their own fears, doubts, and worries. We think it is a very real achievement for author Karl Rockwood, and a book that every American consumer will profit by reading.
The Publishers