Syrup Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Me, Me, Me

  Fukk

  A Brief Interlude with Scat and Sneaky Pete

  Life After Fukk

  Buy Now, Pay Later

  Life, Death and Coca-Cola

  The Ad

  Measurement

  A Brief Interlude with Scat and Tina

  A New Life

  Hollywood

  Scat and 6 in Love

  Backlash

  The Partnership

  Coquette

  The Panic Plan

  The Premiere

  Praise for Maxx Barry’s Syrup

  “Snappy ... satisfyingly revenge-driven, full of scary marketing tips and fizzy as Fukk.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “There’s something so nostalgic and right on the money about this novel ... a satire about youth, joyous youth, where everything is possible, where with enough ambition, organizational skills, imagination and fanatical work habits, it’s possible to get whatever you want.”

  —Carolyn See, The Washington Post

  “A fast-paced tour through L.A., Hollywood, Madison Avenue and corporate America.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Seductively hip ... wickedly funny”

  —USA Today

  “A hilarious satirical novel ... Barry has a deft ear for dialogue and a sharp-honed wit.”

  —Chicago New City

  “Funny and fast ... A rollicking debut about a cola marketing campaign that takes on Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and corporate America in one perfectly executed triple play.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A deft, satirical indictment of an industry that makes its living pushing satire.”

  —Spin

  “[A] terrific comic novel ... charming and hilarious.”

  —Booklist

  “Scathingly funny”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “Offers clever commentary on America’s obsession with image and presentation ... a fun read.”

  —Across the Board

  “Grab this book ... fun, strong, and satisfying”

  —BookPage

  “Will have readers nodding in agreement and quoting it to their friends.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Hurtles along at breakneck speed ... genuinely hip.”

  —The Age

  “Barry is a brilliant new talent, and this is a wonderful first novel.”

  —Campaign

  “You can’t put Syrup down”

  —Who Weekly

  “Insanely fast-paced and unpredictable ... highly entertaining.”

  —Cream

  “An impressive debut ... hip and clever ... a perfect send-up.”

  —FHM

  “Sharp and funny ... clearly a writer to watch.”

  —Canberra Sunday Times

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  SYRUP

  Maxx Barry is a survivor from the trenches of corporate marketing and has taught the subject at two major universities in Australia. He is also the author of Jennifer Government.

  A Note to the Reader

  The characters and situations in this book are entirely fictional. The story set within the Coca-Cola Company is purely of the author’s imaginings. The author has chosen the Coca-Cola Company as the cola company around which the story is built because it is the premier soft-drink company in the world. A sendup about marketing and the soft-drink industry is unthinkable without Coca-Cola. However, lest there be any doubt, the author and the publisher hasten to assure the reader that Syrup is not authorized in any way by the Coca-Cola Company, the trademarks Coke and Coca-Cola are owned by the Coca-Cola Company and we believe that the Coca-Cola Company and its employees would not under any circumstances behave as is portrayed in Syrup, including marketing a product like the one or with the name described within.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

  Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  New Delhi-110 017, India

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank,

  Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1999

  Published in Penguin Books 2000

  Copyright © Max Barry, 1999

  All rights reserved

  eISBN : 978-1-101-15369-7

  I. Title.

  PS3552.A7424S97 1999

  813’.54—dc21 98-53485

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my beloved Jen, always

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to gratefully acknowledge those who made especially important contributions to this book: the members of the Internet Writing Workshop, particularly Charles Thiesen, for their unique and invaluable advice; Carolyn Carlson and the team at Viking, for their unending enthusiasm and skill in bringing Syrup to the shelves; and Todd Keithley, for his confidence, support and that truly spectacular demonstration of buzzmaking.

  Me, Me, Me

  i have a dream

  I want to be famous. Really famous.

  I want to be so famous that movie stars hang out with me and talk about what a bummer their lives are. I want to beat up photographers who catch me in hotel lobbies with Winona Ryder. I want to be implicated in vicious rumors about Drew Barrymore’s sex parties. And, finally, I want to be pronounced DOA in a small, tired LA hospital after doing speedballs with Matt Damon.

  I want it all. I want the American dream.

  fame

  I realized a long time ago that the best way to get famous in this country is to become an actor. Unfortunately, I’m a terrible actor. I’m not even a mediocre actor, which rules out a second attractive path: marrying an actress (they inbreed, so you can’t marry one unless you are one). For a while I thought about becoming a rock star, but for that you either have to be immensely talented or have sex with a studio executive, and somehow I just couldn’t foresee either of those little scenarios in my immediate future.

  So that really leaves just one option: to be very young, very cool and very, very rich. The great thing about this particular path to fame, Oprah and line jumping at nightclubs is that it’s open to everyone. They say anyone can make it in this country, and it’s true: you can make it all the way to the top and a vacuous, drink-slurred lunch with Madonna. All you have to do is find something you’re good enough at to make a million dollars, and find it before you’re twenty-five.

  When
I think about how simple it all is, I can’t understand why kids my age are so pessimistic.

  why you should be a millionaire

  I read somewhere that the average adult has three million-dollar ideas per year. Three ideas a year that could make you a millionaire. I guess some people have more of these ideas and some people less, but it’s reasonably safe to assume that even the most idiotic of us has to score at least one big idea during our lifetimes.

  So everybody’s got ideas. Ideas are cheap. What’s unique is the conviction to follow through: to work at it until it pays off. That’s what separates the person who thinks I wonder why they can’t just make shampoo and conditioner in one? from the one who thinks Now, should I get the Mercedes, or another BMW?

  Three million-dollar ideas per year. For a long time, I couldn’t get this out of my head. And there was always the chance I could have an above average idea, because they’ve got to be out there, too. The ten-million-dollar ideas. The fifty-million-dollar ideas.

  The billion-dollar ideas.

  the idea

  The interesting part of my life starts at ten past two in the morning of January 7th. At ten past two on January 7th, I am twenty-three years and six minutes old. I am just contemplating how similar this feeling is to being, say, twenty-two years and six minutes old, when it happens: I get an idea.

  “Oh shit,” I say. “Oh, shit.” I get up and hunt around my room for paper and a pen, can’t find either, and eventually raid the bedroom of the guy I share my apartment with. I scribble on the paper and get a beer from the fridge, and by the time I’m twenty-three years and four hours old, I’ve worked out how I’m going to make a million dollars.

  now hold on there, smart guy

  Okay. So how do I know this idea is so good?

  a little explanation

  When I was in my senior year of high school, the counselor said, “Now, Michael, about college ...”

  “Yeah?” I was distracted at the time by cheerleading practice outside his window. Or maybe I was just inattentive and day-dreaming of cheerleaders. Not sure. “I’m doing pre-law.”

  This was my plan. I’d had it for years, and I was pretty proud of it, too. I mean, just having a plan was a big deal. When people (like my parents) asked, “And what are you going to do after high school?” I could say, “Pre-law,” and they’d smile and raise their eyebrows and nod. It was much better than my previous answer, a shrug, which tended to attract frowns and comments about youth unemployment rates.

  “Yes,” the counselor said, and cleared his throat. Outside the window, or inside my mind, cute girls twirled red-and-white pom-poms. “I think it’s time we looked at something ... more realistic.”

  I blinked. “More ... ?”

  “Let’s be honest, Michael,” he said gently. He didn’t have a particularly gentle face—It was kind of bitter and jaded—and the effort he made to twist it into something sympathetic was a little scary. “You don’t have the grades for it, do you?”

  “Well,” I said, “maybe not, but ...” And I stopped. Because there was no but. I didn’t have the grades. My plan, perfect until this moment, was missing this small but crucial step: good grades. “Shit,” I said.

  backup

  And weren’t the parents pissed.

  If I’d been fooling myself, I’d been fooling them worse. They were already picking me out a dorm at Harvard and talking about Stanford as a “backup.” It was a little difficult for them when I broke the news that I was going to need a backup for my backup.

  When the only school that would have me was Cal State, they moved to Iowa. I’m still not sure if that was coincidence.

  college

  I majored in marketing because I was late for registration.

  I mean, suddenly I was in college; I was in a dorm and I was surrounded by college girls. There was a lot on my mind. Now, sure, there were upperclassmen and faculty advisers dedicated to making sure that freshmen like me didn’t miss registration, but it wasn’t hard to ditch them in favor of more horizon-broadening pursuits. My biggest mistake was making friends with a guy who had just transferred from Texas and was pre-enrolled: I forgot all about registration. I was scheduled between ten A.M. and eleven, and I turned up at four the following Thursday.

  I was lucky anyone was still there, because by then enrollments had officially closed. When I tapped on the glass door, my choice of two first-year electives was reduced to three sad little tables: Programming in Visual Basic; Masculinity in the New Millennium; and Introductory Marketing.

  Masculinity in the New Millennium was actually kind of interesting.

  But Marketing was unbelievable.

  mktg: a definition

  Marketing (or mktg, which is what you write when you’re taking lecture notes at two hundred words per minute) is the biggest industry in the world, and it’s invisible. It’s the planet’s largest religion, but the billions who worship it don’t know it. It’s vast, insidious and completely corrupt.

  Marketing is like LA. It’s like a gorgeous, brainless model in LA. A gorgeous, brainless model on cocaine having sex drinking Perrier in LA. That’s the best way I know how to describe it.

  mktg case study #1: mktg perfume

  TRIPLE YOUR PRICE. THIS GIVES CUSTOMERS THE IMPRESSION OF GREAT QUALITY. HELPS PROFITS, TOO.

  welcome to reality

  The first principle of marketing (okay, it’s not the first, but it doesn’t sound nearly as cool to say it’s the third) is this: Perception is reality. You see, a long time ago, some academic came up with the idea that reality doesn’t actually exist. Or at least, if it does, no one can agree what it is. Because of perception.

  Perception is the filter through which we view the world, and most of the time it’s a handy thing to have: it generalizes the world so we can deduce that a man who wears an Armani suit is rich, or that a man who wears an Armani suit and keeps saying “Isn’t this some Armani suit” is a rich asshole. But perception is a faulty mechanism. Perception is unreliable and easily distracted, subject to a thousand miscues and misinformation ... like marketing. If anyone found a way to actually distinguish perception from reality, the entire marketing industry would crumble into the sea overnight.

  (Incidentally, this wouldn’t be a good thing. The economy of every Western country would implode. Some of the biggest companies on the planet would never sell another product. The air would be thick with executives leaping out of windows and landing on BMWs.)

  graduation

  I ended up taking as many marketing classes as I could, and actually graduated from Cal State summa cum laude. If I’d just finished pre-law, I’d have settled into earnest conversation with the top law firms of the country, bandying about six-figure salaries, ninety-hour weeks and twenty-year career plans. Law seems very structured like that.

  But marketing hates systems. Which is nice, in an idealistic, free-spirited sort of way, but it makes it a pain in the ass to get a job. To get a good job in marketing, you need to market yourself.

  hello

  My name is Scat.

  I used to be Michael George Holloway, but I had no chance of getting into marketing with a name like that. My potential employers, who had names like Fysh, Siimon and Onion, didn’t even think I was making an effort. The least I could do was echo their creative genius by choosing a wacky, zany, top-of-mind name myself.

  For a while, I seriously toyed with the idea of calling myself Mr. Pretentious. But when sanity prevailed, I chose Scat. It sounded kind of fast-track.

  career plan

  So, armed with my new name, I was ready to hit the major corporations for a job. I was ready for the work week, tailored suits, corporate golf days, pension plans, Friday night drinks, frequent flyer programs and conservative values. I’d take it all.

  But then I get my idea.

  Fukk

  great ideas

  Of course, my great idea is a great marketing idea. And some of the best marketing ideas in the world haven’t been t
hat exciting. Take fridge magnets. Great idea. Somebody probably made a bundle out of that one, before larger corporations with better manufacturing economies ate him up. But nobody cares.

  My idea is for a new cola. This is important, because the soda market is very big. It’s so big that if a new product captures even a tiny percentage of the market, the revenues are into the millions of dollars. People tend to think of soda as little cans in fridges, without really understanding that the top two companies—Coca-Cola and PepsiCo—turn over about twenty billion dollars a year, and could, if they felt the urge, actually buy themselves a country.

  So a good idea for a new cola is pretty exciting.

  into the breach

  At eight A.M., I’m sitting at the kitchen table with a beer, a pen, a scribbled-on piece of paper and a whopping headache. Unfortunately, after my initial burst of genius, I’ve stalled. It turns out that although I’ve come up with good ideas for the important stuff—the name, the concept and the target market—I’m short on the rest, like how it should taste. And, more important, I’ve realized that there’s no way I can bring this product to market alone.