Read Page 57

I asked Hertwick where to find Mr. Hartwell, and he directed me to a pair of giant double doors at the far end of the corridor. Mr. Hartwell was apparently quite the bigwig. Just as I was about to knock, the doors creaked open. He sat behind a wooden desk almost as large as the one in Merlin's office. "Good morning," I said.

He looked up from his work to smile at me. "Ah, Miss Chandler. Good morning."Advertisement

"I thought we ought to get started right away."

"Most definitely. Please have a seat. Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes, please," I said, settling myself in the armchair in front of his desk. I braced myself for the mug to pop into my hands. This time, I didn't jump or spill any of the coffee. With the hand that wasn't holding coffee, I flipped open my spiral notebook to the notes I'd made the night before.

"The first thing I need to do is get a better idea of how you get your products into the marketplace and promote them," I said.

He looked puzzled by my question. "We send them to the stores and put information on what the spells do on the packaging."

"That's it?"

"It's all we've ever needed to do."

"You're going to need to do more than that now. Assuming your competition isn't quite ready for the mass market, we have a slight head start. It's best if we can get our messages into the market before the competition gets there, so we don't look so much like we're reacting to the competition. How fast can you get your packaging changed?"

"Instantly."

-- Advertisement --

pqdm.comads300x250--

I took a deep breath. Too bad I hadn't had access to magic in any of the other marketing campaigns I'd done. In the real world, it would take months. Here, we might be in gear before the end of the day.

"That makes life easier," I said. "What we need to do is incorporate some key messages into everything you do to communicate about your company and your products. A line or two on the packaging and in the material you send out to announce a new product should do it."

"Oh, that's quite doable."

"Now, is Merlin's presence here a big secret, or is that something you can promote?

He should be a real celebrity in the magical community, and you may be able to play on that."

He frowned and clasped his hands together on top of his desk. "That can work both ways. Most people know he'd only be brought back if there was trouble, so they'd assume something was wrong if they saw him."

"Good point. Okay, we scratch Merlin as a celebrity endorser." I crossed that idea off of my notebook. It struck me that I was very possibly in way over my head. I wasn't up to running a major campaign like this for a normal company, but here I was trying to market something I didn't fully understand, and the stakes were a lot higher than they would be for launching something like a soft drink. The way they talked, this sounded like a life-or-death issue. "But we can change the packaging, add some additional corporate messaging to the spell release information, and get some information out to the various magic-specific Web sites, right?"

He nodded enthusiastically, and I got the sinking feeling that he understood about as much of what I'd said as I understood when they talked magic. We were all clueless together, in our own individual areas. "Sounds like a great plan! You'll just need to talk to the design department."

"You have a design department?"

"Of course. Someone has to design the packaging."

Design was one of my comfort zones. Not that I knew that much about how to design, but I understood a lot about the process. That department had been one of my hiding places on Mimi's bad days. They hated her as much as I did, so I found any excuse I could to tarry when I was sent there on an errand.

Mr. Hartwell thanked me again and gave me directions to Design. The department was tucked away into a basement room, and the word "department" was something of an overstatement. It was more like an individual. He was quite young, young enough to make me feel old, and so tall and lanky that at first I thought he must be an elf. He sat slumped on a beat-up old sofa in the comer of the office, his long legs stretched halfway across the room. He appeared to be playing with a Gameboy, but I was sure it was something far more magical than that. I didn't see any of the usual design department trappings in here, such as a drafting table or a super powerful Macintosh computer. Maybe this was just the break room.

I waited until he finished a game—judging by the muttered curse and sigh of disgust when he loweredthe gadget for a second—then cleared my throat and asked, "Are you the designer?" pqdm.com