It began like this....

Patrick, my boss at Cunningham and Cook, asked me to meet with Eric Andrews, the CEO of the Gourmet Kitchen, a national retail chain of high quality kitchen products to finalize the details of another project with him.

I had first met Eric several years ago when he was a partner in another company, one that had franchised health spas throughout the Northeast. At the time, I was only a copywriter at the agency but he had liked my work so much that he asked Patrick to let me head the team handling his account.

He had done well, sold his share in the business and moved on to found a chain that sold high quality cooking accessories. This time, though, rather than concentrate on the local regional market, he had gone into the major cities throughout the country, where a larger target clientele existed for his product.

I, too, had moved on since then, from copywriter to project director to Vice President and Creative Director of C&C. Even though I usually supervised all the project teams, Eric had asked that I personally head the team working on The Gourmet Kitchen campaign. It was an unusual request, but it was an important account and Patrick and I had agreed.

Once again, I was impressed with the way Eric worked with us. He demanded a lot but he did it with finesse and humor. I understood why he was such a success.

In the process we got to know each other and I grew to look forward to his phone calls. It was with heady anticipation that I heard from Patrick that Eric wanted to expand his market, reaching out beyond his solid base of well to do sophisticated customers. He was flying up from Washington to discuss it with me and to write up the contract.

We met in my office in the late afternoon. I was reading an article from Town and Country on gourmet cooking and comparing it to the recipe section in Redbook, in preparation for our meeting. Eric knocked gently on my open door and walked in.

"Eric!"

"Good to see you again, Carmen! How are you doing?" He shook my hand warmly.

"Not bad. I understand we're about to take Gourmet to the masses! Can I have Anne get you some rather proletariat coffee while we talk about it?"

"Sure," he laughed, as he sat down comfortably by the round meeting table in the corner of my office.

"Carmen, I'm glad you're running the show on this one. I can't wait to hear what you've got for me."

"OK, here goes. You came to us because you want to expand your market. Until now, you've been selling to the upscale crowd and doing real well. Now you think there's a much larger market for a fancy line of kitchen products. So here's the challenge: How do we convince folks who don't have money to burn to shell out $1000.00 to buy a full set of gourmet kitchen products?"

Carmen, it's just for that reason that I've hired you. I know you love challenges. So let's hear what you've come up with."

"Here is our thought: First you need to change your policy about selling the whole line of Gourmet Kitchenware as one complete set. Don't sell it to them all at once! Break up your set into financially manageable units while we sell them the idea that to be the complete gourmet cook you need to eventually buy the whole line of Gourmet products. This isn't like a Cadillac, where it's all or nothing. This is something that we can market incrementally, giving people the incentive, over time, to achieve their kitchen dream."

Eric sat back and thought, while he kept his eyes on mine.

"What are you thinking?" I asked.

"Well, first of all, I'm thinking, that I'm glad that when you talk about marketing it, you say, 'We'."

I smiled, and waited.

"I don't know," he said after a while. "We've worked so hard to market it as a set. Breaking it up...we'd have to give that a lot of thought."

"Eric, if you look back at the past, or even at the present of any Middle American home, you'll see that even if they don't have the most expensive kitchen, or live in the most expensive home, or cannot afford meals at a gourmet restaurant, they still try to acquire special items a little at a time, or for special occasions."

"How can you be so sure that will work in this case? What incentive will we give them to buy this dream, when they're paying off a mortgage every month? Even if we sell the items in groups of three or four pieces, that will still be upwards of $200. Remember that the price for the full set is $999, and if we break it up, each piece bought separately has to add up to considerably more than that, or there will be no reason for someone to buy it as a set. These are people with families and kids...It doesn't seem logical."

"No it doesn't, but that's the way people work. I just look back at my own background, growing up in Marietta, in a very middle class -

"Where?"

"Marietta, Ohio."

"I'm from Athens!"

"I can't believe it! That's only like an hour away from us! I love Athens. We used to take Sunday drives there and stop to picnic at Dow Lake on the way. I loved walking around the campus."

"Really? And one of our favorite Sunday activities was driving over to Marietta, to walk along the docks."

"When did you graduate from high school?"

"'78. How about you?"
80. Did your parents teach at the university?"

He laughed. "No, they're great folks, but they never finished college. My dad was the head of the post office. Not bad, actually. He worked his way up from a mailman. My mom worked as an assistant librarian."

"About like my family. My dad was the head clerk in the department of our city hall. He recorded death, births, marriages...My mother was the quintessential stay-at-home mom, but she always volunteered for the PTA."

"So we come from similar backgrounds. Interesting...".

"...and that's the demographics that we're going after today."

He thought about that for a while. "Well, my mother would never have bought my products! She'd consider it frivolous."

"Well, your products weren't around when I was growing up, but every once in a while my mother would go into a boutique clothing store and she would buy something special for herself. It was only a scarf, or a sweater on sale, but it was a perk she'd give herself. And she'd also stop by one of those counters in a department store sometimes, where manicured saleswomen would put make-up on customers, and she'd buy some high priced moisturizer that made her feel pampered.

"But most of all, since we're talking kitchen, I remember her Mikasa china. She bought those place settings one at a time. It took her years to acquire service for twelve, but she was so proud of them...They were saved for special family dinners - Thanksgiving, Christmas, my parents' twentieth wedding anniversary - and no one was allowed to touch it at other times. They were also the only dishes she wouldn't let us wash! Didn't your mother own any special pieces for the kitchen or for serving?"

"You know something, I'm embarrassed to say that she might have, but... I know she had some fancy stuff that she bought."

"Would you know the difference?"

Eric laughed at himself. "Well, I wouldn't have known the difference then, but I know it now! How strange, indeed, that I got into the business that I did."

"Eric, people like our parents are our target. People who say to themselves, "I want to achieve even a little piece of the dream. Maybe I can't have it all, but I want part of it. I want to feel special sometimes."

His eyes sparkled as he said to me, "Some people don't need expensive china or scarves to be special."

I raised my eyebrows slightly and laughed. Anne had come and gone and placed coffee on the table but we had hardly noticed. Eric drank his slowly. I suddenly felt very aware of the way he held his cup, the way he stirred. "Okay Carmen, so you think you can sell the high priced dream to middle America. I like it. Now show me some mock-ups. You said you started working on the plan for the magazine ad."

I got up and walked over to my desk and brought back a portfolio. I felt Eric's eyes following me.

We sat down and began to work in earnest.