An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(21)
“Exactly.” I paused. “Unless we work our asses off right now to be out in front of the story. And also, unless we work out and implement the Freddie Mercury Sequence before anyone else.”
“Oh, do you think there are other people who know?”
“They’re already talking about it on the talk page of the article. If we get to it first, not only are we the discoverers of New York Carl and the initiators of First Contact with an alien civilization, we’re the ones who worked out the first system they’re using to communicate with humans.”
“April, are you sure this isn’t a bad idea?”
“No! In fact, I’m fairly sure that it is. But I have investigated the other possibility, which is leaving this alone and disengaging completely, and that doesn’t sound like any fun at all.”
“I can’t believe I’m the one trying to talk you out of this . . .”
“ME EITHER! So stop!”
“You know that maybe Carl isn’t an alien, right?”
“Yes, but we’re going to act as if he is. Make decisions as if he is. We’re not going to talk about it, or say it. And if it turns out he’s not, we’ll have invested in the wrong reality. But if he is, we’ll be three steps ahead of everyone.”
“Is that a good thing to be? Shouldn’t, like, the president be three steps ahead and not a bunch of . . . whatever-we-ares?”
“I dunno,” I said, honestly. “Let’s just walk through the process and find out.”
And so we did what we’d been taught to do in school: We built a brand. Branding is something designers think about a lot. You take something like a perfume or a car tire, or butt-flavored bubble gum, and you ask questions about it that you shouldn’t be able to ask. What kind of tuxedo would this car tire wear to the prom? What is this perfume’s favorite movie? You try to end up in a place where you understand a product as if it is a person.
The reverse of this, where people become brands, should be easy, right? They’re already people . . . End at the beginning. Except that really what you’re doing when you brand is a process of simplification. You come to understand the essence of that fucking tire. And so branding a person also benefits dramatically from simplicity. People are complicated, but brands are simple.
Marketing is a lot more about thinking than doing. We had to figure out what Carl’s brand was, what my brand was, and how those identities would be a part of each other. We had to think realistically about the role I would play. I wasn’t going to be the president. I wasn’t going to be a national security or science expert. But how we defined me would be informed by how we imagined Carl. We decided that Carl represented power and the future and the “other.” I would represent humanity and weakness and the world Before Carl. I would balance Carl. For all the “This is huge” and “OMG” freak-outs, I could be a balance. Just a small, unassuming civilian who was handling this new reality fine, so you shouldn’t worry too much either. That was an important role that I could fit into, that would be helpful, and that would give us power.
We basically just followed the advertising-campaign handbook all the way through, but this wasn’t about designing a logo or picking fonts and a color scheme. In fact, we hardly did any of that. What we did have, after a few hours of work, was a plan and three different scripts. The first two were just there to round out the idea of April May. Who she was. That she was smart, kind, and snarky but open to the beauty and wonder of the world. We’d be able to upload them whenever there was time but, more importantly, they defined who we wanted me to be.
In those videos, we put in little bits about Carl that would be hints to his possible origins. That the Chinese and Russian governments had closed down areas around the Carls rather than moving them, possibly because they were incapable of moving them. But they were mostly about me.
Then we scripted the video we would release as soon as anyone caught on to the Freddie Mercury Sequence. A video that would show us working out the sequence, going to the store to buy smoke detectors, and presenting Carl with the fruits of our labor. Then, of course, the script ended, because we had no idea what would happen next.
People would later accuse me of being a careful and calculating marketer using the situation as an opportunity to get rich and famous. I would deny it, saying it was just a bizarre thing that happened to me, but that was a lie. It was a lie that was part of our careful and calculating marketing strategy. If it looked natural from the outside to you, well, then I guess we did a good job. But we were calculating. I liked getting stopped for photos in the airport, I liked getting paid, I liked the attention, and I was worried about it ending. More than worried, honestly, I think deep down I was terrified. At some point that night, I glimpsed my most probable future. That one day, the most interesting and important thing about me would be a thing that I did a long time ago. That I would go on with my life doing boring UX design and people would say, “Oh! You were April May!” to me at parties and job interviews, as if I was once something but not anymore.
That is the reality I was fleeing from. And I won’t say that I didn’t consider what I was fleeing toward, because we were pretty careful, and I think that paid dividends. But one thing that I didn’t anticipate was that, in creating the April May brand, I was very much creating a new me. You can only do so much pretending before you become the thing you’re pretending to be.