Young Boss Tricked & Exposed Ch. 04

Part 4

The young women looked at each other, slight frowns on their faces. Anna says, "This one is Mr. Johnson's idea." Then, under her breath, "Of course."

"Okay," Tim said, ignoring Anna's obvious discomfort, "this will be a new take on an old idea. We're having an office party of some sort, maybe a celebration of landing a big account. And somehow it turns into us all playing a game of cards, and then into a game of strip poker."

Shawna and Danielle exchange glances, and Anna rolls her eyes, but Kurt is all in.

Tim continues, "Of course I put the Naked Attraction on, and the girls start getting turned on, and they start losing on purpose. I can see some good gag shots for this one: the camera can look over each woman's hand, showing some pretty decent cards. But when it's time to draw, they discard good cards and keep bad ones. Maybe we could show me getting a mediocre hand and starting to sweat a little. But then at least one of the women always manages to come up with—"

"A worse hand," Kurt jumped in, completing Tim's thought. "I love it! They're all playing to lose, so they can attract your attention."

Anna said, "This one seems a little more iffy to us. If we're actually getting naked in a poker game, we don't see how we can be on camera without showing our nudity."

"And that's not what we've agreed to," Mia said.

"If I got naked on tv, my family would kill me!" Julie added (as always).

"That's not going to be an issue," Tim insisted. "Kurt said that they could do a lot with editing. They'll use camera angles to suggest that you're all getting stripped, but without actually showing anything."

"That's right," Kurt said. But Danielle and Shawna looked a little skeptical.

Tim didn't seem to notice, and plowed ahead. "I was thinking of a good gag for the end of the commercial. The camera could be above the table, and slowly pan from one pile of women's clothes to another on the table. But when it got to mine, there would only be one of my shoes, or maybe a shoe and a sock."

Kurt was enthusiastic. "And then maybe it could switch to a level shot, panning up from the clothes to each of the female players. They could each be naked from the waist up, covering their breasts with one hand and holding their cards with another."

Anna was scowling, and the three other young women were frowning a little.

"Wouldn't that be showing too much skin?" Kaitlyn asked.

"No," Tim said, "like Kurt said, you'll be covering your breasts. Nothing important will show."

"Easy for you to say," Shawna said. "It might work better if we at least suggest that you could lose, just to build the tension."

"Yeah," said Julie. "At least we should get to take your shirt off."

"And the pants might not hurt either," Anna said. "You could be wearing some kind of comical boxers or something."

Tim started to blush, but Kurt jumped to his defense. "That would be funny, but it won't work for our target audience. We're selling a fantasy to young males, and young males want to beat the pants off their attractive female co-workers, not the other way around."

He looked at Tim. "In fact, how about this for a closing shot: after the camera pans around the women with their clothes piled on the table in front of them, we stay on the last woman in the circle. She's got one arm covering her breasts, but she's the only one who isn't holding her cards in front of her with the other hand. She finally squirms around, with just the hint of a grin, and then slowly lifts her other hand... and drops her panties on the table."

Tim grinned. "Perfect!" He looks at Shawna and Danielle, noticing their neutral expressions. "Well? What do you think?"

"It's okay," Danielle said. "I can see how it would play visually."

"Let's definitely make that the third one," Shawna said. "It's a bit of a cliché, and some people might find it offensive. We should shoot the first two and see what the focus group says, before making a final decision on the strip poker ad."

Tim and Kurt looked at each other, and Kurt shrugged his shoulders. "All right. But I'm sure the first two are going to work great, so let's not rule that one out."

In a few minutes, the meeting seemed to be over, until Kurt and Danielle looked at each other. Tim didn't notice it at first -- he was deep into a daydream in which his masterful card playing resulted in his pretty employees losing every last stitch of clothing -- but Shawna did. She said, "Is there anything else?"

Danielle gave Kurt a small nod, and he said, "Well, there is one small thing that we forgot to mention yesterday. I'm sure that you all were probably already aware of it, but the internet is becoming a bigger and bigger part of advertising. Big ad campaigns, which we are hoping this one will turn into, often run their tv ads as a teaser to get viewers to go to the company's website, where more and more of the consumer buying happens."

Danielle said, "The net gives us several advantages over tv. The longest tv ad we can run is either a minute or a minute and a half, and a lot of them are only 30 seconds. But the net is a different proposition: we can run a little 3-4 minute story that picks up where the tv commercial leaves off."

"It's a value-added thing," Kurt said. "Almost like the tv ad is a teaser trailer for a movie, and the net version gives us more room to tell the story and establish our theme."

"What's the other advantage?" Shawna asked.

Kurt said, "What?"

"Danielle said that the net offers several advantages. I get that the extra time is one. What's the other one?"

Kurt looked at Danielle, but she just folded her arms. The body language was clear: this is your idea, so you explain it.

Kurt said, "Well, the net version of an ad doesn't have to be quite as family-friendly as the tv version."

"What does that mean?" Mia asked.

"It means nudity, doesn't it?" Anna said. "I knew it!"

"No, not nudity, exactly," Kurt said, holding his hands up in a calming gesture.

"Maybe just a little more leeway to be more... risqué. Like maybe we show a hint of a bare bottom here or there, or what looks like nudity, but with strategic pixellations."

"We don't want to come across as bimbos!" Anna said.

"My family will kill me if I'm naked on tv or the internet!" Julie said.

"No wait a minute," Tim said. "Let's not over-react." To Kurt he said, "There still wouldn't be anything graphic, right?"

"Of course not," Kurt said. "Nothing like that. I'd expect something more along the lines of what you might see in a PG-13 movie, or maybe a very light R."

Anna said, "I've seen a lot of tits and ass in R-rated movies."

The next few minutes were very dicey, with primarily Tim and Kurt (and a little more reluctantly, Danielle and Shawna) arguing for the tv/internet ad combination, and the four young women dragging their feet. Danielle brought out the modeling contracts that they'd pitched the day before, and pointed out some slightly vague language that alluded to some potential, "minimal" nudity in the internet versions of the ads.

"This is the most important clause," she said, pointing to the last part of the contract. "It gives all of you collectively the right to veto any scene or details that you really object to. We'll do our best to keep from getting there: we'll work with you, and take your feedback into consideration, and edit until we arrive at a final cut that you all can live with."

Tim looked at his employees, and they looked at each other. He knew what they were thinking: they wanted to go ahead, but they were not sure. The screen time and attention would be flattering, and the modeling fees on top of their regular agency salaries would make this a very lucrative contract for all of them.

Finally Anna said, "If any one of us objects, can we kill any ad we don't like?"

Kurt didn't even look at Danielle; he was clearly prepared for this question. "That's in the spirit of the agreement," he said. "But I don't know that we can guarantee that in every case, only because it would really make our bosses hesitate about committing the money to script and shoot and edit an ad, only to see it torpedoed at the last minute by any of the five of you."

Danielle said, "But I think we can definitely make all decisions based on a majority vote. If 3 of the 5 of you say any shot won't fly, that will force a re-edit."

The four women looked at each other uncertainly. Then Anna spoke again. "That's closer, but I still don't think a majority vote is strong enough."

"We can't allow all five people to kill any idea," Kurt said, almost pleading. "Our bosses won't go for that."

Tim saw a looming disaster in front of him, and he quickly made a decision that he would soon live to regret. "Okay, how about we say the vote has to be 4-1 on any close decision?" He looked at his attractive employees around the table. "That would mean that just one person wouldn't be able to kill any good idea, but it would still give us the ability to control our own fates. Surely if any idea really crossed a line that made us uncomfortable, we'd be able to get 2 votes against it, right?"

Kurt saw the lifeline. "That's a good compromise! It would give you all a comfort level, but also allow our bosses to feel better about their investment in this campaign, going forward."

Everyone considered that for a moment. The women were thinking the same thing: "if they try anything too sleazy, I'd just have to get one other girl to agree with me, and we could kill it."

Tim was thinking, "If there any close calls, it might be tough to get Anna to go along. But I'll have a good chance at getting the rest of the girls, and that will be enough."

Finally Mia said, "I think that will work for me." The other women nodded, Anna last of all, and a sigh of relief went up from Shawna, Danielle, Kurt and Tim.

"All right then," Tim said. "Shawna, why don't you, Kurt and Danielle write that small amendment into the contract, and we'll get ready to make some playful, sexy commercials!"

Shawna smiled back at him. "Sounds like a plan. While you all are blocking out the first ad, I'll have our research team start taking a more in-depth look at our target demographic. We need to find out every last detail about our audience, so we can be sure to give them EXACTLY what they want to see in these ads."