Read Online The LeBaron Secret by Stephen; Birmingham - Free Book Online

fleeting one—that the day may be saved, even though the boys know from long experience that it is Sari who tells her son what to do, and not the other way around.
    â€œI’m not saying I’m one hundred percent in favor of this particular campaign,” he says carefully, and the briefly hopeful looks on the other men’s faces fade quickly. “But I see what they’re trying to say, and I think I should tell you that what they are showing us today is based on a suggestion of my own a while back.”
    â€œOf yours? ”
    â€œYes,” he says. “You see—the idea of an upscale campaign for Baronet is based on a very definite national trend that has been going on for the last ten, twenty years.”
    â€œWhat trend is that?”
    â€œWine has become a fashionable drink. It has become the drink of choice for upwardly mobile people, particularly young people—young urban professionals, the people who—”
    Sari waves her hand impatiently. “I know all that,” she says. “Are you trying to tell me something I don’t already know? That trend started in the late nineteen sixties. Are you trying to tell me I’m behind the times?”
    â€œOf course not, but the point is—”
    â€œThe point is that those people, those yuppies you’re talking about, don’t drink our wine. Why, they wouldn’t touch a bottle of Baronet with a ten-foot pole! You won’t see our wine being served at any Park Avenue parties, Eric. On the Bowery, sure. Why, every wino they pick up on skid row is lugging a pint of Baronet Thunder Mountain Red in a paper bag!”
    â€œBut what I am trying to say,” he begins slowly, and Sari can see the small forceps scar on his left temple beginning to redden, as it often does when he is angry or upset. No one else notices this, but she does. Good, she thinks, let him squirm a bit. “What I am trying to say,” he continues, “is that we don’t have to direct our entire marketing effort toward skid-row winos and Bowery bums.”
    â€œYou want to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse—is that it?”
    â€œThere is another market, Mrs. LeBaron,” Mike Geraghty interjects.
    â€œI know there is! But it’s not our market.”
    â€œBut is there any reason, Mother, why we shouldn’t also try to tap this other market, with an advertising campaign designed to make the Baronet name just a little bit respectable?”
    â€œAnd turn our backs on the market we’ve got already? Kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? I tell you, our market doesn’t read Town & Country . It reads the National Enquirer and the girlie magazines. It doesn’t watch the ‘MacNeil-Lehrer Report,’ it watches ball games and prizefights. Our research shows us that. We’re sold in supermarkets , Eric, to men and women who drive home in pickup trucks.”
    â€œBut do we have to concentrate on that market exclusively? While this other market is—”
    â€œDon’t change horses in midstream—did you ever hear that piece of advice? Don’t take your money off a winning horse—that’s another.”
    â€œAnd, while we’re exchanging clichés,” Eric says, “there’s another about putting all your eggs in one basket.”
    â€œBull-do!”
    The three other men in the room are now all extremely uneasy. It is painful for them to have to witness a member of their own sex being taken to task by a member of the opposite one, particularly when that member of the opposite sex happens to be the man’s own mother. Eric, they know, is talking marketing. That is supposed to be his bailiwick, and to talk marketing is supposed to be his right. A marketing vice-president is supposed, at least from time to time, to offer marketing suggestions and advice, and that is all he is doing.
    There is a silence, and then Mike Geraghty says, “You