One day, I received a letter from my client, Philip Issenman, President of ID Foods,
a distributor of specialty foods across Canada.
"We sell a non-alcoholic beer. Under 1/2 of 1% alcohol.
The government is taxing us like an alcoholic beer .
Would you write a letter to the government."
I read and re-read the letter.
And suddenly my legal advisor entered my head.....my kid's voice...
"Ma, it ain't fair!"
So I called in my top researchers (overall I had 28 for my columns!) and gave them their marching orders.
""Seek and ye shall find...all the provincial laws in Canada with the high limit for a non-beer."
'When is a beer not-a beer?'
The results were "incontrovertible"
In the Yukon, anything under 5% alcohol was not a beer.
In the P.E.I. the lowest level in Canada: anything under 1/2 of 1% was not a beer!
That research was our goldmine.
Clearly our client's product at less than 1/2 of 1% was "not" a beer!
Anywhere in the country!
We had a winning case!
So what do we do now?
Something was still missing.
We still needed to crack into the government’s head space.
They needed reassurances that they had nothing to be afraid of in changing the law.
Reassurances that they were not going to create new ground.
Other countries in the world had already set a precedent for non-alcoholic beer.
We had to go to Germany and Switzerland.....okay okay, their consulates in Montreal!
I called in my articling student.
"Would you consent to abandon your articling uniform of 3"-wide-red-and-white-striped T-shirt?...
For only one day?!"
3"-wide-red-and-white-striped T-shirt is Not the "dress de rigeur" for visiting the consulates!
He accepted graciously and came in the next day wearing his Bar Mitzvah suit - pin-striped of course!
I sent him to the consulates of Germany and Switzerland.
What do they consider non-alcoholic beer?
Bingo!
"OF COURSE, VE HAVE A LEGAL NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER!!! VE BELIEF IN PURITY!"
Passed with royal colors.
I was now in my cooking mode. I needed a certain spice... HUMOR!
As luck would have it, my client had run a contest offering a T-shirt to everyone who wrote in why they loved his non-alcoholic beer.
Perfect!
But we almost had disaster.
I caught my secretary rewriting the testimonials in 'proper English.'
“No no, Francoise! Leave the quotes EXACTLY as they are:
"ME ALCOHOLIC. NO CAN DRINK BEER NO-MORE. NOW DRINK THIS NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER. TASTES REAL GOOD!"
What a punch this must have carried. There were no pictures. There was no video.
But when the people who actually drank the non-alcoholic beer jumped out of the page,
they made the "non-alcoholic" in "beer" more real than any dry description in a traditional brief.
We were ready to move forward.
Again i was stumped.
What do I do now?
My little voice - always hovering above waiting to be of service - jumped in.
"Write a brief to the government!"
I drew a blank.
I had never written a brief.
In fact, I had never even seen one!
So i called a friend in one of the big offices in town.
He sent me a copy of a brief he had written.
I couldn't believe my eyes.
8 - 1/2" by 14"
Single space
1/2 inch margin on either side
ALL BLACK!!!!!!!!!!!!
asdfaslkdjfl;skjdfl;askjdflaskjdf;laskjdfl;as
as;kdjfa;lskjdfskjdfasl;kdjfasl;kdjflas;kdjf
a;lskdjfal;skdjfla;skdjfaslkdjfsalkdjfslkdjf
;askdjfla;skdjfal;skdjfsla;kdjflskdjfsldkj
asdklfja;slkdjfl;askjdf;laskjdf;laskjdf;laks
alksjdflaskjdfl;askjdflaskjdflaskjdflaskjdff
as;alskjdfal;skjdflaskjdfla;skdjfasl;kdjfasl
a;lskdjf;alskdjfla;skdjfalskdjfasl;kdjfasl;kd
a;lskdjfasl;kdjfalskdjfsalkdjfaslkdjfasldkjf
a;lksjdlaskdjflas;kdjfla;skdjfalskdjflaskdjfs
alskdjfaslkdjfaslkdjfaslkdjfaslkdjfsalkdjfas
aslkdjfaslkdjfaslkdjfaslkdjfsalkdjfaslkdjfas
All of a sudden, I knew what I had to do.
“Write it like a marketing promotion. GO FOR THEIR HEAD SPACE!"
A brief is no different than advertising copy. "IT HAS TO SELL!”
I now had my one guiding principle in writing the brief:
"Aim between their eyes. GO FOR THEIR HEAD SPACE!"
Now. The format of the brief:
Advertising/Marketing style, the only way to go.
That's if you want the person reading the brief not to sweat it out!:
2- inch wide margins on each side.
Only 3 paragraphs to a page,
Double spacing between lines.
And quadruple spacing between paragraphs.
All the boring supporting stuff at the back of the brief so as not to stop the "selling pitch"
And whenever I wanted to make a point - ONE PARAGRAPH ON THE PAGE!
A very simple message.
Easy to read.
No effort to remember.
AND FUN!
(This kind of brief is only possible when there's no senior partner
checking out your brief before you send it
and comes screaming out of his office...
"THIS GARBAGE WILL NEVER DO. WHAT WILL THE GOVERNMENT THINK OF OUR OFFICE!!!!!!!!!!!")
The last step. I called the Minister of Finance's Office in Ottawa.
“Can your people help me. I've never written a brief before.”
So on a Friday afternoon , 7 top men from the Minister of Finance's Office were waiting for me.
ME, a sole practitioner! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After all the sweat blood and tears, it was almost too easy!
“Of course we will help you. We welcome your brief because we don't have the budget to do the research!
Only one piece of advice. Have your budget in our hands no later than August 15th!"
On Budget night, my husband and I were listening to the budget on the radio.
All of a sudden my husband yelled out! "YOU MADE THE BUDGET!”
It's a good thing he yelled out. Otherwise I would have missed this momentous moment...
I hadn't understood a word!
Later on the guys at the feds told me,
“Your brief stood out over the 2000 we receive every year .
We now use it to teach our people how to write a brief!”
I thank the powers-that-be for my lack of experience. Otherwise I would never have gone for the winning shot: “AIM BETWEEN THEIR EYES. AIM FOR THEIR HEAD SPACE!”
But most of all, I thank the President of my client at the time, ID-Foods, Philip Issenman,
who has a great sense of fun,
and who got a tremendous kick out of making the 'impossible' possible,
let alone not even thinking of jumping feet first into completely unknown territory!
Postcript: I made one terrible mistake.
When I came back another time, (second time round you get greedy!)
the guys in the Minister of Finance's office looked at me and said, very reproachfully,
“You never thanked us”
A lesson I have never forgotten.
People are always first and foremost human beings.
They are proud of having acted fairly.
And they need
recognition from the person who has benefited from their having acted fairly!
Postcript to the Postcript. - Published as a separate post.
Somewhere in the process I got nervous.
My client and I were in the middle of the process to change a Federal law,
and I hadn't had any follow-up call from our meeting in Ottawa with the Minister of Revenue.
The meeting had been a dead waste of time.
For the Minister. And for us.
It was obvious the Minister couldn't care a damn.
In fact, he had never even read our brief to prepare for the meeting.
He was there because his subordinates must have told him
"You've got a duty to at least "look" like you're interested in the "common folk."
"Not everybody coming to government with hat-in-hand are the 'big boys!'"
it didn't matter to this Minister of Revenue that my client was
a multi-million dollar Canadian corporation.
What mattered to this Minister was that it wasn't Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola.
The only thing that caught the Minister's interest were the letters "M.P." after my name on my letterhead.
"No, no, your Highness, the letters don't stand for "Member of Parliament!"
The explanation that it stood for "Master of Piano" just confirmed his distaste for the entire meeting.
Little did he have any inkling at that moment in time that our brief was going to make the budget!. For that matter, at that moment in time, we had no inkling either!
A week later, I called my client. " Haven't had any follow-up. Time is getting closer to budget date. I'm going to call the Minister of Finance. (That's the equivalent of the Executive VP to God!)
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone.
A very, very long pause.
And then, the voice came back - slowly - slowly - very slowly....like a drawl.
"Claire.................I gotta hand it to you.....................you got BALLS!"
At first I was dumb fluxed. And then my inner voice put me straight.
"Asshole, that's a compliment. This is no time for gender equality!
What do you think he should have said.....
'CLAIRE, YOU GOT 'TITS'?"
Thank you, Philip Issenman, for having the balls to jump feet first into the unknown and never once losing the amused twinkle in your eye!
CB
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