Another Name for Victory
After the meal, Chairman Park and the Grosvenor Duke stepped out of the building.
They had said that earlier the distance between them had made any serious talk impossible. Walking side by side now, they were not much closer to it. What passed between them still skirted the center, the kernel carefully left out. Even so, the two of them were quick to find something they both cared about.
"I hear you're sponsoring the McLaren F1 team."
"These days it is my only pleasure."
With the Grosvenor family's money behind it, McLaren had built one of the great cars in the history of Formula One—the sort of machine that, in a season of sixteen races, might win fifteen. Calling it his only pleasure was hardly an exaggeration. For once, even the taciturn duke spoke with something like pleasure.
"I invested a fair sum trying to raise my boy as a driver. He began in go-karts and won straight through F4 and F3, so the results were not bad."
Park Yonghak called Tennessee's face to mind. No wonder the boy had known so much about cars. There had been a reason.
"But from F2 onward, a man has to stake his life on it. He looked thoroughly burdened by that."
He stopped there.
"I have let private talk run on."
The duke allowed himself a faint smile.
That was not, however, the end of the cars. Park Yonghak had a word of his own to add.
"The McLaren F1 team runs a Japanese Honda engine, does it not?"
"Was there a particular reason you chose Honda?"
"I wanted overwhelming performance."
Looking at the results, it had been an excellent decision. They had ground Ferrari and Porsche underfoot and taken the championship more than once.
"When one chooses an engine, the value of a name is not a consideration."
"You look only at the figures?"
"Of course. Numbers do not lie."
"A very fair way of proceeding."
It was just after Chairman Park offered the little joke that the duke spoke again.
"You seem to take a considerable interest in F1."
"It was a long dream."
"A long dream?"
"My last dream is to take a great car like a McLaren and set Hyeon-gang's heart in it, in place of a Honda engine."
At that, the Grosvenor Duke was silent for a moment.
"Because of your history with Japan?"
"Hardly. Money does not carry feeling. I am a man who looks only at the rate of return."
"Numbers again, then."
While the duke smiled, Park Yonghak went on as if it were nothing at all.
"You believe that if France can do a thing, Britain can as well?"
"Of course."
"Korea is no different. If the country next door has made money, we ought to be able to make it too. A certain amount of time and effort will be required, naturally."
"Is that why you have come from a meeting with Rolls-Royce?"
Chairman Park did not answer. He only lifted the corner of his mouth.
Meanwhile, I had been on the move since morning to meet Tennessee.
And what was this? The meeting place was wrong. This was practically the outer edge of London. He had told me to come and see, so I had come, but the moment I stepped out of the car a sight past imagining was waiting for me.
"Ever been up in a light plane?"
"No."
"Good."
"What?"
There was, in fact, an airplane in front of me. You know the kind: a propeller on the nose, the sort of little machine that looks built for one. Look closer, though, and there were two seats.
"You want me to get in that?"
"Why? Scared?"
From what I could see, it was well looked after. There seemed to be at least ten professionals on hand, so there was nothing to fear. Even so.
"And you?"
"I'm getting in too."
"If we both get in, who's flying?"
Tennessee gave me the most incendiary answer available. He sat down in the cockpit.
Hm. A fear I had not possessed a moment ago seemed to be putting down roots.
"Relax. I may not look it, but anything with wheels, I drive."
"The part with the wheels only lasts a minute."
That protest did not last either. A man who looked like an instructor recited Tennessee's flying record, and more than that, the news that this was a special aircraft easily a hundred times the price of an ordinary light plane thawed the part of me that had gone stiff.
So I climbed into the seat beside him.
The propeller on the nose beat faster, then rose into a roar. Oh—we're up! The speed was nothing extraordinary, about sixty miles an hour. We crossed a ridge and followed a river for something like fifteen minutes before Tennessee began to let the altitude down.
"We're landing."
The view opened out. A dazzling river lay below. Tennessee moved his hands, the plane banked in a gentle tilt, and we ran in toward the strip.
"When the wheels touch, the airframe may shake. It won't affect safety, so don't worry."
Contrary to what he said, there was a soft thump and almost no vibration at all. An airliner keeps running long after it lands. A light plane, it seemed, stopped quickly.
"Well?"
"That was fun."
"Want to fly it yourself next time?"
"What?"
"You only need the training. Sixty hours and you can fly. Planes aren't even that expensive."
I'll stick to first class, thanks.
Anyway.
"Why are we here?"
"I thought we might shoot."
A light plane, and now a shooting ground. Today was a full aristocratic special.
"Ever fired a gun?"
"No."
Not in this life.
At that, he started explaining.
"Two shells. When you're ready, a clay will fly. You hit it."
"Do you do this often?"
"Sometimes. When I'm stressed."
"When are you ever stressed?"
Perhaps it was a question he had not expected at all. He hesitated.
"Well. You know. When the tutor starts nagging."
I nearly snorted.
A little later, under a staffer's guidance, I chose a gun. All I had ever fired was a K2. What was I supposed to do with a shotgun? I put on a shooting vest anyway, a very fine one, with leather padded over the shoulder where the stock would seat. After the explanation, the gun was put into my hands. It broke open down the middle, like a crocodile opening its mouth. There was a metallic snap, and then bang, bang. The staffer loaded the shells himself. Bang, bang.
After I had fired four rounds, I heard myself ask it.
"Do we need to adjust the clicks?"
"Sorry?"
Wait. Seventeen years old, a high-school boy who had never worn a uniform, and out of my mouth comes click adjustment? That was a bit much.
"Ah, it's just—one of my friends wants to try for special forces. He's crazy about the military, so he says things like that. If you want to know whether the zero is right, you have to adjust the clicks. Ha ha."
I laughed, badly.
"You talking about Jack?"
Tennessee, beside me, cut in.
"Right. Jack. Who else would it be. Ha ha."
And so, after that small calamity, the shooting began in earnest. A red clay hissed up into the empty air. I brought the muzzle up at once, held my breath for a beat, and pulled. Bang. The clay blew apart.
"That's impressive."
I had fired guns in the army, but I had never been any great marksman. Twenty rounds, and I might have hit fifteen. Maybe it was the new body. Strange thing: everything I sent downrange hit. I must have fired about thirty rounds in all. Unlike the army, where someone stood over you and made you shoot, this genuinely felt like stress coming loose.
"Well?"
"It's fun."
I answered him with a wide grin.
"Nobles used to enjoy duck hunting. The dogs would run in and startle the ducks, and you'd wait behind them and shoot."
"Did you ever do it?"
"A very long time ago."
These days, of course, there was no chance that hunting animals for sport would be allowed. In a country like Britain, even less so.
"So that's why places like this exist?"
"Yeah. Instead of ducks, clays fly."
"Ah."
That was the end of playing. Tennessee soon said we ought to move. His face had gone quite serious. Business, then.
"Do you know why I did the plane and the shooting today?"
"Does it have something to do with the business?"
Tennessee nodded, then went on.
"When I heard energy drink, this is the image that came to me."
Well, now.
"A moment that's fiercely challenging. A moment that demands total concentration..."
"And that's flying and shooting?"
"Well, it is an energy drink. In real life most people use them to stay awake. But if you're the one doing the marketing, you have to offer a new picture."
"When did you think of that?"
"All night."
"What?"
"I told you. I've gotten interested in business. You pulled out a new item, so of course I stayed up thinking about it."
The attitude was good. It was. But.
"So you flew a plane after being up all night?"
"I slept. A little."
I said nothing.
"I drank energy drinks, too. Call it preliminary research."
When he had said he wanted to meet Grandfather, I had found it a little strange. This one was serious about business. And he's got an eye for it. On the strength of that, I took the thread up in a good mood.
"Making a drink doesn't take cutting-edge technology. Which means, in the end, marketing is what decides whether you win or lose."
There were, as it happened, quite a few drink advertisements I still remembered. The plum drink whose commercial confessed it wanted to take a bite out of you. The pomegranate drink that beautiful women were supposed to love. The sports drink that warned you not to mistake it for water. Overseas, the situation was much the same. How else do you explain polar bears drinking cola, or a rival company going so far as to build a cola mascot clad in metal?
But there was a marketing strategy better than any of those, and fortunately I remembered that success with perfect clarity.
"Hang on."
I took a notebook from my jacket, made a simple sketch, and showed it to Tennessee.
"What does this look like?"
"Rugby. A scrum."
"Right."
I lightly redrew the collision of head against head.
"And now?"
"Not people. Bulls?"
"Right. This is the brand we have to acquire."
"What?"
Tennessee studied the sketch for a long while.
"What's it called?"
Beneath the logo, I wrote a line.
"It's another name for victory."
If I had to name the single most successful piece of branding in the beverage business, I would choose Mad Bull without a moment's hesitation.
Before Mad Bull appeared, caffeinated drinks were sold mostly as fatigue tonics—something a man in his forties or fifties drank after work. That was the whole of their position. Mad Bull sold the same kind of drink and offered an entirely different strategy. The line was this:
To build that new image, Mad Bull had sponsored the so-called mad ones: people who dived from the edge of space, who leapt from cliffs on skis beneath a parachute, who crossed from building to building in wingsuits. You who mean to break your limits—drink a Mad Bull first. That must have been the message they wanted to send. Nor had they spent themselves only on the extremes. They backed the major sports without stinting, and little by little they stacked up the recognition that Mad Bull meant sport.
In other words, they were not simply selling a drink. They were working to sell a particular image.
I remembered the road Mad Bull would travel, so of course I saw it that way. Right now, it hasn't even found its orbit. Tennessee had none of that knowledge, and still he had chosen flight and shooting—Mad Bull's own marketing, performed in the flesh. Not bad.
I was off in those thoughts when he stepped abruptly into my line of sight.
"This venture."
"...?"
"You said you wanted to partner with me."
I nodded.
"If you recognize me as a partner, can you leave it to me?"
"Leave what?"
"From buying Mad Bull through the branding. Can you put it in my hands?"