Laziness aside, one of the reasons that I have not mustered a blog in the three weeks since our Captain Morgan launch campaign started is that I don't want this blog to be a chronology of my job. I doubt anyone has much interest in reading something that I have little interest in writing. Now, excuses made, let me dive in with a story:

Last night we had a KTA at a club called Top One. Had a camera-man filming, customers acting drunk and goofy, people wearing eyepatches and dancing on the bar- big success. The boss of the club approaches one of the Morganettes and asks for a fake mustache. She doesn't know that he is the boss, and tells him he can go and play rock paper scissors with the Captain if he wants a prize (thats the structure of our KTA (Keys To Adventure) events- a customer plays rock paper scissors with me, and if they win, they get a key that opens the treasure chest with the prizes in it.) The boss is not having it. He is furious at being treated like a normal customer. "You come to my club to have an event, and you don't know who the fuck I am?" I wasn't there, but Im guessing he got the mustache at that point. Anyway, the boss then calls "the client," i.e. the company (Diageo) that owns captain morgan (its kunming branch), essentially jumping over us (The Loop, who are running this campaign) in the chain of command. The client then contacts Rich (our tour manager) to put out the fire.

Now. Even people who have not heard the Asian concept of face explicitly explained- as 'the external embodiment of ones social status and self-esteem, reinforced though peer recognition,' perhaps- probably understand it already on an intuitive level. Its when the lanky but funny freshman sees the captain of the basketball team fighting with his (cheerleader) girlfriend and says "I guess the only time hes going to score tonight is in our game against Riverview," and everyone laughs. And then later the freshman gets his ass beat, not by just the captain of the team but also some of the people who were laughing.

That bit is to say, I would not have been surprised if the affront to the boss had prompted overreaction. Top One is one of only 2 clubs in China that are selling a lot of Captain Morgan at this point, so the cooperation of the mealy-cheeked, chainsmoking, thinning-longhaired, always-wears-a-suit-two-sizes-too-big-for-him boss is key for this campaign. To rectify his loss of face, the club boss is going to need a healthy serving of apologies and ego stroking, issued by the local Diageo reps, as well as Rich. Having gotten to know Rich relatively well over the course of living together for a month and a half, I didn't expect that he would fire the Morganette, but I was still surprised a how utterly unfazed he was by the whole issue. He was this unfazed: After presumably having been chewed out by the client as well as the club boss, the Morganette called our tour manager, my other roommate Lindsey, to apologize. Lindsey gives to the phone to Rich and he says: "don't worry about it...stop it. its nothing. its nothing. you going out with your friends tonight?... they give receipts at soho? get a receipt. its on me. have a good time." Bam. Very classy.