‘Mal Costain’s new book “ADLANDIA” is a collection of brilliant stories of life in the ad biz. They range from hilarious to touching to Little Nemo-esque surrealism but all are characterized by charm and insight. Whether you know (or give a damn about) the adworld, you should read it to discover a fine writer who exposes a world where billions are spent and made and where nothing is what it seems. A must read!” Michael Hart, Executive Creative Director (Retired), DDB Worldwide (Hong Kong).

MAD MEN. DRIVEN WOMEN. WHAT COULD GO WRONG? 

In ADLANDIA, people dream big, work hard and crash heavily–all in pursuit of Ad Land’s curious idea of success. The result is an unputdownable collection of darkly comic tales with wicked, fantastical twists.

Meet some of the cast of ADLANDIA’s unforgettable characters and their desperate predicaments.

The Art Director Who Deals With The Devil To Launch Her Career.

Sherilyn Faye is an overworked art director obsessed with the details of her designs. When a sinister voice speaks to her from one of her posters, she fears she is going insane. When the voice begins ‘doing favours’ to help her career, she finds herself in a dangerous liaison with forces she can’t control. 

The Copywriter Who Begged Karma To Restore His Creativity

Andrew Blazevic is a copywriter devastated by the sudden loss of his creativity. In desperation, he deploys a special ‘karma tactic’ in a bid to coax the powers of the universe into saving him. When the powers respond, his career takes a bizarre and unpredictable turn.

The Account Executive And The Email That Could Ruin Her Career

Leona Lee is an overly-ambitious executive with a hot temper. In a fit of rage, she accidentally sends an abusive email to her major client–or at least, she thinks she does. With the clock ticking, she must find out if the email was sent or not, before her career and the careers of thousands of her colleagues are destroyed.

Only in ADLANDIA. 

Based on author Malcolm Costain’s fifteen years as a copywriter and creative director, “ADLANDIA”  offers an insider’s view into the lives of people struggling to realise their dreams under pressure. You might think advertising people deserve all they get, but “ADLANDIA” will change your mind.

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Q & A with Malcolm Costain,

I’m

Include information that relates to the book. For example if the book takes place in your home town, mention you grew up where the book is set. If your book reflects an expertise that you have, mention how you acquired that expertise. Remember, your Media Kit includes an author bio, make sure this answer supplements that information instead of repeating it.

 

2. Give a brief description of ADLANDIA.

It’s a collection of humorous stories about the people who live and breathe the business of making ads. The characters in ADLANDIA are mostly on from creative side which is the one I’m most familiar with, and each character finds themselves in a pressure situation in which they either have to act for fail. Some characters are struggling to be creative; some are trying to find fame; others are in crises from situations they created themselves, like the woman in the firs story who accidentally sends an abusive email to her agency’s biggest client. Most of the stories are set in today’s agency world, but some of them take on a wickedly surreal twist.

 

3. Why did you write ADLANDIA?

There’s some advice from a famous UK screenwriter about not setting stories in advertising agencies and hairdressing salons. But I disagree. After fifteen years in the business, I was fortunate enough to observe hundreds of people all making their careers. Many of their stories or adventures are fascinating.

But at the time, I was too busy to work on them. It was only after I stepped aside from advertising that I could look at what I’d seen with fresh eyes and concluded that these were stories worth telling.

 

4. ADLANDIA is mostly about people in the creative side of the agency business. What about that specialty interests you?

The part that interested me most is where people think up the ideas. Some people find other parts more fascinating, like the production of the photographs of the TV ads, but I always thought the ideas part was the most interesting, the creating-something-out-of-nothing, part, which is some of the stories in ADLANDIA take place during that process.

 

5. Is this book part of a series?

Yes, it’s the first. I have drafts of the stories for the next volume. No publication date is set.

 

6. The writing style of ADLANDIA is sometimes naturalistic, sometimes it’s surreal. Can you tell us about your methods?

Well, overall, the writing style is fast-paced and engaging, with the predicament revealed early on. Readers sometimes don’t like short story collections, mostly because they constantly have to meet new characters. I wanted to make the stories grab the reader as fast as possible. So each story begins with a vividly drawn character in the midst of a high-stakes predicament. So

I approached the stories like I would a creative brief, which is to be methodical — at least in the beginning. I listed out as many predicaments and ‘what if’ situations as possible. Then, I shortlisted the most interesting ones, and worked on what type of person would be best in the lead role for each one— a bit like casting for an ad. Then I got to work.

Some of the stories slip into fantasy. I thought this would be a great way to make a difficult predicament even more awkward. Advertising and copywriting are spooky businesses anyway; it seems natural that on the fringes of a creative business, there would be a little bit of magic.

In the stories where there is no magic, the situations already seem bizarre enough.

7. The setting of ADLANDIA adds much to the texture of the story. Can you tell us about why you chose to set the story there?

Well, the stories aren’t set in any particular place or city. They’re in the otherworld of ADLANDIA, which could be any big agency in any country. So, the settings are all the familiar areas of an advertising agency office: the creative department and its open plan with large-screens on every desk, the brainstorming rooms with the whiteboard-lined walls, the corner offices of the senior management, the long conference tables of clients. Only one of the stories is set in a different area: the story titled ‘Love Signs,’ is set within the frames of two billboards high above a street.

The settings are important to evoke the atmosphere of a real agency’s offices. This is particularly important for when the stories turn a big magical. The more real the office, the more effective the surreal turn.

8. The idea of ambition is strong in your book. What about that idea moved you?

It drives the action. Like many industries that people regard as being glamorous, advertising is a difficult one to enter, to endure and in which to succeed. Cleverness and creativity are the mere entry points. In order to survive you must be hard-working, collaborative, a good communicator, and willing to work nights and weekends—regularly. Then, to succeed, you must be able to win new business pitches and awards, and be consistently creative. Reaching those levels isn’t easy. Many people crash and burn along the way—or decide that it’s either not worth it. It’s the moments when people reach a crisis point that interested me. In the book you can see these moments – like when a stressed art director begins hearing voices in her designs, or the account executive who sends an abusive email to her client in frustration, or the talented copywriter who suddenly finds his creativity gone and in desperation resorts to mysticism to get it back. 

9. What was the most challenging part of writing this book?

Compressing the stories into the shorter story format. Just like in a longer story, the right elements must be there. The character must face a problem; there are consequences if he or she fails; the character is flawed in some way; there is a beginning middle and end, and yet all these elements must all be compressed in a smooth way into the story. In order to serve the story, some of them are implied rather than emphasised. I found it difficult. 

10. What drew you to this particular story?

Advertising was my life for fifteen years. When I decided to try a book, it was only natural to choose advertising as a subject. I

 

Question 3 above explains you why you wrote the story, and this gives you another chance to talk about your true motives. This answer can differ from your answer to Question 3 by being more specific to some precise elements of your story: Why is your novel told by a child’s point of view, for example, or why did your gardening book focus only on drought-resistant plants?

11. What other books have inspired you?

Talk about your influences here. What writers do you like? What books were seminal in your life? Mentioning your literary preferences situates you in the community of authors. The books and authors you mention do not have to be in the same genre as your book, in fact, the contrast may be intriguing.

12. How did you come up with the title?

I wanted a title that united all the stories under a theme. Some of the earlier ones were taken from individual stories. For example, ‘The Ad That Saved The World,’ which was a story that didn’t make the final cut. Then I saw the TV programme, ‘Portlandia,’ and how by the simple addition of a suffix, they had turned a place into an otherworldly place—the same place, but 15% different. That’s what I wanted to use to describe Ad Land. So, I, ahem, borrowed the idea.

13. What is your favourite passage in the book and why?

It’s quote at the beginning of the book from one of the characters. It’s the one that sets the scene of a different world.

‘You can’t buy a ticket to Adlandia. You can’t drive there and you can’t fly there. If you knew what it was, you wouldn’t want to go there. But you cross the frontier when you begin to tell yourself that your ad is really, really important.’

14. What aspects of your own life helped inspire this book?

Two things. My own career in the business, and my observations of my colleagues. I came to advertising in my early 30s, so I was eager to make some progress.

This is another way to humanize you as an author. Talk about your own life and offer some examples of the ways it relates to the content of your book.

15. What can readers hope to learn from this book?

For advertising people, ADLANDIA is a chance to read stories about themselves. This is something unusual. There aren’t many novels set in the advertising world. Yes, there was Mad Men, and a few books over the years, but that’s about it. Same with movies.

For non-advertising people, here’s an opportunity to see into the lives of the people who make the ads that they like or loathe. But they’re also really good stories with darkly comic twists.

Where is ADLANDIA?

It isn’t any particular city or country, it’s the state of mind someone adopts when they they’ve worked in an agency for a year or so. As one of the characters in ADLANDIA, says, you can’t buy a ticket to ADLANDIA and you can’t fly there or drive there, but you cross the frontier when you tell yourself your ads are really, really important.

What is ADLANDIA?

It’s the ad land we know already, but with a touch of the surreal. Ad Land itself can feel like a separate world already with its own cultures and priorities. ADLANDIA is this same world but with an occasional overlap into fantasy and science fiction. It’s not a world that can be easily entered. You have to work in advertising for a while before your worldview changes. As the book mentions early on, you can’t buy a ticket to ADLANDIA and you can’t fly there, but you cross the frontier when you begin to tell yourself the ads you make are really, really important.

What inspired your to write ADLANDIA?

The outsider’s perspective I gained after stepping out of the business.

After fifteen years of agency life, I finally had a chance to look at the business with an outsider’s eyes. Several things occurred to me: how many hours people spend in the office; how important ads seemed on the inside and how unimportant they are to the rest of the world; how surreal all the meetings and discussions can seem and all the stress and tension they create.

But the main thing was the stories of the people in the business. During my career, I had the opportunity to observe many talented people trying to realise their ambbitions, often under pressure, and at different states of their careers. There were the new staff trying to work it all out; the staff with more experience trying to work on the more interesting projects; there was the stress of the senior teams, knowing they had to keep up the standards. And the overwhelming desire for everyone to win the major advertising awards.

Is there a theme running throughout the book?

Yes. The constant theme is of people trying to succeed under pressure. Anyone who works in advertising knows what it takes to succeed, or even just to work in the business: long hours, pressure, deadlines, constant finessing of your work, last minute changes, the necessity of winning awards to get ahead, and completion from your peers.

All but one stories in the ADLANDIA feature characters undress pressure in various situations.

Interestingly, despite all the pressure, people don’t want to leave. As I said in one of the advertisements about the people in ADLANDIA, “The love it. They hate it. They can’t escape it.

How has it been received by advertising people?

Very well, as you can tell by the reviewers. The first people to read the book were mostly advertising people. They recognised the situations immediately. A few people had even done exactly as Leona Lee does in the first story: accidentally send an abusive email to a client by mistake. Others recognised the situations, such as the guy who suddenly loses his creativity, and enjoyed the way some of the stories slipped into fantasy.

Why did you leave the business?

At first, for family reasons; then to keep writing. My father died in 2012 and there was quite a lot work to do on his estate for my sisters and I. So, I decided to take a break and work on that. That’s when I began writing.

Do you know there is a podcast called ADLANDIA?

Yes, I discovered them after I started using the title. They’ll probably say they thought of the name first, but I have some news for them: someone beat us both to the name ADLANDIA. There was a book called, ‘ADLANDIA: A marketing quiz,’ published in 1940 by a guy called Mark O’Dea. No, I haven’t read it.

What’s the definition of an idea that the character in ‘Big Ideas,’ finally discovers?

I’ll let you know in my next book.

What are you working on now?

Excerpt from ADLANDIA. Chapter 1.

Natural Grace

8:30 a.m.

Office of Leona Lee

Senior Account Director

Calthorpe Advertising

40th Floor, Calthorpe Tower

Downtown

Leona Lee, thirty-six years old and the acting account director on the Natural Grace Cosmetics account, sat frozen before the screen of her laptop. Her mouth was open and her hands were suspended above the square black tiles of the keyboard.

She had been locked in this position for almost thirty seconds, not even blinking, hardly even breathing, as motionless as a screenshot from a horror movie.

On her laptop, her email browser waited for her next command. The cursor blinked and the mouse pointed. The unread emails stood impatiently in their ranks. What’s it going to be, they seemed to ask. Select email? Reply to email? Compose email? Delete email? We’re waiting for you.

But there was only one command that Leona Lee wanted, the one command that could undo the catastrophic mistake she had just made: the command to recall an email.

‘Shit,’ said Leona. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

The trouble was, Leona didn’t know how to use the command. She wasn’t even sure it existed. The recall email command was like an urban myth. Maybe it existed; maybe it didn’t.

Leona brought her hands up to her face and held them there. ‘What have I done?’ she whispered. ‘What have I done?’

ADLANDIA QUOTE

You can’t buy a ticket to Adlandia. You can’t find it on a map and you can’t drive there or fly there. If you knew what it was, you wouldn’t want to go there. But you cross the frontier into Adlandia when you tell yourself that your ads are really, really important.

—Albie Turner, Partner, ECD, Audacity Inc.