2: Squirrel – The life and times of a Business Intelligence Agent.The Business 01.08

The beginning of the year is a time for taking stock, making plans and eating the boxes of biscuits let over from Christmas. So I reflect…we have been through a lot you and I, I have been writing this column since the very first edition and collectively we have won some nice awards for the trophy cabinet and a few industry accolades…but perhaps this year it’s time for a change?

So allow me to indulge myself for a while.

The Business has always set out to be something a little bit different from ‘other’ business magazines…perhaps a little alternative? So this year I will occasionally serialise extracts from what yet may be my next book: ‘The Supremacy of Marketing’– it is based upon the principle that most ‘text’ books about business are, to be honest, as dry as a dusty place without a Dyson…no sex or violence and very few laughs!

So an introduction - this is a story about a Business Intelligence operative named: Squirrel.

'The Supremacy of Marketing'

It was a midwinter’s day, the sort of day where the weather hovers between fog, rain, snow and frost; indecisive, indifferent and inconvenient, yes inconvenient as a choice of coat would always be a lottery on such a day. The choice of coat, however, had not been a worry to the figure jogging silently through the woods lost in thought and yet alert to the subtle changes in the shadows of the perfectly planted pines that edged the path and dictated the runner’s destination.

Squirrel was dressed in his customary black running gear: he had once answered an acquaintance who had enquired as to the need for black, with the reply: ‘it’s off black – sort of grey…acts as a camouflage when I’m out in the woods’. Pulled tight around his ears was an ‘off black’ military style skull cap, under which the slightest of glimpses of ginger hair could be seen. He enjoyed the solitude of the woods, a place to think, only occasionally interrupted when he would startle a walker or someone walking a dog…they just couldn’t hear him coming. He had always had a strange attraction towards woods.

He was running and thinking…not by way of demonstrating, contrary to popular belief, that men can multitask: but because he was mentally reflecting on the brief that his current client had tasked him with. This was one of those clients that it was hard to say no to in fact you probably would not want to say no to! The brief had been given to Squirrel by his handler ‘Preacher’, on a bench overlooking ‘little Switzerland’, several weeks before and the same ‘Preacher’ had made the arrangements for a meet.

In the world of Business Intelligence, certainly at the level that Squirrel operated, clandestine and global, an agent needed a handler. The handler acted, as a conduit for organisations that had market development issues, but for sensitive commercial reasons did not want to be seen to have called in the consultants – ‘insultants’ Squirrel called them – on account that far too many were poorly trained and quite unaware of the dangers that they were putting people in. Good ones were hard to find and were acknowledged specialists who had been field agents for a long time…and the very good ones never advertised the fact.

The meet had been arranged by Preacher…in Aberdeen. ‘Aberdeen!’ exclaimed Squirrel at the time… ‘Why Aberdeen?’

‘Our contact has retail interests in Scotland and let’s be honest any further East and you’ll be in Stavanger…that’s in Norway, Squirrel’, explained Preacher, in what Squirrel thought was excessive geographic precision, give or take a few North Sea oil fields, ‘and’ continued Preacher ‘no one knows your face in Aberdeen’, Nor for that matter any other part of me, amused Squirrel.

‘What’s the problem?’ Squirrel asked

‘Well’ began Preacher, ‘the contact has a small chain of retail stores and also has an on line offering – trouble is that sales are falling and the web site just isn’t delivering, add to that the fact that the accountants are unhappy and the bank manager insist on weekly meetings…it could be a tough nut to crack’

‘and I’m the man for a nut…tough or otherwise’ replied Squirrel, without a hint of irony, which was ironic. ‘what type of business?’

‘Lingerie – up market female underwear’, Preacher detailed

‘I know what lingerie is’, snapped Squirrel, recounting in his mind a recent encounter with a Spanish Basque or was that a Basque made in Spain? ‘ So in essence, just to clarify’, Squirrel began in order to clarify the situation, ‘ this is a complicated brief about knickers with hard nuts’, He paused for effect, ‘sounds more like a medical issue than a commercial one’,

Preacher was less than amused with Squirrels summation,‘ here are the details’, he muttered, passing a brown A4 envelope to Squirrel, before standing and walking away without further comment, several seconds later he turned to issue a final command to Squirrel, ‘the contact’s name is Star’ he said to a now empty bench, save for the empty shell of a hazelnut.

The flight from Bristol to Aberdeen had taken just under two hours, the Jetsteam 41 offering superb early morning views of the snow capped Cairngorms on its long decent into Aberdeen. Squirrel had spent the flight alternating between three thoughts: why had the business suited man in front of him taken so long to complete the Times Sudoko?, creating life scenarios for the other 28 passengers on the flight , based on what they were wearing (this was a short lived pastime as all bar one of the passengers were men and judging by the conversation, clothing and complexion the majority worked on a rig 120 miles off shore), and musing about what would happen if one of the blades of the propeller, now a blur just outside the window, were to break free, if you were lucky, he thought you would have a crash course in free fall – the only sport in the world where you will never learn from a mistake!

Aberdeen airport is the busiest airport in the world…well for helicopters, as he stepped down from the plane and was re associating himself with his artic parker (the plane being so bijou that wearing a coat and sitting in a seat were not compatible concepts) he eyed a long line of oversized wasps coming in to land from the North East, the majority in the red, white and blue of the Bristow fleet.

Squirrel had no difficulty in identifying the contact, in an arrivals area full of boots, beards and quilted shirts: a tall, spiky blonde, slim and elegantly dressed siren stood out like the only gift under the Christmas tree during a retail recession as she visually interrogated the arrivals board. As he approached her Squirrel could not but wonder what was being worn under the long black (or was that dark grey) fur coat, given that she obviously travelled in lingerie.

‘Squirrel’ he said as he stood alongside her and followed her stare toward the arrivals screen, ‘I hear you have a problem in the underwear department’.

Without changing the direction of her sight line, she unhurriedly replied: ‘you come highly recommended Mr Squirrel’, slowly turning to face him during the last few syllables of the sentence; uttered, unmistakeably in the unique accent of a French Canadian.

‘Just Squirrel’ replied Squirrel, in middle-Monmouthshire monotone, without the need for further comment she led the way to the silver Audi RS4 conveniently parked on yellow lines behind the concrete anti terrorist barriers…one day this will make a good book thought Squirrel…

To be continued…


Jonathan H Deacon wears red socks and helps create the businesses of tomorrow at the Newport Business School