As long as the attitude is to only show the sheet metal, then

Host: The advertising agency was almost empty by midnight, save for the low hum of the air conditioner and the faint buzz of fluorescent lights that flickered like tired eyelids. The windows revealed a city skyline soaked in neon, streaks of red and white from passing cars slicing through the dark.

The conference room was a battlefield of coffee cups, crumpled sketches, and half-eaten sandwiches. Posters of sleek cars lined the walls — all chrome, speed, and smiles — but none of them felt alive.

Jack sat at the table, sleeves rolled up, his grey eyes cold and analytical as he stared at the latest design mockup. The car on the screen glistened like a weapon — flawless, soulless.

Jeeny stood near the whiteboard, her arms crossed, eyes heavy with frustration. Her long black hair caught the faint light as she turned toward him.

Jeeny: “You can’t keep selling dreams through metal, Jack. This isn’t advertising anymore — it’s engineering with Photoshop.”

Jack: “And what’s wrong with that? People buy what they can see, not what they feel.”

Host: Her laugh was sharp, dry — the sound of someone who’d been patient for too long.

Jeeny: “Jerry Della Femina once said, ‘As long as the attitude is to only show the sheet metal, then automobile advertising will continue to be wretched.’ And he was right. We keep selling the body, never the soul.”

Jack: “You’re romanticizing again. The soul doesn’t sell. Horsepower does. Price tags do. Flash does.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. Connection sells. Emotion sells. The moment when a father teaches his daughter how to drive, or a woman drives away from her old life for the first time — that’s what people remember. Not whether the engine has twelve cylinders.”

Jack: “And yet, Jeeny, every buyer still asks the same question — ‘What’s the mileage?’ They don’t want poetry. They want performance.”

Host: The light flickered above them, momentarily bathing the room in brief darkness, as if the electricity itself disagreed with his cynicism.

Jeeny: “Performance without purpose is vanity. You think a car is just a machine? It’s a vessel of human stories. Every scratch, every worn seat tells a life. But we hide all that. We polish it until it’s dead.”

Jack: “You sound like a priest blessing a transmission.”

Jeeny: “And you sound like a mechanic pretending to be a prophet.”

Host: Their eyes met — a collision of worlds, one forged in logic, the other in longing.

Jack: “You think the world wants meaning? They want escape. They want to believe that buying this machine will make them somebody. That’s the truth we sell. The illusion, not the story.”

Jeeny: “Then we’re no better than magicians selling mirrors.”

Jack: “At least magicians make people smile.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked louder than usual, each second stretching the space between their words. Outside, a car engine revved — distant, real, alive.

Jeeny: “Do you remember that old Volkswagen ad from the ’60s? The one that just said ‘Think Small’? It was simple, honest. It didn’t scream power. It whispered humanity. That campaign changed everything — because it respected people’s intelligence.”

Jack: “That was a different era. Back when people had attention spans longer than fifteen seconds.”

Jeeny: “And whose fault is that, Jack? Ours. We trained them to expect noise, not meaning. Every time we replaced a story with a spec sheet, we shrunk their imagination.”

Host: Jack leaned back, his chair creaking under his weight, his fingers running through his hair. He looked tired — not just of the project, but of himself.

Jack: “You think meaning sells in a world that scrolls faster than it breathes? People don’t even look up from their phones long enough to see their own reflections in a car window.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe we stop chasing them and start reminding them. Make them feel again. That’s what Della Femina meant — stop showing the metal. Show the life inside it.”

Host: She picked up a marker and drew a rough sketch on the board — a small car, surrounded by figures: a family, a lone traveler, a street musician playing beside it.

Jeeny: “This. This is what we sell. Not horsepower. Not chrome. The road. The story. The human heart beating behind the wheel.”

Jack: “And if that doesn’t move product?”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the product isn’t worth moving.”

Host: Her words hung in the air like smoke, heavy, impossible to ignore.

Jack: “You talk like someone who’s forgotten this is business, not art.”

Jeeny: “And you talk like someone who’s forgotten business needs belief. Look at Apple, Jack. They don’t sell devices. They sell emotion — identity — rebellion in a glass screen. If a phone can do that, why can’t a car?”

Jack: “Because emotion doesn’t guarantee profit.”

Jeeny: “Neither does emptiness.”

Host: Silence again. The rain started outside, tapping against the window, rhythmic, almost meditative. Jack’s eyes softened as he watched it slide down the glass — the reflection of the car ad glowing faintly beside it.

Jack: “You know… when I was a kid, my father used to drive this old Ford pickup. It had a dent in the door and a rattling dashboard. But I loved that sound. I used to fall asleep to it. That thing was pure metal and noise — and yet, it felt alive.”

Jeeny: “Because it wasn’t just metal, Jack. It was memory.”

Host: His lips curved — not a smile, but the shadow of one.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the wretched part isn’t the metal. It’s us — the people who forgot what it meant.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. The moment we start treating the product as sacred and the people as statistics, we lose both.”

Host: The storm outside grew heavier, lightning flashing faintly across the sky, illuminating their weary faces — two silhouettes framed by stubborn ideals.

Jack: “So what do we do, Jeeny? Rewrite the campaign? Tell the board we’re selling stories instead of cars?”

Jeeny: “We tell them we’re not selling cars at all. We’re selling freedom, nostalgia, love, rebellion — whatever the road means to the soul that takes it.”

Host: He stood slowly, gathering the mockups into a pile, then tossed them into the trash bin. The sound of paper hitting metal was sharp, cleansing.

Jack: “You realize they’ll hate this pitch.”

Jeeny: “Then we’ve done something right.”

Host: A low rumble of thunder filled the room, followed by a brief silence that felt like renewal. The rain washed against the windows, erasing the reflections of the old designs — leaving only their faces, watching the world outside.

Jack: “You know, maybe Della Femina wasn’t criticizing the ads. Maybe he was criticizing us — the way we stopped believing in what we’re supposed to inspire.”

Jeeny: “Then let’s start believing again.”

Host: The lights dimmed as the building’s power flickered, leaving them in a faint glow of neon blue. Outside, a single car rolled through the wet streets, its headlights cutting through the dark, like a heartbeat reborn.

Jeeny smiled, soft and resolute.

Jeeny: “There. That’s your ad. No slogans. No specs. Just that moment — the sound of rain, the hum of life, and someone driving toward something real.”

Host: Jack nodded, his expression quiet but alive again, the first spark of belief flickering behind his tired eyes.

Jack: “Maybe… that’s the kind of success worth selling.”

Host: And in that still hour, as rain met metal outside, the wretchedness that had haunted their work began to dissolve — replaced by something fragile but true: the rebirth of meaning.

And somewhere in the city, a new story was already starting its engine.