George Street, Sydney is the commercial heart of Australia. All its connecting streets — major roads with names that were given before Australia was even official — are host to countless department stores and shopping arcades. If anything can be bought on the island, you can find it near George Street.
Towering above the microcosm of the Australian retail industry are the skyscrapers. The head office of every major Australian company and brand. The banks are all accounted for, competing office towers that eye each other guardedly. The mining companies are there too, plus there’s the Vegemite Building, Hahn Square, Bonds Plaza. Anyone who does business in Australia is on George Street, and last Sunday I was there too.
This didn’t actually happen, but I was walking down the street with my wife, touching butts, when a woman with too much makeup and dressed in the most precise of grey suits approached us. She introduced herself as Leslie.
“I represent the head of research for a big five cereal company,” she said. “You’re Brad, right? Of bradism.com”
I nodded.
“Brad, you’ve been identified by our marketing department and our breakfast engineers as a highly commended candidate. How would you like to design your own cereal?”
“What kind of cereal?” I asked, not questioning the legitimacy, only thinking of the combinations.
“This is a greenfields project. You can come up with anything you desire. We want you to come up with the perfect cereal, the next iconic brand.”
As always, Vanessa encouraged me. That afternoon we sat in a workshop at a table lined with executives, engineers and scientists all in expensive suits adorned with silk ties or scarves. I was intimidated, but Vanessa’s reassuring look gave me the self belief I needed.
We began to speak cereal. We covered flakes, oats, bran and fibre. Dried fruit versus protein pieces. Different kind of nuts. The balance of healthiness versus flavour. We went late into the night, refining, revising, drinking coffee after coffee. Vanessa fell asleep on the couch and still we persisted. The city around us, all George Street’s institutional skyscrapers blinked out and went dark as the Earth beneath us blocked the sun’s light. On Monday morning, when the birds were chirping in Hyde Park and the breakfast show hosts began arriving at Martin Place we finally had a design. I called it, “Brad Cereal.” The artists from marketing started sketching drafts of the box. The new recipe was taken to the kitchen-lab where the first ever test batch of Brad Cereal was to be made. It was only appropriate that it was served to us at breakfast time.
Thirty-something executive lined up along a boardroom table, many of the men with their ties flipped over their shoulder. The bowls were presented, covered. The jugs of milk brought in. All waiting to experience the perfect, ultimate cereal.
The CEO was the first to unveil the contents of his bowl, the rest of us waiting politely. His eyes widened. The rest couldn’t handle their suspense. They scrambled to open their bowls, to behold the cereal inside. Some gasped, some cursed. Leslie looked at me, speechless, unblinking. The CEO stood, his wrinkled face pink-red under his thinning silver hair. He huffed in air, preparing for a rage. When he’d sucked in enough oxygen he bellowed, “You idiot! You’ve designed Weet Bix.”
I roused Vanessa and she smiled at me. We held hands as the lift traversed down the fifty-four floors and we walked out of the lobby of the Uncle Tobys Tower and into the near-spring morning sunlight.
