The Balloon
Leigh Curtin-Wilding
This never happened.
Word Count 630
I was six months into a new job on Pepsi's public relations team when I had what seemed like a very good idea. I have a history with those.
It was 1990, and the MTV Video Music Awards were being held at Universal Studios. Coke was sponsoring an outdoor press conference before the show and Pepsi had no presence there. But the Cola Wars being the Cola Wars, Pepsi wasn't about to sit quietly on the sidelines while Coke got the cameras. We had recently signed the rapper MC Hammer and needed to generate buzz.
I knew Pepsi had an aerial team and two hot-air balloons. Then it hit me: "What if Hammer arrives at the press conference in the Diet Pepsi balloon?"
The room went quiet. Photographers would have to point their cameras skyward. We'd have the picture nobody else had. Every TV newsroom would want it.
Heads nodded. By that afternoon, I was on a plane to California.
Hammer's older brother and manager, Louis Burrell, handled everything. I explained the idea. He looked me straight in the eye.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "But Hammer don't like heights, baby."
What followed were several hours of shuttle diplomacy under the California sun. A black town car ferried me up the hill to Universal's executive offices, then back down to Team Hammer at the hotel. Up the hill to explain we'd barely leave the ground. Back down to promise the balloon would rise no higher than the flagpoles.
Finally, Louis nodded. "Okay, baby. He'll do it."
Victory, I thought.
Waiting for me at the top of the hill was Universal's director of risk management.
"I'm sorry," she said. "We're not insured for an event like this."
Then, something that sounded remarkably like my voice swaggered, "I can cover it."
Out of my purse came my green American Express card. I threw it down like a winning poker hand. It made a tiny plastic click against the wood. She looked at the card.
Member Since 1989.
Then she looked at me.
If she'd said, "You've got to be fucking kidding me," I couldn't have argued.
Instead, she laughed. "You're a woman after my own heart," she said. "I still don't think we can do it... but let me make a call."
She was already dialing when I stepped into the hallway. I waited there, still sweating through a stained blouse and a linen suit that looked like I’d slept in it. Then I heard them.
Flip-flop.
The balloon crew, coming down the hall to find me.
"Good news," I said. "We're doing it."
They looked at me. Then they looked past me, out the window. The trees were bending sideways. The Santa Ana winds had arrived. Forty-mile-an-hour gusts.
I called Louis.
"It's off."
"Too windy?"
"Too windy."
"Okay, baby. Nice try."
That night, I sat alone at the MTV Video Music Awards looking like a woman who’d spent the day trying to sell a hot-air balloon entrance.
Nobody expected MC Hammer to win Best Dance Video in the show’s grand finale. Madonna's Vogue was the favorite.
Suddenly, to the strains of "U Can't Touch This," Hammer and his dancers bounded onto the stage, each carrying a Diet Pepsi. Then Hammer stopped the action.
"Wait a minute. Hey, hey... hold on... hold on..."
He looked out at the audience.
"Drink up!"
The cans went up. The audience cheered.
Later that night, a Pepsi executive found me at an after-party.
"Great job."
"What are you talking about?" I said. "I didn't hand him those cans."
He shrugged. "Nobody needs to know that."
Thirty-six years later, you can still find MC Hammer on YouTube, cans in the air, telling the world to drink up.
Diet Pepsi got its big moment.
The balloon never left the ground.
Leigh is a recovering public relations person and former Cola Warrior. She’s made a living with words for more than four decades—much of it writing “corporate fiction.” She teaches graduate Writing for Health at Boston University and publishes a Substack, Wilding. Three of her essays were recognized in the Writer’s Digest 95th Annual Writing Competition. She lives in Rhode Island.