How do you choose a person of the Century?

Well if you're developing a fund raiser to celebrate the first century of Scouting, then first and foremost, you need an outstanding Scout.  No problem there.  You have an incredible abundance of folks to choose from. Eagle Scouts alone have become presidents, governors, war heroes, Supreme Court Justices, and astronauts including 11 of the 12 men who walked on the moon. 

So the Boy Scouts Los Angeles Area Council tried to find a person who exemplified the spirit of scouting.  Someone with a wide breadth of knowledge and experience in a variety of fields.  How better to represent the many areas of achievement rewarded by Scouting with merit badges and advancement in rank. 

The person they decided on was University of Southern California president Steven B. Sample.  As our CEO and Boy Scouts Los Angeles Area Council Board member, Suzanne Marks explained, "He best personified the variety of skills that Scouting has taught for over a hundred years.  Steven Sample is an inventor, an educator, a business leader, an author and a Boy Scout.” 

To develop her campaign, a mix of traditional and electronic media, Suzanne relied on two of her own Scouts at Pasadena Advertising, Life Scout and V.P. Creative Tony Nino, and Eagle Scout, Creative Director, David Ensz.  “I wanted a design a basic look with a balanced focus to honor Dr. Sample and also pay homage to the first century of Scouting,” explained David Ensz, “the muted earth tones were a reminder that camping is an essential part of the Scouting experience.”  “Although crimson and gold seemed to be more prominently displayed among the USC alumni,” laughed Tony Nino.

Dr. Sample is the esteemed author of the Los Angeles Times Best selling book, “The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership,” and a highly regarded professor of “The Art and Adventure of Leadership,” His extraordinary efforts in propelling academics at the University of Southern California are world-renowned; his incredible ability to generate contributions to that fine institution of higher learning has resulted in one of the most successful fundraising campaigns in the history of higher education.

Fittingly Dr. Sample’s Person of the Century celebration raised over $600,000 for Scouting in Los Angeles. In this economy, that was an achievement that more than exceeded expectations.  The Los Angeles Area Council is honored and grateful for the contributions of all our supporters.

Success doesn’t take a miracle in Old Pasadena.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I admit I am biased. I am a Pasadena Advertising owner and the chairman of the Old Pasadena Marketing District (OPMD). However, I’ve heard more than my share of comments about Old Pasadena leading a charmed life, and I think it’s time for a little reality check.
Times are hard, and doing business anywhere is a challenge, but as far as Old Pasadena is concerned, the rumors of the economy getting better seem to be true. Like anywhere else, to take full advantage of that, you not only have to work harder, you have to work smarter, and in Old Pas, we also work together. Cooperation is what gave Old Pasadena its start in the late ‘80s, and it’s what is keeping us ahead of the curve today.
This was a very good Holiday season for our 22-block district. Even though we don’t have all the figures in from all the stores, we can see that our garages were consistently at full capacity, unique visitors to our web site nearly doubled from last year, and merchants have come to us with thanks and stories.

Marci Christianson, proprietor of LulaMae, an award-winning Old Pasadena gift boutique saw a dramatic increase in profits over last year. She is not only a smart merchant but also an active marketer. Since OPMD research had predicted that virtually all our customers would be spending less, she changed her product line to take full advantage the situation. To attract more customers, she participated in all our holiday events beginning with the Halloween, Trick’’n’’Treat weekend. To maximize her visibility with limited ad funds, she developed a web site as fun and quirky as her store. She linked it to the OPMD site, offered on-line coupons from both sites, then gave the coupon discount to all her customers, whether they knew about them or not. “I see the look in their eyes when they get the added discount. I know they’ll visit my site now, and they’ll come back to the store.”

Andrea Auman, owner of Crowned Studio salon not only experienced a 35% increase in business, she did it overcoming an additional challenge. In the middle of the worst recession in anyone’s memory, she decided to move and start up her business all over again. “It was the best possiblee timing as far as I was concerned, “she remarks, “I knew my best customers would follow me, and with Pasadena rents at an all time low, I knew I could find a great place in a great city." Andrea not only took full advantage of the OPMD web connections and events to bring in customers, she started up networking and cross-promotional events of her own. To maximize her electronic presence Andrea links to her partners and fellow merchants from her home page and maintains Facebook and Twitter accounts and a blog.
As diverse, and sometimes eccentric, as the merchants of Old Pasadena are, all of our success stories share this aspect of working harder, working smarter and working together. No magic potions (that we know of), no lucky Leprechauns, and no behind-the-scenes buyouts or bailouts have been employed to give us the upper hand. Just Good research, good marketing and good business. The Old Pasadena Management District is proud to be the hub of this activity, and is working hard to keep giving our merchants and business owners ahead of the game.

To Dream The Practical Dream

Every product is a dream. A car is a dream of freedom and power. Lipstick is glamour. Running shoes are fitness and health. A Mac is… better than a PC. But how do you show the Scouting dream? And how do you tell the world?

The answer to both questions: a float in the Tournament of Roses Parade.

The Boy Scouts of America faced a dilemma. It was their 100th anniversary – a time to celebrate a hundred years of building character and responsibility in citizens and leaders alike. It was a perfect time to kick off the next century of Scouting. But they had to be practical. The economy was down. Donations were down. Programs that kids depend on were threatened. Yet the right message could help alleviate that. It The Boy Scouts could show the promise of Scouting in just the right way, people might see the value of investing in it. More kids might join. The trick is to find a way to make the most impact on the maximum number of people in the least expensive way possible.

Participation in the Rose Parade was the perfect choice. Where else could you get three minutes of National Broadcast time on ALL the major networks for free? Sure it costs money to produce the float, upwards of a hundred thousand dollars, but that’s well less than half of the cost of most commercials on network television. And when you calculate placement costs of $250,000 per 30 second commercial, three minutes is equal to a million and a half dollars worth of airtime for free. Plus there are a multitude of other hidden benefits for contributors as well as Scouts themselves.

The float is decorated almost entirely by volunteers, and there’s a waiting list of people who want to volunteer. In many cases, the volunteers, or the companies who donate to Scouting, pay for the privilege. It is a meaningful way for companies to reward select employees, and corporate executives get an opportunity to participate in the many Rose Bowl activities, including prime seating for the parade and attendance at the Rose Bowl itself. Luckily, this year, that privilege extended to attendance at the BCS game Thursday, January 7th.  It made "contributing" an even greater perceived value.
The boy scouts took this concept a step farther and used the opportunity to reward Eagle Scouts with the opportunity to march in the parade. The world wide audience not only got to see the symbolic representation of Scouting, they experience the pride of Scouts in their accomplishments. To make matters even better, the Boy Scouts' Centennial Celebration float won the Pasadena Tournament of Roses’ National Award.

The eagle scouts, even after 5 ¼ miles of marching, still stood tall as they carried the American Flags and flags of all 50 states in the precession. The proudly carried representations of all the merit badges that Scouts can earn. And the float itself symbolized the excitement that lies at the center of the tradition of Scouting. And the Scouts aboard the float, boys and girls alike, were excellent representatives, canoers smiled at waved at the cheering crowds. Riders pedaled their seed-encrusted bikes, and a scout still slid down a working zip line between two trees.

After almost a year after the Boy Scouts Board of Directors (including Marketing Committee head, Suzanne Marks, our CEO) had approved the initial designs, and almost 8 months of tireless fund raising, the Centennial Float had taken huge strides in accomplishing the Boy Scouts’ mission. New contributors had been brought into the Scouting organization, the centennial year celebration had gotten off to a memorable start, and Scouts all over Southern California had been given the memory of a lifetime.

For sheer advertising value, an award-winning symbol of Scouting excellence and adventure had been seen by over a million people along the parade route in Pasadena, and by over 40 million TV viewers in the US, and in more than 150 countries worldwide. The hundreds of volunteers and Scouts who worked on the project took home a special pride that they shared with family and friends. For Scouting it was a dream come true.

The next century of Scouting is off to a grand beginning.

Finding a Voice for Every Person

When I was asked to write a congratulatory ad for a client being honored by The City of Hope, I was a bit dubious. I expected it to be one of those tired, boilerplate, “Congratulations. Job Well Done (insert name here)” pieces.  Luckily, it didn’t quite turn out that way.  My client was receiving The City of Hope's "Spirit of Life Award" for years of tireless fund raising efforts for this world-renowned cancer center. By all accounts, he had done a spectacular job.

More remarkably, in the middle of his tenure, his wife contracted a particularly virulent form of cancer and he was forced to discover first hand how skilled and caring these physicians were. His wife's treatment was long and painful, but together, family and doctors united to wrestle it into remission.  Their story had a deep impact on family, co-workers and friends alike.  They all wanted to express personal congratulations for his award along with intensely personal appreciation, admiration and affection.  They had stories they had to tell.  The more I was drawn into the story, the more I felt obliged to make each of the ads not only individual but also memorable and compelling. Clearly, boilerplate solutions were no longer even a consideration.

The inspiration for the tone of these ads came from a seminal statement by former City of Hope executive director Samuel Golter: "There is no profit in curing the body if in the process we destroy the soul."

City of Hope is a research, treatment and teaching center dedicated to defeating cancer. They talk about the disease as if it were a living, breathing enemy. They are painfullly aware that while cancer itself is deadly and debilitating, its very treatment wrecks havoc on the minds and bodies of patients.  To alleviate that, the physicians here, have created a culture that strives to both save lives and preserve the spirits of their patients and families. 

Not surprisingly, all of the individuals who asked me to help give them a voice wanted to say so much that they couldn’t fit it all into the few lines allowed by the constraints of a simple ad.  What I had to do was distill all the stories and emotions down to the bare essence of their emotional connection to their husband, or father, or son, or friend, or coworker. 

Of course, this is the essence of advertising, condensing the message of the client into a few powerful images, and it is a goal that any artist can relate to.  It’s not unlike the task of Robert Russin, the creator of the Spirit of Life fountain that welcomes families and patients to the City of Hope. He had to find a way to express a sense of hope without any false promises of guaranteed cures.  He chose a vision of joy.

As a writer, and as a son who lost a mother to cancer, I felt a special bond with these friends and family.  I was also filled with a sense of obligation to make their sentiments powerful enough to reach out and touch their audience.  I scheduled lengthy interviews to serve as the basis for each person’s ad.  Their stories and emotions served as both inspiration and the foundation for the individual voice 
for each ad. 

At the celebratory dinner, virtually every family member and friend thanked me for being so true to their meaning. Some shook my hand.  Some hugged me.  But the face that I remember most was a co-worker who took me aside and said, “When we first read your copy in our office, the ads from his children and his brothers and sisters made us all laugh.  The personal note from his wife to her doctor made us all silent.  But when we read the ad from his wife to him, I had to leave the room to cry.” And she thanked me.

But that wasn’t me.  That was them.  They made her laugh.  They made her think.  And it was his wife who made her cry.  All I did was help them find their voice.  I was honored that they’d asked me.  It was an assignment I will never forget.

What a Ride!

Sunday the 22nd, offered up a beautiful morning for a bike ride.  The air was clear and crisp.  The traffic was light.  The weather, gorgeous.  It felt good to be on the road.  Not to mention that at the end of the ride, I would get to see our billboard for the Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension.

The Foothill Extension, a section of light rail line bogged down in a bureaucratic morass for over six years, had finally gotten the go ahead. It had taken a lot of work and a lot of patience.  The Foothill Extension Authority, mayors, communities up and down the foothills, and their allies had put in countless hours to make this dream a reality.  Finally, the long-neglected San Gabriel Valley was about to get some relief from hours of infuriating, congestion-clogged freeways. Our agency had played a small role in those battles for relief, and had helped people in the valley make their voices heard.
Now Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design had been chosen to make the long-awaited news public with a series of six billboards. We backed the boards up with souvenir packets of postcards featuring the artwork for each station’s billboards.

We designed one board for each of the six new locations along the route featuring architectural renderings of the site.  The first to get it’s own board was the Monrovia station.
When I got to the site, the board sat all alone at the south end of a sprawling, virtually empty parking lot.  The day before, the lot had been packed with people and politicians, reporters and dignitaries. Some were there to celebrate the prospect of relief from years of unyielding, bumper-to-bumper rush hours.  Others were there to finally claim their role in a hard fought victory over substantial odds.  Some were there to weasel out a little credit for which they had no right whatsoever. But, that’s politics.
I liked visiting the empty lot a whole lot better.
Off to the south east side of the lot, I saw the long forgotten Monrovia rail station that I had first seen over a decade ago, as it was being closed down and boarded up. Now it would have a second chance at life as a part of the new Monrovia Gold Line station complex.  That made this one little victory all that much sweeter.

I can’t wait to see it restored, and I’m sure there are more than a few long-time Monrovia residents who will rejoice to see it come back into use again. 
Every once in a while, advertising benefits people and whole communities. This is one of those times.  We in Pasadena only played a small role in this battle, but once we had been invited to join in the fight, we hung on for the whole ride.
I couldn’t be prouder of the end result.
________________________

This is the first of two entries in my blog about a month that has been both exhausting and exhilarating. Being a part of the advertising effort in the Foothill Extension fight allowed our agency to make a lasting impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of San Gabriel Valley residents. Advertisers are rarely offered that kind of chance, but after six years of wrangling, we have finally gotten a glimpse of a future we helped create.
Advertising is widely perceived as fun, and much of the time it is.  And challenging, which it also is.  And frustrating, which it is more often than any of us would care to admit. Yet very rarely, it can be deeply meaningful and rewarding.  In the last few weeks, we have been lucky enough to have two such moments. This was only the first.

The Flies Have It

I've been too busy this week to breath without an appointment, but I just had to share this.

In Frankfurt am Main, Germany, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the crowds were stunned, and more than a bit amused when Jung von Matt unleashed an advertising air force comprised of 200 banner-carrying, marauding house flies. To promote the Eichborn publishing house, von Matt attached banners to the house flies with a bit of wax and set them free inside the Convention Center (Messe Frankfurt) to fly about at will.  



Since the beginning of the year, von Matt has worked on relaunching the corporate identity of Eichborn - a literary publisher. They came up with a new branding vocabulary, a revised logo, color palette and redesigned book covers. The needed a breakthrough launch for the new ID, and the best place for that was at the Frankfurt Book Fair.  But if that was the classic location, the promotion was most decidedly not: A house fly air force. Von Matt and his team meticulously applied microscopic amounts of wax onto 200 house flies, attached an ultralight banner and set their buzzing waxworks free at the fair.

The banners were only a few centimetres across, but they played havoc with the beleaguered flies piloting skills. The extra weight kept the flies at a lower altitude and forced them to land more often. Bad for the flies, great for the promotion.  The encumbered flies were forced to spend most of their flying time at eye level.  Of course whenever and wherever they were forced to land, the banner was clearly visible. Naturally, in the air their zig-zagging flight paths attracted attention because of the flies' rapid movements.

I have nothing but high praise for this innovative and eye-catching launch.  However, as I have often explained to my clients: What is brilliant for one client, could well be disastrous for another.  For Eichborn publishers, this was brilliant.  For the Four Seasons restaurant, ... Wayall... maybe not so much.

A tip of the hat and flick of the swatter to Jung von Matt.

NEVER say “Yes” to a stranger.

While this is not exactly about advertising or marketing, it does revolve around honesty in communication. Yesterday, I wasted an entire afternoon arguing with aggressive, obnoxious phone agents, all because one of my employees answered a question, “yes.” Avoid that, and you can save hours of hassles and/or hundreds, even thousands of dollars.

Before I begin, check your last phone bill.  Really.  Do it now.  Right now.  Seriously.  Specifically page 6 or 7, listed under “OEM charges."  I’ll wait. See that charge for $40? That’s bogus.  You never authorized it. 
 

Yet, there it is.  Right there on your phone bill, and it’s probably been there for months.  Just a small enough charge that you wouldn’t notice it at first, yet substantial enough to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges from unsuspecting customers.

Lemme ‘splain.

Let’s say someone calls you one day (or has already called you) to “check on your address,” or ”update their directory” or see “who handles your phone service.” Sounds innocent enough. “Are you still at 601 main street,” the disembodied voice would ask.  “Yes,” you would answer, because, what the hell, it is your company address.  And that’s all it takes.  It’s over.  It’s done.  Congratulations you just bought into a bucket of headaches, and expensive headaches at that.  The caller probably went on with a number of Yes/No questions, because it’s less suspicious, and it provides them with a variety of intonations that they can use later.
“Use how?” Glad you asked.
They record your “yes.”  And then they concoct a completely different conversation, record it and cast you as the star.  Their recording is of a sales call.  They insert your “yes” as proof of your authorization to charge you.  They will even play it back to you should you call to complain about a service you never ordered.  Their version of the call may sound something like this. 

"Hi I’m calling from (for instance) More YellowPages Online, and AT&T has authorized us to provide your company with added visibility online.  Are you authorized to make decisions about your phone service?
[Your voice] Yes.
For only $40 a month we can promote your company to web visitors around the world. Are you interested?
[Your voice] Yes.
Are you authorized to approve this charge?
[Your voice] Yes.
Congratulations.  You have made a wise investment. Starting this month, we will charge your AT&T account for $40.00 per month.  Do you understand?
[Your voice] Yes.
And you approve?
[Your voice] Yes.
Thank you very much."
They could have just as easily asked.
"Will you please bend over and grab your ankles.
[Your voice] Yes.
You understand, we will not either pull your hair or kiss you.
[Your voice] Yes.
Good bye."
Doesn’t that sound vaguely like fraud? Flagrant fraud? That’s because it is. And it is well known.  If you were to Google “More YellowPages Online scam,” you would get 550,000 results, many of which you will recognize as your own experience.

Of course, if you have a couple of hours to spare, you can get all the charges reversed.  But the hope of these online thieves is that you will not notice. 
How do you avoid it.  Simple, hang up.  Or if you have time and want to have fun with them, answer their questions precisely without using the word “Yes.”
"Is this your address?
It is.
Is this your phone number?
My phone number is correct.
Is this your company?
That is the name my company does business by."
(or just keep giving them your web address… they hate that)
Save money.  Save time.  Save headaches.  Save “yeses” for people you know.
Say “No” to fraud.
Never say “yes” to a stranger.