how it all started
I was chasing a journalism degree at the University of Florida in the late 60’s and writing a motorsports byline for the student paper, The Alligator. With press pass in hand, I’d cover nearby destinations like Gainesville Raceway and Sebring.

It was in Daytona in the basement of a long gone beach hotel where I stumbled into the forerunner of today’s aftermarket industry trade shows; a couple of table top exhibits that ran the gamut from A to B.

Before the convenience of desktop publishing replaced trade craft with pixels, mainstream ads of the go-go years were provocative due to memorable headlines and copy from creative giants like David Ogilivy and Leo Burnett.

Artwork was commissioned by a four-color wizard here and and a black-and-white warlock over there. Craftsmen hand set headlines in a stick and body copy was cast from molten lead on a Linotype. Precision meant a wooden yardstick rather than a digital micrometer, while turnaround time was measured in days. Guttenberg would have recognized the process.

One day I saw this BSA ad in Cycle World — a classic example of crisp copy and clean composition. The photography features a crowbar-wielding model custom made for the image, while the headline — “out of the box…120 m.p.h.” — leaves nothing to doubt about performance.

Main Street was blocked off then. The popular drink was a flaming Ron Rico 151 Zombie at the Crazy Horse over on Beach Street, and the cops were minting revenue one sucker at a time. No surprise there — some things never change.

The ad really fired my interest in the powerful role advertising plays in our culture. Print was never healthier – Avis was Number One, and Mama Mia was forever associated with Alka Seltzer — the cure for spicy meatballs.

Over the years I’ve photographed Tom Petty for Rolling Stone and covered races in the Bahamas for Runner’s World, but I’ve still hung on to that antique page as a reminder that no matter how clever the technology, it’s the creative process that wakes up the audience and drives the consumer to action.

Bringing a message to life with today’s digital toolbox full of temptations is the most rewarding job I can imagine. From web content to exhibit POP, we create inspired content — advertising, public relations, marketing — for a superior return on investment based on our clients communications needs.