Spring Break in New Jersey #4: In Which James V Lafferty Invents Happiness.

Sometimes location is not enough so the conscientious land promoter or real estate developer needs something extra. Back in 1937, an 18-foot-tall statue of Paul Bunyan appeared in Bemidji. The statue was built to promote a carnival. This being Minnesota, contractor Cyril Dickinson didn’t think anything unusual about the assignment.

About 40 years before this, Henry Flagler began building an entire railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway, to bring people from the urban East down to Florida, where he was developing resorts and communities all along the state’s Atlantic shore. The FECRR is still in business (just not that of promoting real estate).

And in 1881 or so, most of the area south of Atlantic City was pretty much dune grass, bayberry bushes and scrub pine...not too appealing for someone wanting to sell vacation lots to serve the increasingly well-off middle classes of New York and New Jersey. This particular “someone” was James Vincent de Paul Lafferty, Jr:

...born in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1856 of prosperous Irish immigrant parents from Dublin, Ireland. Lafferty, who grew up to be an engineer and inventor, came into possession of a number of sandy lots in the South Atlantic City area. They were cut off from the frame houses and mule-drawn street cars of Atlantic City, by a deep tidal creek. Only at low tide could anyone make his way down to the sands of his properties.

Naturally, the idea he lit upon was to build a giant elephant. Wouldn’t that be your first thought? According to the good people at LucytheElephant.org (“Lucy” being the giant elephant's name), Lafferty then:

...enlisted the aid of a Philadelphia architect named William Free to design this unusual structure he felt would attract visitors and property buyers to his holdings...Lafferty always claimed that before the work was finished the cost skyrocketed to $38,000.

The United States Patent Office thought this an outstandingly clever idea (and it was!) So the USPO granted Lafferty a 17-year patent giving him the exclusive right to make, use or sell animal-shaped buildings. Which he did at least two more times.

Lafferty could not create his way to real estate success – unlike Flagler, the elephant’s inventor died broke. But he left behind a happy-making piece of Americana in Margate, NJ, which has been preserved by people who love it...and it’s just as eye-popping as you think. Sayeth Lucy’s promo flyer:

...Climb up to the museum in her belly on a spiral staircase in her legs!

...View the ocean through her eyeballs!

...Get a spectacular 360° view from her howdah high in the sky!

...See out her posterior window, aka “the pane in her butt!” (Really.)

Everything you ever want to know about one of America's premier early advertising promotions is here. The story of Lucy's great paint job, by Alpine Painting, is here. And consider this: Any real estate mogul can build a great Facebook page. It's not even in the same galaxy as your classic 65-foot elephant.

Spring Break in New Jersey #3: Start Industrial Advertising History at 16 Spruce Street.

While visiting this part of the country, it's easy to see plenty about Broadway and the arts. Even immigrant history is a hot ticket – one insider's tip is the Tenement Museum in Orchard Street, NYC.

Across the river in New Jersey, though, there's B2B adventure if you're open to it.

In 2004, when Rachelle Gabardine wrote about industrial-era Paterson, she managed to sound disapproving, as New York Times writers often do when portraying America's Machine Age. At least she was descriptive:

In Paterson's Great Falls Historic District, the top of No. 16 Spruce Street has white letters, 2 to 3 feet high, march 170 feet across, announcing the Paterson Silk Machinery Exchange. The building, which is now transitional housing, was a 19th-century factory that was home to the exchange from 1928 to 1956, and earlier housed the Rogers Locomotive Works. The exchange reconditioned machines key to the city's textile industry, which at its height comprised 800 silk operations...

In fact, from an industrial perspective, Paterson's got a bad reputation – strikes and factory closures and company failures make for grim reading. Still, for business-to-business marketers and advertising pros, there's formative stuff. Samuel Colt's Paterson experience, where he first invented and produced revolving pistols, rifles and shotguns...plus the early advertising that went with it – that's here in Paterson.

Rogers locomotives, among other Paterson-built steam engines, wandered in and out of American history (the Transcontinental railroad, the Panama Canal).

How about the birth of Big Pharma – especially in OTC? Here's Unguentine ointment (remember that one?) and Fungacetin (really) and Phor-A-Sole and – wait for it – Suavinol! It's a brander's heaven or hell.

Wright built aircraft engines here, including the one that powered “The Spirit of St Louis.” Wright's marketing and sales helped build America's reputation as the world's preeminent industrial power.

Paterson has big, dark spaces. Another Times writer described the city in 2002:

...this bleak but battling community, hard by the Passaic River, that was forged by the Industrial Age, ruined by its demise and is still reeling from a century of labor strife, racial tensions, high crime rates and joblessness...

It has plenty of creativity in its bloodstream too. Welcome to Paterson – home of the Silk Machinery Exchange and other links to the history of Industrial Advertising.

Spring Break in New Jersey #2: Staying with Family, We Avoid Problems. Outstanding!

Thanks to Rachel Baron and Alison Bond, we’re able to take a complete pass on certain kinds of vacation challenges.

I’m talking about the challenges of having to stay in a bad motel. How do I know? I have researched the “10 Warning Signs of Motel Misery.” Let me list ‘em for you:

1. The free mint on the pillow starts moving when you come close to it.
2. The “complimentary” morning paper tells you that President Kennedy has died.
3. The bed’s Magic Fingers® vibration is supplied by a foot-powered bicycle pump.
4. You have to wait ‘til the guy next door is done with the towel so you can use it.
5. There is still some yellow tape on the doorway – the kind they put around nuclear accidents.
6. The pictures are artfully placed to cover up recent earthquake damage.
7. There’s a chalk outline in the bed when you pull back the covers.
8. You have to move the body in order to plug in your phone charger.
9. The only TV station you can get is a current events talk channel hosted by Eleanor Roosevelt.
10. The wake-up call comes courtesy of a great big guy with a shaved head.

Seriously, we’re looking forward to the visit – going to enjoy ourselves big time. Thank you in advance to everyone in North Bergen…

Spring Break in New Jersey #1: Of Death and Crocuses and Custom Truck Bodies.

You do know we’re taking a Spring Break, away from Houston, right? Last year it was a 10-day cruise to the Panama Canal. Remember that? For 2011, it’s off to a destination that is just as foreign: New Jersey.

We’ll be visiting Rachel Baron and Alison Bond in North Bergen, NJ. I realized I hadn’t posted you about this specifically. So when Rachel called to let me know that “…the crocuses were all dead,” I thought I better catch you up.

Look for Barbara Nytes-Baron and me just across the river in North Bergen in a couple weeks. We have been…alerted about the oddball weather in that part of the world in this time period. Alison mentioned that it could get up into the 70s – that’s Fahrenheit. I told ‘em, I thought that was pretty impressive but that as far as we were concerned, the 70s is so last week.

That’s when Rachel mentioned the crocuses. Planted in various parts of the outdoor realm of their house, they have apparently fallen victim to this afternoon’s hailstorm. Dead, dead, dead. “Hail storm?”

“We hardly ever get hail storms in April. Really,” Rachel answered.

I’ve done some research on North Bergen, I’m looking forward to immersing myself in the culture. I pointed out one discovery to the girls – all the elected officials (the Mayor and four City Commissioners) all have Italian-American last names: Sacco, Cabrera, Ferraro, Gargiulo, Pascual. It’ll be such a change for us, even if I’m doing Commissioners Cabrera and Pascual an injustice. Those could be Latino and Portuguese respectively.

Rachel pointed out, “They keep the streets clean, we keep voting for them.” Fair enough.

We’re genuinely looking forward to this and I will make every attempt to avoid embarrassing [1] the people who are opening their arms to us in hospitality and [2] Barbara.

Meantime, you’re probably wondering about the sign in the photo, the one that says “Highway Body Works?” I put North Bergen, NJ, through a Google Images search and this photo came up in third place. I thought it was appropriate for some mental reason, so mille grazie to the photographer, Vincenzo Aiosa.

Vincenzo – I’ll buy you a beer, meet me at the Italian bar around the corner from Rachel and Alison’s, okay? April 2 – it’s a date!

God Bless Island Princess and All Who Sail in Her.

There will be follow-ups to the 2010 Signalwrite Panama Canal Cruise. This post, though, has less to do with marketing and advertising and more to do with giving thanks.

As I already wrote to Nathan Eisenberg, you would probable enjoy this 10-day cruise if [a] you like the sun (very nice, out there on the Lido deck); [b] can stand up to 24-hour-a-day eating (relentless) and [c] enjoy meeting and spending time with several thousand strangers (actually not so bad).

We wished there was much more “Panama Canal” in the Panama Canal Cruise. Nevertheless, this is a shout-out to Captain Nicolo Bommarco and the crew (ship side and passenger side) of MV Island Princess:

You have a beautiful cruise ship and operated it beautifully. We not only sailed 3300 miles in complete safety, thanks to you; all 890 of you worked very hard to ensure that almost all of the 2,300+ passengers had a good time. On board your ship, we did.

Good-bye. Smooth sailing to you all. Thank you very much. Sincerely…

BTW, the “Las Señoritas” shirt whipped up special for this cruise went over a treat: Lots of positive strokes. Love and thanks to Barbara again for making that happen.

Panama Canal as Advertised - A Post in Haste.

Getting access to the Internet aboard Island Princess is not hard unless, like me, you have an institutional prejudice against paying for the service. I figure very roughly that this single cruise ship pulls in $22 million a month in revenues. And yes, I realize it is expensive to operate the boat in this pretty swell manner.

So it probably evens out but I am sticking with my laidback, non-Internetting lifestyle. I have found a couple of Internet cafes, though, this one in Porto Limon, CR. So this will be a short note about a long subject: The Canal delivered its promises as far as I´m concerned. One lecturer keeps calling it, ¨the eighth wonder of the world.¨ It is even being enlarged.

Now I saw the Canal (some of it) in luxury, not among a crowd of sailors. It is possible I missed all the hands-on, walking-around swellness that comes from a land tour. Nevertheless, I am thrilled to have seen the Panama Canal at last. Next time you see it advertised, take a look at it for yourself. There is more to come on this subject; ta for the time being.

When the Consumer is an Individual, Travel Marketing Has More Moving Parts.

This Panama Canal cruise I’m taking, I never waited for Princess Cruises to market it to me. I reached out and selected the destination and the means of getting there.

Maybe it’s because I’m on the leading edge of the famous Baby Boomer generation. Or I’m one of the group that broadly wants to keep learning, connecting and engaging with the world. Maybe I’m an individual and not really part of a group at all (though I find this last bit hard to believe).

Nevertheless, taking the Princess cruise ship south and west to the Canal is a personal choice that’s years in the making. When I was growing up, the Panama Canal was heroic – in many ways it still is.

When President Jimmy Carter signed the 1977 treaty which agreed to return 60% of the Canal Zone to Panama two years later, I was against that action, not because Panamanians didn’t deserve to control their own territory but because the Canal was so much a part of my historical understanding of America’s manifest destiny. And after all, I wasn’t against it that much.

In the middle of that now-foggy set of events, in ’78, David McCullough published his superb study, The Path Between the Seas, about the creation of the Canal. I read it immediately and it’s been in my bookshelves ever since; I re-read it every couple of years: Such a very American story.

Traveling to the Panama Canal hasn’t been all that difficult in the past century. But mental barriers exist, or used to: Time, location, affordability. Mentally, the Canal has come more and more within my reach.

I’ve seen enough jungles. There’s a limit on the number of on-the-water adventures I want to have. But this event comes down to imagination. Pictures like those above, by Argentine photographer Edgardo Balduccio, mean far more to me than eco-tourism (a merely trendy appeal).

Look closely at the date on the Miraflores Locks Control House…1913. It’s the year President Howard Taft said the Canal would be completed, the year that the US started paying Panama for its lease of the Canal.  MV Island Princess is really a time machine. One with a lot of very moving parts.

Photographs © Edgardo Balduccio, 2008. All rights reserved.

30 Days from Now, We’re Taking to the Water – Don’t Wait Up.

Those rumors you’ve heard, they’re true. We’re shipping out, cruising to the Panama Canal and back for 10 days. We sail on March 30 from Fort Lauderdale on a large and (sinfully) luxurious vessel, MV Island Princess. With 90% of its staterooms designated as “ocean-view,” there’s a wrap-around Promenade Deck and more more than 700 balconies. One of those – squint and maybe you can see it – is reserved under Baron.

I’ve been following cruise-ship advertising for years. But the decisions made about this particular 10-day adventure into Central American waters come from a chain of impulses and events that run from the overnight Baltic cruises Barbara and I took in Dialogue days through the enthusiastic endorsements of colleagues and friends.

Certainly it’s not because I feel deprived of cruise experience during my own military service… no Med Cruises, no WestPacs. All those service years were Naval Air. No real sea-time for this Airedale, except for the occasional Mike boats in Manila Bay.

Coming up, between the end of March and April 9, look for online posts about Caribbean adventures, cruise-related advertising and other marketing-related high points. Presuming we're not eating, drinking and doing other typical tourist things. It’s our own Panama Canal Cruise. We’re outahere end of the month.

Thank you, Stacy Allen of Prism Design, Inc., for the cruise poster - look for it on T-shirts and other swag, coming soon (or not).

“Texas T-Bone”

The “T-Bone” needs our help. No other state can claim this name – and if the new high-speed rail proposal gains traction, we’d really have something to brag about. In fact, prospective consumers of alternative travel in Texas learned more about the train plan yesterday from a Houston Chronicle article by Peggy Fikac:

The idea of high-speed rail is being pushed again in a big way in Texas, and backers hope to have $12 billion to $18 billion high-speed trains running by 2020. This time, they say they have taken care to ensure the idea won’t fall flat the way a bullet-train push did some 15 years ago.

Here’s a mouthful: The Texas High Speed Rail and Transportation Corporation. It’s the non-profit behind the new plan to achieve high-speed Texas rail in 10 years. “T-Bone” is the shape of the travel corridor between Dallas and San Antonio, with a Houston leg meeting the line in Temple. (That’s “256 miles shorter than running the bases on the straight line.”)

Although Houston’s Judge Robert Eckels is Chairman, some people are afraid this routing arrangement represents a highjack by “people” in Dallas. I’d like to hear more about that.

Texas could have started a new rail system in the mid-90s if Southwest Airlines hadn’t been so frightened by the competition. Now, with the new administration in Washington and an economic demand for better travel options makes rail at least conceivable again. Finally.

But the Texas-T-Bone could benefit from our savvy…the help of sharp graphic designers, art directors and copywriters to start with. Ladies and gentlemen, the THSRTX website needs substantial improvements in styling and navigation. The logo could be better, stronger and more evocative of the “romance of the rail.” Then a talented PR group ought to get involved.

Let’s take it all a step or two further. The T-Bone’s a consumer product (despite the politicians and governmental bodies, NGOs and corporations who are the start-up stakeholders in the venture). That means consumer rules apply: A sense of style is critical to promoting acceptance. I’m going to come back to this point again and again in future posts. High-speed rail is too good an opportunity to screw up this time around.

Got a T-Bone stake? If you do, let me know…get yourself on board before the thing leaves the station. Meanwhile, I’m going to drop a line to the executive director to determine the Corporation’s interest in taking on a professional creative team.

Many, many thanks to Stacy Allen, Prism Design, for revising the antique British Rail poster specially for this blog post. Just what did the people who ran the railroads a hundred years ago know about marketing that has since been forgotten?