RIP Paul Newman, the Preeminent Face of Cause-Related Marketing

After a private battle, Paul Newman passed away from lung cancer on Friday, September 26, 2008 surrounded by family and friends.

He will be remembered as a splendid actor, a competitive professional race car driver, a political activist, philanthropist and accidental leader. But I’ll remember him as the preeminent face of cause-related marketing in our day. (And certainly as the star of my favorite Western, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. See left with Katharine Ross).

On a lark in 1982 along with his neighbor and friend writer A.E. Hotchner, Newman started selling salad dressing that they called Newman’s Own. Later they added pasta sauce, popcorn, salsa, wine, cookies, among many other items, to the line.

The labels featured jokey caricatures of Newman and the pledge that 100 percent of the proceeds from the venture, after taxes, would be donated to charity. From its founding through 2007, Newman’s Own had donated more than $220 million to charity. Last year’s charitable donation was $28 million.

“The embarrassing thing is that the salad dressing is outgrossing my films," Newman once drolly remarked.

When I worked for the Operation Kids Foundation, we were a beneficiary of a Newman’s Own donation, but not because we’d asked for money. Instead, we’d sent an inquiry asking if he’d be willing to be feted as a Lifetime Achievement Award honoree at our annual gala. He wrote back and said that such awards made him uncomfortable. Inside the envelope was a check for $10,000.

Until about two years ago Newman was still personally distributing the company’s profits. About the same time he stepped back from that responsibility, Newman set up a private independent foundation called Newman’s Own Foundation to receive and distribute the profits from the Newman’s Own company.

The Foundation benefits the Hole in the Wall Camps which serves children with terminal diseases and other serious medical conditions free of charge, and numerous other charitable endeavors. Newman founded the first Hole in the Wall Camp in 1988. There are now 11 camps in the United States, Europe, and Israel affiliated with the Hole in the Wall.

Newman worked very hard at keeping the marketing for Newman’s Own… and even its operations… light-hearted and open to input from almost anyone. It was a legacy of Newman’s lifetime of film-making that he believed good ideas could bubble up from almost anywhere.

You can read about Newman and Hotchner’s merry pranks in two books: In Pursuit of the Common Good, published in August 2008; and Shameless Exploitation in Pursuit of the Common Good from 2003.

I’ve written before about how the success of Newman’s Own has inspired many imitators. If Helen of Troy was the face that launched 1,000 ships, Paul Newman looking back at you from a bottle of Newman’s Own was the face that launched 10,000 social enterprises.

So in memory of what he did and who he’s inspired, join me now and raise a toast of Newman’s Own wine (or lemonade) to Paul Newman, the accidental cause marketer sans pareil.

Buy Any Alden Keene Merchandise and $1.50 Goes to the Children's Organ Transplant Association

About five years ago I was tasked with finding a national children’s charity that was well-managed, well-regarded, and necessary. It had to meet a number of stringent standards of effectiveness in achieving its mission and demonstrate efficient stewardship of its resources. It also had to have a good name and ‘heart.’ That is, even given all those data-driven measures, it also had to be a charity with genuine emotional appeal.

I found all that and more in the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA) in Bloomington, Indiana. I flew to Indiana for a meeting and to my delight discovered an organization led and staffed by pleasant, honorable people. It was a little like going to the Grand Canyon for the splendid views and finding a Michelin 3-star restaurant there.

As a consultant I’ve never done work for COTA. But when anyone asks me to recommend a top-notch children’s charity, I tell them about COTA with the fervor of an evangelist. It really is a terrific charity.

Now I’m pleased to do a little cause-related marketing for COTA.

When you buy any Alden Keene merchandise item at Printfection.com/janus, Alden Keene will donate $1.50 to the Children’s Organ Transplant Association. There is no upper limit on the donation and the campaign will continue until October 2009. To view the Alden Keene Printfection site, click on the Alden Keene T-shirt in the upper right hand corner.

Organ transplants are one of the great medical advancements of our age, extending life for thousands of kids and adults. But the wait-list for organ transplants is perpetually long and most hospitals in the United States won’t undertake an organ transplant until there is proof of payment in advance.

When you consider that the average price for a liver transplant… the most common organ transplant surgery… is $300,000 you can see the dilemma. Even families with good insurance have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars before their child can even be wait-listed. And that doesn’t include things like the airfare and hotel necessary when the hospital is far away. COTA’s mission is to help families raise the money necessary and to help negotiate the rocks and shoals of the organ transplantation process.

At Printfection.com/janus you’ll find more than 60 items including T-shirts, sweatshirts, aprons, cutting boards, and mousepads in different colors and a wide array of sizes. All showcasing several cheeky versions of the Alden Keene & Associates logo.

I’ve ordered merchandise from the Printfection site and found it to be reliable and the turnaround time to be quite fast.

One final point, you’ll notice that the URL is Printfection.com/janus. Why Janus and not Alden Keene?

I’ve never explained this before in this blog, but the Alden Keene logo is modeled on Janus, the Roman God of new beginnings, although I understand that few, if any, representations of Janus as male and female survive from the days of Ancient Rome.

In Rome Janus was the god of the past and the future, of gateways and doorways, of coinage and money, and of peace. Janus is also the god not only of vigilance but of fair-mindedness, since he is able to see both sides of an issue. Janus is the namesake of the month of January (the first month of the year) and also of janitors!

I choose a Janus figure to depict Alden Keene in no small part because Janus was also the god of bridges. And cause-related marketing is a bridge between causes and companies.

The logo was designed by the very talented Hugh Butterfield at Bailey-Montague, a graphic design house in Salt Lake City. He’s a terrific designer and, as you can see, he has major chops as an illustrator, too.

All this by way of saying that I thought it would be more fun writing the descriptions of the Alden Keene merchandise in the voice of Janus than in the voice of Alden Keene.

I hope you enjoy it.

My Quarterly Disquisition on Transparency in Cause-Related Marketing

I saw the Anne Klein ad to the left in the October 2008 Elle magazine and intended to question the unnecessarily abstruse language at the bottom that refers to “translational research,” whatever that means.

And then I came across this remarkable document on The Breast Cancer Research Foundation website. Remarkable because there in one PDF is all you need to know about the various jewelry items being sold this breast cancer season benefiting the BCRF.

It includes the jewelry price, where it’s being sold, how much of a donation is generated, press contacts, product descriptions, etc.

[The design of the document is rather blasé and the PDF itself could be more crisp. But I’m picking nits here.]

I've often written in this space about the necessity of transparency in cause-related marketing. (Click here for more.) Transparency is vital in cause-related marketing and far too rare. Vital because more than almost anything else you can name, cause-related marketing trades on trust.

BTW, according to Anna Deluca, associate director of marketing at The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, “’Translational research’ is also sometimes called ‘bench to bedside’ research and refers to research that translates scientific findings in the laboratory to clinical advances (new drugs, technologies or other treatments) for patients. This means that the laboratory research that BCRF supports must be aimed at new and better results that will improve the lives of patients with cancer or potential patients who are at risk of developing cancer.”

Brava Breast Cancer Research Foundation!

Celebrities, Evolutionary Fitness and Cause-Related Marketing

Cone Inc.’s blog 'Do You Stand for Something?' recently posted on the topic of cause marketing with celebrities. They cited two surveys… one of marketers and the other of consumers… to suggest that cause-related marketing with celebrities is a less than effective tactic.

Yet still we see celebrities and causes tying the knot faster than Britney Spears on a weekend bender in Las Vegas.

What's up with that?

Certainly you have to parse out the surveys a little. Here’s what they wrote on the Cone blog:

“New Research out this week surveyed marketers to explore the roles of celebrities in cause-marketing efforts, and the findings indicate that while these spokespeople often help raise awareness of a cause, they are not particularly effective in inspiring people to act. According to (the) survey, the majority of respondents (about 58%) indicate a celeb’s tie to a cause may motivate them to look into the cause, but not necessarily become involved. Cone’s own consumer research found that Americans cite celebrity involvement as one of the least effective communication tools for nonprofits to reach them–specifically, it ranked No. 9 on a list of 10 (falling well behind such preferred methods as word-of-mouth and media coverage). And, only 15 percent of Americans said celebrities are likely to influence their decision to
support a cause or charity.”

The survey of nearly 500 marketers by Octagon First Call asked: “to what extent does a celebrity/spokesperson’s involvement motivate you to you to become involved with the same cause?”

57.9 percent answered “Motivates me to look into the cause, but not participate.” Nearly 16 percent answered that it motivated them to donate a time, resources, or money to the cause. The other 26 percent answered that it “does not motivate me at all.”

What kind of lightweight would that question in the affirmative? How many people say, ‘oh yeah, if Patrick Dempsey is involved sign me up’? [And even if, in fact, you are so highly influenced by celebrity support of a cause that you would give time or money to that cause, would you admit it in a survey?]

Octagon First Call concludes: “While a celebrity spokesperson often grabs the public’s attention and motivates them to look into a cause, it does not necessarily generate participation results.”

Why then do charities then seek celebrities? And why do companies give preference to charities that can draw on celebrity support?

Let's be clear, not too many charities at the national level approach celebrities and ask them to work the phones for them or write fundraising letters. Just as you don’t use newspaper ads to reach teens, you don’t use celebrities to make a direct sale.

If your expectation is that a celebrity is going to be able get people to act directly, you need to adjust your expectations.

Instead, celebrity support for charities amounts to what economists call a “signaling” device. For an admissions officer at an Ivy League college, the signaling devices of a desirable student recruit might include high SAT scores, extensive extracurricular activities, and volunteering.

In evolutionary biology they call it a “fitness” test. For example, the reason that peahens typically choose the peacock with the most lavish display of feathers is because all that plumage signals that the suitor is physically healthy and thereby probably fecund.

How is celebrity support like a fitness test?

It can be… and usually is… a whole lot of work for a charity to secure the support of a celebrity. The higher the celebrity’s profile, the harder it is to get contact information, satisfy the gatekeepers, and secure a meeting with the celebrity.

Some celebrities are so aloof that even if you got a meeting, you’d never get a yes. But if you did, it signals that your charity is very capable indeed. For instance, if David Letterman announced tomorrow that he was supporting the American Heart Association in a big way, I’d look at that esteemed charity in a whole new light.

For those of you with a rock hard bottom line focus you may be saying to yourselves ‘signaling?’ ‘fitness?’ What kind of nonsense is this? If celebrities can’t sell, who needs ‘em?

Ironically, if this is your viewpoint you’re in a good position to make the best use of celebrities. Chances are you already got plenty of marketing arrows in your quiver. Use celebrities for their celebrity. A way to attract attention to the cause. Another arrow.

Don’t kid yourself that they can do much more than that.

And if you somehow manage to find and attract that rarest of birds, the evolved celebrity who can do more than parade about in his/her beautiful feathers, well then count your lucky stars.

Cause-Related Marketing With an Edge

Does it feel like cause-related marketing is too sincere, too earnest, too sober? Too many soft piano chords and not enough wailing guitar licks?

In the last couple of weeks I’ve come across two cause-related marketing efforts… largely targeted to women… with a decidedly mischievous approach.

The first is from an outfit called ta-tas Brand Clothing, which produces T-shirts, other wearables, bumper stickers, and special soap meant to enable early breast cancer detection called ‘boob lube.’

Their signature T-shirt reads: “save the ta-tas,” but they offer a number of other cheeky variations like “caught you looking at my ta-tas.” “A portion of every sale is given to breast cancer research,” through the company’s foundation, The Save the ta-tas Foundation. To date, the website reports, sales of ta-tas merchandise has generated more than $185,000 in donations.

The second is more shocking still.

The ‘Eff’ Cancer Cross stitch Kit from Subversive Cross Stitch, generates a donation to Susan G. Komen.

Both would be stronger if they replaced the ‘portion of proceeds’ language for something more clearly defined.

The question is, would both be stronger if the campaigns weren’t so impertinent?

Yes and no. The ta-tas items are mainly just sassy. But the Eff cancer cross stitch is outrageous and therefore self-selecting, if not entirely unique; a little more than 1/3 of Subversive Cross Stitch’s current catalog features kits with the Eff word.

But what about the larger question; should cause-related marketing efforts be profane?

I confess to being old school on the subject. My scout leaders growing up (both cops) taught me that the person who resorts to profanity is almost certainly someone who lacks the capacity to give full flower to their feelings. Maybe that’s true.

All I know is that while cancer is a vicious killer, my mother somehow managed to face down breast cancer without resorting to profanity. Cancer killed my father, but he never felt obliged to utter a vulgarity about it.

I won’t suggest for a minute that either of these items is a slippery slope or the thin edge of the wedge that illustrates the sad decline of modern mores.

All I’m saying is, I myself will not buying any of these products.


[Tip of the hat to Kate, a member of the Cause-Related Marketing GoogleGroup for turning me on to Subversive Cross Stitch].

Looking for Arts Organizations Which Have Successfully Used Cause-Related Marketing

Hey Gang:

I'm looking for arts organizations which have successfully employed cause-related marketing.

If your arts organization has done so, or you know of one that has, please contact me.

Thanks,

Paul Jones, President

Alden Keene and Associates

aldenkeene@gmail.com

Social Entrepreneurship and Cause-Related Marketing...

...An Interview with Social Entrepreneur Michael Arkes, Part II

In this second half of my interview with social entrepreneur Michael Arkes, the founder of Helping Hands Rewards…a Chicago organization that helps social enterprises sell better… we peel back the layers a little to reveal what motivated Arkes jump into social enterprise and how he manages his for-profit company and a social enterprise at the same time.

Read part I here.


What are your financial results?
“We expect to lose money through 2009 but plan to approach breakeven in 2010.”

I assume that you committed a fair amount of time during the startup of Helping Hands (I've been involved charity startups myself). How do you justify that attention that could have been paying to Hinda?
“I grew up in a home that participated in social activism and then went to college in the late 1960’s as our country was trying to deal with our involvement in Viet Nam. I was shaped by these early experiences and throughout my adult life have served on Boards, volunteered, and fundraised for a variety of worthwhile social and civic organizations. HHR is an opportunity for personal fulfillment. For the past 35+ years, I learned how to build a very successful incentive company. I saw the opportunity to apply what I know best to the betterment of people seeking the opportunity to improve their lives. This was the ideal convergence of social philanthropy with my experience and expertise.”

What’s the relationship between Hinda and Helping Hands?
“Helping Hand Rewards and Hinda have the same President, me. Hinda is a customer of Helping Hand Rewards and purchases product from the social enterprises at the same price as companies Hinda competes with. Obviously, Hinda’s team appreciates and shares in my commitment to support the social enterprises. Their products are well represented in Hinda’s award assortment and marketing efforts. Hinda wants to also be recognized as a leader in corporate social responsibility.”

What are the social enterprises involved?
“We work with six social enterprises:

1. The Enterprising Kitchen
2. Greyston Bakery
3. World of Good
4. Mercado Global
5. Women Helping Other Women
6. Bright Endeavors.”

Do they have to be organized as nonprofits for you to take them on?
“Not all of these are not for profit corporations. Most are. All these organizations provide people in need the opportunity to be successful.

Typically, we do research and network in order to identify a social enterprise that offers consumer products that are appropriate for the incentive market. We then introduce ourselves to them and often they are not responsive. We persist. These organizations rarely have staff available to consider a new sales channel. We try to find a leader who is open to fresh ideas and willing to commit their organization to the opportunity. This process has taken far more effort than I initially envisioned. We also have to be careful to work only with social enterprises that can operate their enterprises professionally since they will need to service customers that expect a high quality of service, including prompt responses to their questions. We discontinue our discussions with social enterprises we find incapable of servicing our customers.”


There’s a natural kind of push-pull in social enterprises between fulfilling contracts and fulfilling missions. Where does Helping Hands stand?
“The social enterprises make the decisions regarding the balance of efficiency and employment. Our role at HHR is to sell more of their products so they can generate more profits to employ more people. Each social enterprise has stories of individuals that they have helped become successful. However, we do not credit these beautiful success stories to the assistance of Helping Hand Rewards. We do not ask the social enterprises to identify which are the incremental workers they hired and then to track their success. We are pleased just to know that we are generating revenue for these organizations.

Typically, we are not being asked to justify the price of our products to comparable products without the social purpose components. We have found that many of our customers are personally involved with social causes and welcome the opportunity to experience this same personal fulfillment at work.”

The Brazen Mercantilist Division of the Cause-Related Marketing blog

In the last few months I’ve added brazen mercantilism to the cause-related marketing blog; Google Ads, Amazon, and now a “Lemonade Stand” with products for informal learners, which I write about on my other blog at The Learner's Guild.

None of these blatantly commercial efforts, however, really lend themselves to cause-related marketing.

So in the next few weeks the blog will also feature aprons, cutting boards, mousepads, sweatshirts, and… as required by law in more than 87 countries…T-shirts. All showcasing several cheeky versions of the Alden Keene & Associates logo above.

On the occasion of my 250th post I’m pleased to announce that when you buy any merchandise item with the Alden Keene logo, Alden Keene will donate $1.50 to the Children’s Organ Transplant Association (COTA). There is no upper limit on the donation and the campaign will continue until Sept 2009. COTA is an effective, honorable, and well-run charity that helps kids get life-saving organ transplants.

We all know that the wait-list for organ transplants can be horrendous. What isn’t well known is that most hospitals in the United States won’t undertake an organ transplant until there is proof of payment in advance.

The average price for a liver transplant… the most common organ transplant surgery… is $300,000! Even families with 90/10 insurance still have to come up with a $30,000 deductible before a hospital will accept them. And that doesn’t include things like the airfare and hotel necessary when the hospital is far away. COTA helps families raise the money necessary and negotiate the rocks and shoals of the organ transplantation process.

Why all the shameless emphasis on profit-making you ask? Hey, someone’s got to put my kids through college. And since they’re under 10, nobody wants to employ them. What else am I going to do?

Social Entrepreneurship And Cause-Related Marketing...

...An Interview with Social Entrepreneur Michael Arkes, Part I

In the last 10 years there’s been an explosion of ‘social entrepreneurship.’ There’s probably a better definition somewhere but I think of social enterprises as entities that sell goods or services to further their own mission.

In the United States social enterprises can be organized as for-profits. After all there’s no law here that says a company can’t have a ‘mission’ beyond generating profits. There are certain advantages to organizing as a for-profit, including: fewer regulatory hurdles, faster decision cycles, and better access to capital markets.

I don’t have official numbers in front of me but I think it’s safe to say that most social enterprises are organized as nonprofits, chiefly because in the States a nonprofit with a mission generally has more moral authority than a for-profit with a mission.

Let me hasten to add that social enterprises are not a recent innovation. Many people know about Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York which provides Ben & Jerry’s with two million pounds of brownies a year. [Greyston’s unofficial mission: “we don’t hire people to bake brownies. We bake brownies to hire people.”]

But for generations before Greyston there were sheltered workshops, which hire people with disabilities to make stuff, assemble things, fulfilling janitorial contracts, etc. Even a nonprofit hospital sells its services and as such could be considered one of the flavors of social enterprise.

To be frank, cause-related marketing… the subject of this blog… and social enterprises aren’t the same thing, but there is overlap. They are first cousins.

In this two-part post, I publish the first half of an interview I had with Michael Arkes who started Helping Hands Rewards, a for-profit with a distinctive mission to help social enterprises break into the $46 billion incentives market. I’ll post the second half on Thursday.

Arkes who owns Hinda Incentives, a $50 million merchandise incentive company in Chicago, did this on his own nickel and without a real model.

Tell me about how Helping Hands Rewards came about?
"In late 2003 my wife and I were having dinner with a friend, Lauri Alpern, and her husband. Lauri had just started a new job as co-executive director of a social enterprise, The Enterprising Kitchen. We knew this but asked Lauri to explain some more about what The Enterprising Kitchen did. She mentioned in her explanation a gift with purchase order from J Jill that was a significant portion of their sales in 2003. I told Lauri that I would volunteer to help her replicate that sale. Lauri is an exceptional student and we worked together to:

• Create pricing services and policies appropriate for the incentive market
• Create support materials
• Pursue customers

"In 2004 through most of 2006, I volunteered my time, a lot of it. I accomplished this by extending my work day and work week. In 2006 I realized that The Enterprising Kitchen was never going to invest dollars upfront to market to prospective incentive customers with the hope of obtaining some future benefit. Non-profits of their size just don’t have the dollars to make that kind of investment.

"So I decided to form Helping Hand Rewards. The concept is that Helping Hand Rewards would make the upfront investments for marketing and business development and get paid a commission on sales that we make. I then decided to seek out additional social enterprises to provide these same services. I envisioned three roles for Helping Hand Rewards:

• Indentify and qualify social enterprises
• Sell the products of these social enterprises to incentive companies that service corporations
• Create market awareness."

How much did you invest in Helping Hands?
"We started spending money in addition to my time in the fall of 2006 when we secured space at the Motivation Show (the space was donated by Pete Erickson, the owner of the show management company, but we paid for all the other services). In 2007, I spent approximately $25,000 and for the first half of 2008 I spent $22,000."

Do you serve on its board?
"I chose not to serve on the Board of The Enterprising Kitchen. I decided that I would have a more significant impact devoting my time to HHR than serving on their Board."

What models did you draw on?
"We built HHR from scratch. There were no models to learn from. I joined both the Social Enterprise Alliance and Social Venture Network to network and to learn. What I am doing is unique."

On Thursday: The how of Helping Hands Rewards.

Cause-Related Marketing, Now in Italian

My new friend Francesco Santini is translating a select number of my posts into Italian for his blog.

If your Italian's better than mine, you could read my post and all of Francesco's at http://www.fundraising.it/.

And to any of my Italian readers I'll repeat what I said to Francesco: "If you ever need a token American to speak at or attend a nonprofit or marketing conference in Italy, I'm your man."

My price?

Heck, I'd do it for airfare and a twice-daily gelato.

Matchmaking and Cause-Related Marketing

For at least five years now I’ve been looking for a means whereby Alden Keene could predict the potential fit between a cause and a sponsor in cause-related marketing campaign. A matchmaking tool, if you will.

I approached at least a half dozen professors and researchers and the answer was always some variation on a theme of “yes we can survey people, but what we really need is a theoretical underpinning.”

Can you recommend a theoretical footing, I would ask?

“No. But we can conduct a survey for you once you find it,” would come the response.

Well, I can survey people. That’s no challenge. My company, Alden Keene, conducts surveys and focus groups all the time.

But until now I never found the theoretical foundation for such a predictive tool. And, I’m especially pleased to report it comes from a familiar source.

An old friend from my Children’s Miracle Network days runs a firm called Venture Dynamics, LLC that draws on research from stakeholder theory to produce predictive instruments for various industries.

The staff at Venture Dynamics and I are refining a cause-related marketing instrument right now.

And the good news is, it will also help predict the potential success of a campaign based on a ranking in 48 separate measures.

This is exciting stuff and I’ll keep y’all apprised as it develops.

Student Needs Help With Research on Cause-Related Marketing Ads

Hey Gang:

I got the following email from a student at Stetson University who’s looking for some help on some research she’s conducting on cause-related marketing ads.

Here’s the contact information if you can help: eschiff@stetson.edu.


Warm regards,

Paul Jones, President
Alden Keene & Associates

I’m looking for print ads (appearing in magazines and newspapers preferably) with human subjects which are part of a breast cancer cause related marketing campaign (with a preference for Komen Foundation endorsed ads). I need a sufficient number to conduct a content analysis. Unfortunately, a select few from a single campaign wouldn’t do, since my advisers want me to locate either all of a single campaign, or a large quantity from which I can draw a random sample.

My analysis will be from a sociological perspective, analyzing the race, age, gender, and class of those appearing in the ads. Once I’ve quantified the elements of gender, race, and age, I intend to compare the population in the ads to statistics on breast cancer sufferers. It is also my hope to integrate elements of Erving Goffman's analysis of gendered advertising into my study.

Thank you for any help you can give me.

Pampers Buy One Give One Cause-Related Marketing

Dear Pampers:

Just a quick note of thanks for your 1 pack = 1 vaccine campaign benefiting UNICEF.

You may know that I love these ‘buy one, give one’ campaigns. They’re the best thing to come along in cause-related marketing in a long time. Consumers respond to them. They understand them. They feel good about participating in them. And they can generate crazy word-of-mouth.

Your execution has been dynamite, including the follow-up FSI page in the August 31 Proctor & Gamble brandSAVER. Consumers want to know what happens after all the talk and promotion. I appreciate the transparency on your website as well that describes the exact donations made. Smart!

I have to say something about the TV ad, too. It gives me a visceral reaction every time I see it. The moment when the Asian toddler waddles over for a hug and kiss is pure magic. Normally that would be a cheap visual cliché, but by gad it nearly reduces me to tears every time. And I’m not exactly your target market.

The track… ‘Dream’ from Angela McCluskey… is wonderful and the accented English narration from actress and new mother Salma Hayek strikes the ideal tone. I don’t know if you hired the director and the editor or if the agency did, but they both deserve a bonus.

If I had to complain about anything in the TV ad it would be the sorta back-lot at Universal Studios look to the set. It’s been dressed up as best as could be. But I swear Hillstreet Blues was shot on that same set.

All in all, nice work!


Warm regards,

Paul Jones, President
Alden Keene & Associates