THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210465
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MYLENE MANGALINDAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
It would be easy to mistake Sam Rogers as a piece of meat.
Norfolk's director of marketing, otherwise known around the office as ``the other white meat,'' is plastered as a marketing ploy on 700 cans that look like Spam.
ADVentures Advertising of Virginia Beach developed the marketing campaign based on Spam, a brand of canned meat, to publicize the local American Marketing Association's meeting today. ``Sam in a Can'' features a man sporting a Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, a straw hat and a few leis, with outstretched arms under the yellow heading, ``SAM: the tourism treat.''
Billed as ``tourism marketing you can really sink your teeth into,'' Rogers heads the Virginia Waterfront Campaign, a Norfolk-led initiative to market the destinations from Williamsburg to Virginia Beach as one area. The luncheon keynote speaker at the local AMA meeting, he will address expanding tourism and business in southeastern Virginia through municipal marketing.
Careful readers of Sam in a Can are urged to ``Try Sam at Lunch!'' and are assured that there will be ``No canned presentation.''
Its ingredients outline key achievements on Rogers' resume, including jobs as Philadelphia's marketing communications executive and the Bureau of Travel Development executive for Pennsylvania.
On the back, the invitation offers details about the luncheon such as its location, cost and topic.
Sam in a Can began as part of the AMA's effort to spice up its invitations to entice more people to attend their monthly meetings, said Theresa Bannon, senior marketing director of Spirit Cruises, who sits on the board of directors of the AMA.
Local agencies are asked to participate in a design contest by proposing and implementing an invitation for their designated month's topic or speaker.
ADVentures had less than a month to design and produce the AMA invite.
``We decided, `Let's have some fun and see if we can get people to a meeting during the Christmas chaos,' '' said Joe Takach, a partner at ADVentures. ``It's going to take a lot to get someone to a meeting in the last week of December.''
It seems to have worked, however.
Sam in the Can, which has been mailed to about 700 people, has turned up some good results, Bannon said.
She reported that 35 people have registered to attend the luncheon; she expects about 45 to 50 total. Usually, about 25 come.
``Obviously it's a testament to a creative idea and a subject matter people are interested in,'' Bannon said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Sam Rogers, Norfolk's director of marketing, is the luncheon keynote
speaker today. He will take about expanding tourism and business in
southeastern Virginia through municipal marketing.
by CNB