We hear the roar of their engines and see the sun glinting off their wings as they traverse the skies over northwest Oklahoma.

But another large part of the base’s pilot training mission is carried out far from public sight, inside Vance’s Ops Group building.

In this building, in rooms chilled year-round no matter the temperatures outside, a dedicated group of men and women work to keep a vital part of Vance’s training mission up and running.

They are the simulator technicians.

Much of each student pilot’s training is conducted inside these multi-million dollar machines, which are used to teach pilots to cope with all kinds of different situations they will encounter in an airplane, all without leaving the ground. In a simulator there is no danger to the student or instructor, and the lessons can be conducted without burning any fuel.

The people charged with keeping these sophisticated machines up and flying have to be versatile, able to deal with computer, electronic, visual and even mechanical issues.

Ron Hall has been working on simulators at Vance since 1977, when instead of computers, terrain model boards and closed circuit TV cameras were used to simulate flight.

He is one of three T-1 simulator technicians at Vance employed by L-3 Communications, who maintain two full training simulators and 3 part-task trainers. Part-task trainers are used to teach students to program their onboard computers to guide the plane to 100 waypoints around the country, but can’t simulate takeoffs or landings.

Ron Hall said maintaining the T-1 sims keeps him and his colleagues busy.

“There’s quite a bit (of maintenance) because you have alignment in the visual systems,” he said. “Your hydraulic systems have to be tweaked or aligned, all your (control) surfaces. Your power supplies, there’s tons of power supplies, computers, fans.”

The T-1 sims were built in 1988 and installed at Vance in 1990. Trying to maintain them is like trying to keep a 20-year-old PC running.

“I have diversified 486 and 386 computers in my sound system,” Ron Hall said. “Try to find old hard drives to work in that kind of equipment. They sent us a lot of used F-16 visual systems that we use to keep the T-1s going. They don’t manufacture tubes anymore so we have to rely on older tubes or older remanufactured tubes to keep our visuals going.”

The T-1 simulators are being upgraded, however, a process expected to be completed by 2013. Vance normally has three full training simulators, but one has been removed for an upgrade.

The T-1 sims are operated 16 hours a day, meaning there are two shifts of technicians working to keep them flying.

“We have an hour and a half in the morning for maintenance to get them up and ready, and two hours at night to put them to bed,” Ron Hall said. “I really enjoy keeping the simulators working. It’s a lot of electronics in all kinds of fields.”

Vance’s T-6 and T-38 simulators are maintained by 13 technicians employed by FlightSafety International. Michael Oaks, the site manager, dubbed his men and women, “The Trunk Monkey Squad,” after the stars of a series of TV automobile dealer commercials depicting cars that carried magical chimps in their trunks, who came to the rescue in difficult situations when the drivers pushed the “trunk monkey” button on the dashboard.

“I have absolutely the best crew, anywhere, and I’ll stake my very reputation on that,” Oaks said. “They don’t get the recognition, they do the grunt work of the simulator world, but it doesn’t happen without them.”

There are 17 T-6 simulators. There are five operational flight trainers, which feature high-resolution graphics and a 270-degree field of view that give students the closest experience to actually flying. There are seven instrument flight trainers with a cockpit and forward visual display and five unit trainers, with no visual systems but fully functioning cockpits designed to teach cockpit familiarization.

“As parts fail, we spend a lot of time on them,” said T-6 technician Ben Tucker, “but we have preventative maintenance we follow on a daily, weekly, monthly and semi-annual basis. We have checklists galore on all our preventative maintenance.”

That is the routine maintenance, but there is plenty of the non-routine type as well.

“When one of those projectors just decides to not turn on one day, we get to figure out why,” Tucker said. “If we’re bringing them up in the middle of the night, we can have a couple of hours, but if it happens at 11 o’clock in the morning we have 15 minutes to get it going before we start losing missions and devoting our entire day shift to fixing it.”

“As a general rule we’ll have at least one or two system failures of some kind a week,” said Oaks, “be it something small like an instrument or something big like a computer or a projector.”

Day shift technicians, Oaks said, “sit around waiting for the fires,” while night shift techs “do all the dirt and grime.”

T-6 and T-38 simulators are used in a daily 12-hour window, from the time of the first flight to the last.

Technicians don’t only fix simulators, they have to be able to fly them, too.

“We do daily pre-flights to make sure that every device is fully functional and operational for the next day of training,” Tucker said.

The T-38 sims, said technician Phil Johnson, “are pretty well built, they don’t require really high maintenance.”

Vance has two T-38 weapons systems trainers, which allow pilots to dogfight against one another with full simulated weapons. These have 14 projectors and 18 computers to produce the full wraparound graphics.

There are two operational flight trainers, without the weapons and with a 216-degree by 135-degree vertical field of view. And there are three unit training devices, a cockpit with a 40-degree field of view.

There is one big advantage to being a simulator technician, Johnson said, particularly in the summer. The simulator rooms always are kept cool in deference to the delicate equipment.

“They worry more about the equipment than the people,” he said, laughing. “It’s fun to keep it all running.”

“I enjoy puttering around and fixing all the small problems,” said T-38 technician Mark Ewald.

“The best part of this job is the diversity of the things you have to do,” said T-38 tech Robert Hall.

Source: The Enid News and Eagle
Byline: Jeff Mullin, Senior Writer

PORTLAND — Perhaps it was his cool-headedness in delivering a baby on the side of the road. Or his expertise in giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a man overcome by hot coffee. Or maybe it’s just that we all wish we had our very own Trunk Monkey.

Whatever his charm, Trunk Monkey, a chimpanzee featured in a comical series of car-dealership commercials, has been winning over audiences so successfully that he’s generated a profitable side business for the Portland ad agency that created him 3 ½ years ago.

Dealerships from as far away as New Zealand pay to license the series of commercials for their own use and now are the largest source of revenue for the R/West agency. Meanwhile Trunk Monkey is about to debut in his biggest market yet, as a New Jersey dealership is buying ads to run in the New York City area on Super Bowl Sunday.

Tim Ciasulli of the Planet Honda and Used Car Universe dealership in Union, N.J., is hoping that viewers will have the same response he did when a friend first e-mailed them to him.

“I’m watching them and I’m just laughing,” he said. “They’re very funny and extremely memorable.”

Like other dealerships that have licensed the commercials, he is supporting the campaign with his own marketing blitz — hiring an actor to wear a monkey suit and decking out the dealership in a jungle motif. “I think our phones are going to be ringing off the hook,” he predicted.

R/West, which first created the farcical commercials in 2003, has been banking on that kind of response. The agency, headed by President Sean Blixseth, found that the commercials — originally commissioned by Suburban Auto Group in Sandy, Ore. — have just as much sway with audiences outside Oregon.

The first commercial, showing a driver hitting a Trunk Monkey button on his dashboard to subdue an aggressive road rager, was produced for less than $50,000 with the filming assistance of a friend, Blixseth said.

The commercial, and others that followed, quickly gained popularity online. Trunk Monkey has since dispatched a would-be car thief in “Sopranos” style, fended off aliens and tried to bribe a police officer to let a speeding driver off.

R/West has continued to produce the ads for Suburban Auto Group, which supplements its Trunk Monkey campaign with T-shirts and bumper stickers. It also hosts the commercials, one of which will be broadcast locally during the Super Bowl, on its Web site. But since the 2003 debut, 45 other dealerships around the world have licensed the commercials, each for tens of thousands of dollars a year, making it the largest source of revenue for R/West, which employs 20.

The proceeds go for production of new commercials — now costing about $75,000 to $100,000 — and any profit above that is split between R/West and Suburban. The two declined to disclose the profit.

Syndicating commercials isn’t new, said Norm Grey, executive creative director with Creative Circus, a two-year advertising school in Atlanta.

But the challenge is, “no matter what happens, every bank, every car dealership has its own needs,” he said. “It’s not necessarily personal.”

Still, in the world of auto advertising, which focuses on price and “the deal, the deal, the deal,” Trunk Monkey breaks new ground, said Steve Miller, a senior reporter who covers the auto industry for marketing publication Brandweek.

It also is a way for a small agency like Blixseth’s to gain national attention, and perhaps open the door for national clients.

He said it’s unlikely that car dealerships, which have such defined geographic markets, would object to running the same commercials as another dealer somewhere else.

It didn’t bother Gary Grubbs, the advertising manager for the Lawrence Hall of Abilene dealership in Texas, which started running commercials last year. “Anything that’s a good idea never stays an exclusive for very long.”

The commercials don’t escape criticism. Some call to complain that he isn’t really a monkey at all, but rather a chimpanzee. (But Blixseth protested that “trunk chimpanzee” just didn’t have the same je ne sais quoi.)

And some animal-rights activists are upset about the use of a primate in advertising. The agency contracts with a California company that provides animals for filming.

But some dealerships say the commercials have only brought positive comments — as well as suggestions from customers about potential scripts.

“It has totally changed our life,” said Jane Delligatti, marketing director of Arnell Auto Group in Burns Harbor, Ind. “We have people calling, giving ideas for different spots. … This whole area of Northwest Indiana loves our Trunk Monkey.”

Copyright © The Seattle Times Company

Byline: HELEN JUNG, The Oregonian
Source: Seattle Times Newspaper

I can’t stop giggling about those silly Tomkinson trunk monkey commercials.

Have you seen them?

There are two ads playing now. In the first, a woman is pulled over for speeding. When it’s clear the officer intends to write her a ticket, she presses a button and a monkey hops out of the trunk of her car. First, he offers the patrolman a fistful of cash. When the officer shakes his head, the monkey pulls a secret weapon from behind his back: a doughnut!

In the final scene, the monkey forlornly looks out from the squad car’s back window as he’s being driven away to lockup.

The second ad, which I’ve seen only once, shows a trunk monkey kicking out the back seat of a stolen car and forcing the thief to pull over. The monkey drags the culprit out of the car to the railing of a bridge and throws him over, reclaiming the car for his owner.

Rick Tomkinson, owner of Tomkinson Automotive Group, believes most car dealers’ ads have left the public “shell shocked” from the barrage of gimmicks and come-ons.

Tim Borne, chairman of Asher Agency, agrees.

“Car dealers do bad advertising, as a rule,” he said.

Tomkinson wants to distance himself from the pack. “We want to give people a chuckle and hope they’ll come in and give us a try,” he said.

The idea, he said, is to increase his 30-year-old Fort Wayne-based company’s name recognition. Tomkinson sells Dodges and BMWs at 929 Avenue of Autos and Chryslers and Jeeps at 4801 Coldwater Road.

Making TV commercials can be expensive – a real hurdle for small- and mid-sized local retailers. But placing your name on one that’s a canned spot – one that can be personalized by a number of companies in different markets – can allow a business to run ads with better production values.

“It could allow you to look bigger than you are,” said John Ferguson, president and principal of Ferguson Advertising.

That’s the case here. Car dealerships in two other markets are running the same series of ads, which were designed by R/West, a West Coast agency, Tomkinson said. It’s the same agency that does those Career Builder.com ads that show a frustrated guy working at a company surrounded by a bunch of monkeys. Now, I know you’ve seen those clever commercials.

“Local or national, it’s tough to stand out,” Ferguson said. But, he added, a good concept can be the launching pad for a memorable ad, even without a big budget.

The trunk monkey ads have made an impression on Ferguson. They’ve also caught the eye of Chad Stuckey, founder and president of Brand Innovation Group.

His team gathers Monday mornings to dissect the commercials they remember seeing over the previous weekend. The real test of a good spot is whether viewers can remember what it was selling.

“Good humor’s hard to pull off,” Stuckey said. “Those (trunk monkey) ads make me laugh every time I see them. But will it make me go out and buy a car? I don’t know.”

Borne, of Asher Agency, said that although Dodge customers might get a kick out of the monkey, “For a BMW buyer, is that the image you want?”

I can’t afford a BMW, so I don’t know. I just know what’s funny. And so does Tomkinson. He thinks the ads’ tone will at least distinguish his dealership. The advertising guys I consulted say it’s tough to gauge commercials’ effectiveness without conducting focus groups before and after. Most of the results are measured anecdotally.

Tompkinson’s showrooms are seeing more customer traffic in recent weeks, although the owner concedes that consumer interest tends to take an upturn as winter ends and spring arrives. Still, those ads are making an impression.

“There’s no question it’s going to raise our name as the one company that’s not screaming at (customers),” he said.

There’s no question that I’m thinking Tomkinson. But I bought a new car only a few months ago. Do you think he’d sell me just the monkey?

Source: The Journal Gazette
Byline: Sherry Slater

“Trunk monkey” can’t enter U.S., fiance may not be allowed in Canada after border arrest

An Amherst woman who got caught trying to sneak across the U.S. border in the trunk of her American fiance’s sports car says the couple, who met online, will find a way to spend their lives together despite any legal obstacles.

Dora Arlene Sauveur, 36, was arrested July 19 at the border crossing at Houlton, Maine, and served 23 days in a county jail at Bangor, Maine. Her friends started calling her “trunk monkey” and “suitcase” after her arrest.

Her fiance, Martin Ellis Crossno, 34, of South Carolina started serving a similar jail term last week.

Ms. Sauveur is banned from visiting the United States for 20 years and Mr. Crossno is now a convicted felon and might not be allowed to visit Canada.

Ms. Sauveur said the couple will find a way to be together, even if it means moving to France or Mexico or living in tents across from each other at the Canada-U.S. border.

“I’m sure we’re going to figure something out,” she said. “We’re getting married.”

She said Mr. Crossno has written to Oprah Winfrey and hopes to win the American TV talk show host’s support or appear on her program.

Ms. Sauveur and Mr. Crossno, who had clean records at the time of their arrest, last saw each other in court the next day. They had spent the night in adjoining cells but couldn’t see each other.

“We could talk to each other,” Ms. Sauveur said from her home Monday.

“They took him first, and he said, ‘I love you, baby.’ ”

When they were being transferred — in shackles and handcuffs — from the jail to the courthouse, their paths crossed and Ms. Sauveur defied the guards’ orders against personal contact and quickly gave Mr. Crossno a kiss.

Since then, the pair have mostly communicated the way they met — over the Internet.

Ms. Sauveur, who referred to herself as a “crazy Newfie,” had been married to Doug Sauveur of Amherst for nine years. They had two sons, now ages nine and six, but split in July 2003.

She met a different South Carolina man, Todd Mumford, 33, on the Internet in May 2004, went to visit him and ended up moving in with his parents.

She briefly returned to Canada and went back to Mr. Mumford’s parents’ house in August 2004. Her relationship with Mr. Mumford ended a few months later but she continued to stay with his parents and met Mr. Crossno last April.

She hit it off with the computer expert, whom she said hadn’t had a girlfriend for about eight years.

“We went hiking and we both clicked,” she said. “We just talked to each other all the time and we just grew more fond of each other.”

She started the application process for American citizenship, met Mr. Crossno’s parents and took him to Canada to meet her family in July.

The couple set out to drive back to South Carolina on July 14 but got stopped at the border. Ms. Sauveur had her sons with her and was asked to talk to a border official. She had all the necessary paperwork and her ex-husband’s permission to take the kids, who were on summer vacation, but a border officer said she had violated her six-month visa on her previous visit to the U.S.

She was denied entry to the country for five years. But with work as a graphic designer awaiting her in South Carolina, she decided to sneak into the country. Although she had a global positioning system device and contemplated running through the woods, she and Mr. Crossno decided she’d hide in the trunk of his car.

“To think back now, it was kind of stupid,” she said.

The American judge told Ms. Sauveur to start acting her age.

She said her jail time involved lots of boredom and horrible food.

“I’d have to ask them, ‘What are we eating?’ ” she said.

After her release, she returned to Amherst and started working at Wal-Mart, a job she will leave next week to work for TeleTech, a call centre company.

Ms. Sauveur said Mr. Crossno recently became very religious.

“I guess he found God before he went to jail,” she said. “He got to bring his Bible in and he’s just going to Bible-thump in jail,” she said.

She isn’t religious, but she said his recent conversion won’t be a problem for them.

To communicate during their time apart, Ms. Sauveur bought a laptop to send instant messages and she also foots the bill for pricey, international, convict-to-civilian phone calls. She said they’ve spoken to each other for up to a half-hour at $5 a minute.

She said her family and friends are supportive, even though some tease her, but Mr. Crossno’s family is somewhat shocked by all that has happened.

“Before me, Martin wasn’t with anybody for like eight or 10 years,” she said. “Then he meets me and in four months I’m meeting his mom, and (after) another month we’re going to meet my parents, and then in another month we’re in jail.”

Ms. Sauveur thinks her ban from the U.S. is “awful mean” and too long.

“It’s kind of crazy to ban someone for 20 years,” she said. “If I had a trunk full of drugs or a trunk full of guns or a bunch of Mexicans stuffed in the trunk, it’d be different, but I don’t think we did it in such a mean way that that’s the punishment we should put up with.”

Mr. Crossno’s situation regarding entry to Canada isn’t clear.

Jennifer Morrison, a spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency, said: “If you have a criminal record, then right off the bat you’re inadmissible to Canada, (but) there are some exceptions.”

She said such people have two options — apply for permission at a consulate outside Canada or speak to an officer on arrival at the border.

“It’s their decision to make and they take all the factors into consideration,” Ms. Morrison said.

“It really depends on the situation.”

She wouldn’t speculate on Mr. Crossno’s chances of entering Canada but said a felony conviction always remains on a person’s record.

Despite all the difficulties they’ve been through, Ms. Sauveur said she would do it all over again to be with her man.

“You can’t beat love,” she said.

Source: The Chronicle Herald
Byline: DAN ARSENAULT Crime Reporter

“There is always something going on,” said Jason, a former elite British soldier who works on personal security detail for a major engineering company there. “It could be an improvised explosive device by the side of the road, people taking pot shots at you or a truck loaded with explosives trying to ram you. The danger is there all the time.”

Those who have worked in Iraq are unmoved by the so-called “trophy” film captured on the airport road that emerged this week. Apparently taken from an unofficial website run by former employees of Aegis Defence Systems, the firm owned by Colonel Tim Spicer, the film shows a private security convoy shooting at what appears to be a civilian vehicle.

For the convoys, firing on vehicles that threaten the safety of their clients is the final sanction in a standard operating procedure drilled into them during weeks of intensive training. Andy, who trains security staff specifically to work in Iraq, said: “Our guys are trained to shoot if required. These local vehicles can be acting with bravado or they can be probing, planning a later attack. They are all perfectly aware that they must stay back. If they don’t they are dicing with death – they know that.”

According to Jason, the rear gunner, or trunk monkey that accompanies each convoy, moves through a special procedure to warn off unwanted motorists. “If they ignore the Arabic warning signs, we use a hand signal, then if they persist we fire a warning flare. If that doesn’t work it’s a bullet to the radiator, then the engine block. As a last resort, we’ll shoot the driver.”

The footage, which has been circulated among security personnel on e-mail for some months, has prompted fury from British politicians. The Conservatives even compared it to the scenes captured at the notorious Abu Ghraib jail. Critics of the private security firms say they are maverick forces, unregulated and operating beyond the law. Iraqi security sources say that as many as 60 civilians have been killed in similar shootings.

Aegis Defence Systems won a $150m (£86m) contract to provide security services to the US military last year. The company said it has set up a “formal board of inquiry” to investigate the matter. However, it refused to comment on allegations, which surfaced on the internet yesterday, that the man responsible for one of the shooting incidents was a South African employee of the company who worked out of the company’s Victory headquarters. It was claimed that attempts to sack him had failed after his convoy threatened to quit. Despite the dangers, security jobs in Iraq are vastly oversubscribed. A typical eight-week posting can see staff come home with up to $30,000 (£17,000) tax-free. There has been a boom in training courses that teach potential applicants everything from the use of firearms, to battlefield first aid and defensive driving techniques. There are even Ministry of Defence grants to help ex-soldiers retrain. A typical five-week course to operate in a level-five hostile environment – London is ranked level one – lasts five weeks and costs £4,000.

Jason insists the training is rigorous and firms stringently enforce discipline. Every time a firearm is discharged, staff must account for the ammunition. “This is no place for rampant egos or wannabe Rambos,” he said. “The insurgents are becoming better trained, their technology is improving and their weapons are becoming more sophisticated all the time.”

Andy agrees: “Egos are what get people killed. That is what we try to get across to the guys. The terrorists are not stupid. They are making their own videos and are doing their own training. They are well trained and well motivated. Our guys are on the job 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and you cannot relax, not ever.”

Jason added: “After a contract out there you are exhausted but no one is forced to be out there. We are not mercenaries but protection work can be boring in Britain. Out there, it is never dull.”

Source: The Independent
Byline: Jonathan Brown

Source: PETA

Brooklyn, N.Y. — After Plaza Auto Mall’s controversial “Trunk Monkey” commercial featuring a chimpanzee who is portrayed as rescuing a beleaguered driver caused public outcry and a response from PETA, the car dealership pulled the ad off the air. PETA will be awarding the dealership its “Compassionate Advertiser Award.”

PETA contacted auto dealer John Rossati after receiving complaints about his commercial from local viewers. Informing him about the cruel methods used in training great apes, PETA also reported that Honda, PUMA, and Keds recently pulled their commercials featuring great apes and that Men’s Wearhouse had pledged to never use great apes in ads. Furniture chain HomeUSA Warehouse and New Jersey auto dealership Malouf Ford pulled their entire ad campaigns featuring a chimpanzee and an orangutan, respectively, after corresponding with PETA.

A primatologist working undercover for a California facility that trains great apes for the TV and film industries witnessed trainers kicking, punching, and beating chimpanzees into submission. The orangutans and chimpanzees seen on TV are traumatically taken from their mothers. By the time they reach young adulthood, they are too powerful to be used and are often discarded at substandard roadside zoos or warehoused. The Jane Goodall Institute and the American Zoo & Aquarium Association recognize the unavoidable problems of using great apes for entertainment.

Plaza Auto Mall thanked PETA, saying, “Once we first heard of the possibility of the cruelty happening, we immediately discontinued all advertising.” Says PETA Director Debbie Leahy, “Plaza Auto Mall is sending a positive message that will resonate well beyond the Brooklyn community. These intelligent, social, and sensitive animals don’t deserve to be treated like punching bags by trainers.”

For more information, visit NoMoreMonkeyBusiness.com. A copy of PETA’s letter to John Rossati is available upon request.

It seems that Sam Oberman of Sainte Marie, MI nominated Trunkmonkey.com as champ chimp when Maxim asked its readers to send in the most chimptastic sites on the Web. Yes, we at Trunkmonkey.com know that chimps aren’t monkeys, but we’re still flattered by the nomination! Thanks to those at Maxim for another five minutes of fame!

Bresee Chevrolet is building brand identity thanks to a new television advertising campaign that highlights a monkey popping out of a car’s trunk, inevitably helping out the car’s owner in some way.

It’s an ad campaign specifically designed to offer an antidote to Billy Fuccillo’s “Huge” ad campaign.

“It’s totally the opposite,” explains Scott Portuondo, Bresee’s general manager. “Ours [is] fresh, It’s not as in-your-face, it’s more entertaining.” Equally entertaining has been the response by customers and prospects that have seen the TV spots, he adds.

The Liverpool car dealership has had to create an e-mail list for customers eagerly awaiting the fourth trunk-monkey commercial. Portuondo, who won’t reveal what the trunk monkey’s next stunt will be, says that ad will launch at the end of this month. Other customers have e-mailed Portuondo explaining that they bought a new car, but now they want their Trunk Monkey.

Portuondo, a Bresee Chevrolet veteran of 10 years, says he “cannot remember any ad campaign having nearly as much of an impact. It’s mostly kind of a goofy ad that cuts through the clutter. Every ad you see on TV for car dealers has been tried anywhere you go in the country, and this has a fun twist to it.”

There are no sales goals attached to the campaign, which Portuondo says was designed specifically to build up the Bresee brand. The dealership has a Trunk Monkey-decorated Christmas tree, and plans to come out with a line of Trunk Monkey-themed apparel after January 1.

The commercials, which have been airing since late May, have cost Bresee between $15,000 and $20,000 per month. “On average, we’re spending a lot less than ‘Huge’,” Portuondo says.

And while Portuondo says he’d love to take the credit for the Trunk Monkey’s appearance in Central New York, the idea originated with a dealership in Portland, Oregon. A clip was e-mailed to Portuondo in April “and I just thought it was hilarious,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Gee, we have to get that.’”

He called up R-West, a Portland-based advertising agency, to secure the rights to the campaign, and then coordinated local branding of the Trunk Monkey series with Bresee’s own ad agency, Designworks. Additional commercials featuring the Trunk Monkey depend on how long R-West can keep the campaign fresh.

“It depends on how many sequels they’ll produce,” Portuondo says. “We just bought another commercial last week. We’ve got the rights to that for another year. They keep making commercials, we keep buying them.”

Copyright Central New York Business Journal December 10, 2004
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved

Source: CNY Business Journal

Just in case you haven’t heard about Panache yet, feel free to check out the photos he posted after crashing into a house. Long story short, he claimed that his throttle cable stuck which caused him to crash into a house. Eye witnesses and the house owner have registered on the forum and posted saying they’ve seen him speeding through the neighborhood before. That, combined with the fact that he’s had two other major accidents in as many months, has caused the surrounding Internet community to call BS on his story. You be the judge.

This advertising agency in Portland, Oregon, created a commercial called “Trunk Monkey” that portrays a tire iron wielding chimpanzee, stored in a car’s trunk, who can be summoned whenever the operator of the vehicle is harassed by another driver. The commercial is sold to car dealerships all over the country. Please write to R/West officials to ask that they retire the commercial and establish a policy against using live primates in their ads:

Sean Blixseth, President
R/West
1430 S.E. Third Ave., 3rd Fl.
Portland, OR 97214
503-223-5443
503-223-5805 (fax)

Aired October 17, 2004 – 15:00 ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: From New York City America’s financial capital. This is IN THE MONEY.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JACK CAFFERTY, HOST: Welcome to the program. I’m Jack Cafferty. Coming up on today’s edition of IN THE MONEY — your move, now that you’ve seen Bush and Kerry square off, the next big step, of course, is all up to you. We’ll look at where the presidential race stands heading into the home stretch, and mercifully, after the debates are over.

Plus the power of the pulpits: Some Roman Catholic bishops are opposing John Kerry and telling their flock to do the same. Find out whether Catholic voters are paying attention.

And go ask your mother: Marketers are turning children into customers before they can read. We’ll talk with an author who has studied what that means for childhood.

Joining me today, a couple of IN THE MONEY veterans, CNN correspondent, Susan Lisovicz, “Fortune” magazine editor-at-large Andy Serwer.

You know, back when Ronald Reagan asked during the campaign, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago” it was a simpler question that had probably a simpler answer. But, there’s a question now being raised in this campaign, and given all of the rather unusual events, the recession, the events of September 11, it’s an issue worth addressing and I suppose it depends on, you know, what side of the economic scale you’re on, whether your answer to that question’s yes or no.

ANDY SERWER, “FORTUNE” MAGAZINE: Well, I think you’re dead right that it’s more complicated this time because from a purely economic standpoint I think you could argue the answer is no, because of the job losses, the stock market, gasoline and oil prices, which I keep saying is going to be a big issue throughout the end of this year. But, the whole 9/11 and security thing, are you better off when it comes to security, and we don’t really know. I mean the jury is still out — are we better off now? I mean, maybe our borders are more safe, the Army’s out there, but you know, it’s still uncertain if you ask me. SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, and I think when you’re talking about “are you better off now,” we’re not just only talking about our own — whether we — the ability to put food on our table and to put gas in our car, we’re talking about a much word broader picture, the world at large. Some people are concerned about no WMDs, tries to al-Qaeda and Iraq, other people say the right thing to do, the U.S. taking charge. So, it’s a complicated question, but that’s ultimately how people vote. Are you feeling better than you were four years ago?

SERWER: Right.

CAFFERTY: Exactly. That’s the $64,000 question.

LISOVICZ: Should the CEO of the United States be rehired or not?

CAFFERTY: And if it turns out we’re not any safer because of the events involving terrorism, then it becomes a moot point whether we’re all better off economically. Because, if we’re not safe it just doesn’t matter in the end, does it?

SERWER: Yes.

CAFFERTY: A presidential race is part political theater, and sometimes not very good theater, at that. And we’re closing in on the final act in this one, mercifully. The conventions are history and as of Wednesday, so thankfully are the debates. So, we’re going to take a look at what lies ahead. There’s not much time now. If you’re already sick of hearing about the debates well, we’ll try go easy on you, but we are going to talk a little bit about it. Joining us now from Charlottesville, Virginia, is Larry Sabato. He’s the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Larry, nice to have you with us.

LARRY SABATO, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

CAFFERTY: What was your sense of these debates? A lot of people felt they were so constricted, restricted, so many rules, so many conditions, the flow of information. So confined, that we didn’t really get a chance to see any good old honest give and take, here.

SABATO: Well, I couldn’t agree more with the criticisms. I think the debate process has been contorted and it’s really an embarrassment. Frankly, in the greatest country on earth in many ways we ought to have candidates who can freely exchange ideas, ask themselves questions and all the rest of it. You know, the campaigns and the parties have taken over this whole process. The only people left out are the voters. What a shock.

CAFFERTY: Yeah.

LISOVICZ: It’s disgraceful. I think we all agree on that, but was there any light or was it just heat? Were there any moments, any key phrases that you think will resonate through the years? SABATO: Ah boy, that’s a good question. I would tell you, as somebody who loves both political science and history that I can truthfully say neither candidate uttered a word that will live through history.

LISOVICZ: There you go, again.

SABATO: Yeah. No, I’m sorry, but it’s just not true. But I will say, I will — I will say this. The debates matter, and people — despite all their problems, people did learn some things especially about the challenger who was relatively unknown. They know President Bush, they’ve watched him, they saw, in essence, more of the same, both positive and negative. But look, this race was almost over in Bush’s direction, when the debates started. By the end of the debates, Kerry had evened it up. It’s — now as tight as a tick. So the debates did have an influence, whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, whether these debates really, truly reveal the nature of these candidates, we could argue forever.

SERWER: Larry, I was going to ask you where’s the beef, but maybe I better hold that question. But…

SABATO: I’m a vegetarian.

SERWER: Oh you — OK, well then I really won’t to ask that question then.

SABATO: OK, good.

SERWER: What should we do? I mean, what would be your optimum plan to have the debates? How would they look? How would they feel? What would we do?

SABATO: The moderator would be there as a time keeper and just to help the flow. The candidates would run the debates, by asking each other questions, back and forth, back and forth, and then there’d be a segment at the end for audience questions. I think the audience questions can be good and helpful, as this town hall meeting suggested, but look, there have to be follow-ups. You all know that. That’s your business. It’s so easy for a candidate to evade a question unless you can ask a follow-up.

CAFFERTY: What about the argument that President Bush made a tactical mistake even agreeing to do these things. You said it already, just a minute ago. Going into these debates, he had a commanding lead in virtually every poll across the country; he was leading in double digits in many of the battleground states, like Ohio and Florida. Now it’s a dead heat, again. What would have prevented him from saying, “you know what, I got too much to do, I got a war in Iraq, an economy — you know, I’m up to my ears and I just don’t have time and we’re not going to do this at all.” Might he have come out of this thing better off if he had just said “no?”

SABATO: Now, reasonable people can disagree about this, but I happen to agree with you. I think…

(CROSSTALK)

CAFFERTY: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) you can be on any time you want. We’ll have you back soon. All right?

SABATO: There you go.

I knew I’d say the right thing eventually. But look, he was ahead, and other incumbent presidents have gotten away with this. Would he have been criticized? Is the Pope Catholic? I mean he would have gotten enormous criticism, but that’s not how and why people vote and most people thought that Bush was probably going to win the debates anyway.

LISOVICZ: You know, I was intrigued by the follow-up questions. Since you said it, Larry, it’s so important and we all agree here. Here’s my follow-up. Charlie Gibson did ask a follow-up question on how each candidate would really reduce the deficit. Both of them gave their two-minute or 90-second banter, but neither of them addressed it, and so we asked the question. I don’t think anyone came away from that response figuring that out either. So, they’re just running — in other words they’re having their way with the moderator.

SABATO: Well, of course, and I thought the moderators, given the rules, did a pretty good job. I really did. I thought Charlie Gibson and Bob Schieffer. And Schieffer in particular did a very good job. But look, here’s the essence of it, with this debate format, you’ve got these candidates giving America a diet of hot fudge sundaes, question after question after question, and they get away with it because they don’t even challenge one another. They don’t want their diet of hot fudge sundaes challenged either.

SERWER: Yeah, I mean, that’s what sort of blew my mind, Larry, is when one candidate would say to the other, “and you did you this 78 times,” and then the other candidate would just go, “my position is…” and — you know, they just — they wouldn’t respond to each other, and it’s just sort of — it was surreal in that sense. But let me ask you, do you think that this debate — these debates really changed people’s minds?

SABATO: It changed some people’s minds. You know, it’s hard for us, who follow this on a daily basis, to believe that there actually are truly undecided people out there. Who could be undecided with these macro issues of war and peace and the economy and strong personalities? But there really are. And some of them did switch. They really did move from one to another as a consequence of the debates.

CAFFERTY: How do you fix this system? The democratic and republican parties now have control of this thing. We had the rules for this whole charade, and that’s what it was, being negotiated by Vernon Jordan and Jim Baker behind closed doors and out of view of the public. Nobody gets a vote except the democrats and the republicans. I mean, it ought to be criminal, but it’s not. The League of Women Voters used to run these things and they were a hell of a lot better. What can be done?

SABATO: You know, most things that are wrong are legal…

(LAUGHTER)

SABATO: …and that’s what really bothers me about life, but I couldn’t agree with you more. These were better debates when the League of Women Voters ran them. I think we need to seize it back from this bipartisan debate commission. That’s a function of the democrats and republicans. Why shouldn’t there be one debate out of, say four, where you have the libertarian candidate and the green candidate, and some other third party candidates included? Sure, they’re not going to win, but they introduce ideas that the major party candidates would have to respond to.

CAFFERTY: Well, and some of those…

SABATO: It’s a good thing.

CAFFERTY: Some of those third party and minor party candidates have, in fact, influenced the outcome of elections.

SABATO: Yes.

CAFFERTY: You can look at Ross Perot, who got 19 percent of the vote the first time he ran and changed what would have been the outcome if he wasn’t in it. You can look at Ralph Nader in the last election and suggest if he hadn’t been in the race it might have been Al Gore’s presidency instead of George Bush’s. So, they do have a role and the fact that we’re not getting to hear from anybody but the democrats and republicans, well, it’s only an hour show and I got to stop.

Larry, it’s nice to have you on the program. Thank you.

SABATO: Enjoyed it. Thanks a lot.

CAFFERTY: Larry Sabato, he’s the director of University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Coming up next, Catholic versus Catholic: Some of the bishops in John Kerry’s church have turned against him. We’ll look at why and whether or not they could sway voters in the race.

Plus so much money it’s almost scary: Find out from Halloween went from a little celebration for kids to a major, major retail blowup.

Plus don’t monkey with the trunk monkey: Find out why. Allen Wastler tours the “Fun Site of the Week” later on IN THE MONEY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAFFERTY: For generations, Catholic voters in this country have been solidly democratic, but over the last several elections that’s begun to change. This year much has been made about John Kerry’s stance on abortion. He’s pro-choice and that position has pushed many parishioners into opposing corners. How are they going to vote? We’re joined now by James Fisher, co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies at Fordham University.

Mr. Fisher, welcome to IN THE MONEY, nice to have you with us.

JAMES FISHER, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY: Great to be here, thanks.

CAFFERTY: How’s the — how’s the John Kerry phenomenon any different from, Mario Cuomo comes to mind, the governor of New York, I think it was, three terms. A staunch Catholic and yet was elected overwhelmingly in a very strongly democratic state with a huge Catholic population. Is this — is this that serious an issue among Catholics do you think?

FISHER: Well, Cuomo made a famous speech at Notre Dame about 20 years ago where he outlined his position where he, as a Catholic opposed abortion, but as the governor of a state which represented a really diverse array of views, he didn’t feel it was appropriate to impose those views on the electorate.

CAFFERTY: But, isn’t that the old cake and eat it syndrome, I don’t want to own up to the fact I’m violating one of the tenets of my church by looking the other way on abortion?

FISHER: It’s a very difficult position, and of course — and President Bush jumped at Kerry and even ridiculed him saying you have to decide for the answer. It’s a very difficult position to make convincingly for Catholic, national Catholic democrats, who inevitably are pro-choice because they’re required to be.

SERWER: Yeah, well James, isn’t it very possible that President Bush could get more of the Catholic vote than John Kerry?

FISHER: Well, Al Gore won narrowly the Catholic vote four years ago. See, the thing is, there’s no such thing as the “Catholic vote.”

SERWER: Right.

FISHER: There’s many Catholic votes and in this case, there are at least two, probably two clear-cut Catholic votes. There are conservative Catholics or those who see the moral issues, like abortion, as paramount and they’re much more likely to vote for President Bush and then there are other Catholics who see this whole range of, sort of, global social justice issues as extremely important and they may very well vote for John Kerry. And the thing is, there’s strong traditions within Catholic life and Catholic thought that support both points of view. So, there really are at least two distinct Catholic votes at work in this election.

LISOVICZ: But James, I live in a town where my state senator quit the Roman Catholic Church, this year…

FISHER: Would that be Bernard Kenny of Jersey City?

LISOVICZ: Hoboken, actually.

FISHER: Hoboken, right. LISOVICZ: Yeah, he was no longer being served communion at the parish he’d attended for many years. My question to you is, where do you stop? The Roman Catholic Church took a stand against abortion, but where do you stop? What about politicians who support the death penalty? What about a war in Iraq where people say, “You know what? I thought there were weapons of mass destruction there.” What about weapons, military-style weapons that are free to customers, perhaps underage consumers? Where does the Catholic Church stop and open the door?

FISHER: Well, that’s why some years ago the late Cardinal Bernardino, of Chicago, tried to propose what he called the “seamless garments approach” where Catholics took a pro-life position across the board, which would include a peace or anti-war position, a position on behalf of workers and the poor. That is a consistent ethic of life which tries to, sort of, overcome these partisan divisions. Well, it just didn’t work. I mean, for decades, Catholics took a beating from people on the outside and in recent years we’re beating ourselves up. And so it’s very fractious and divisive time within the church.

Now bishops, you know, their job is to assert the moral teachings of the church and that’s what they’re going to do. The question becomes when people start to feel that bishops are actually telling people how to pull a lever in the voting booth, that’s a whole another story and there’s no evidence, really at all, that people vote because a bishop indicates to them they should vote one way or the other.

CAFFERTY: But, is there a legitimate question that we ask you about bishops standing in the pulpit on Sunday telling people how to vote in light of the ongoing difficulties over the last several decades within the Catholic Church itself? I just wonder how much moral credibility still remains when it comes to things like lecturing people on who to vote for in light of the church sex scandals that have been in the news for years and years now.

FISHER: The bishop’s job is to teach and it’s not clear that bishops are preaching you must vote for candidate X or Y or republican or democrat. Their job is to provide a very clear statement of the church’s teaching and they do that to a greater or lesser degree of success. But, it’s quite clear in this election that there is a group of bishops, and certainly not all, but there is a group of bishops who clearly are endorsing, without publicly necessarily saying so, they’re suggesting that the only appropriate vote for a Catholic is to vote for President Bush. The question becomes, however, how does that really translate into behavior? Because again there’s been no evidence from recent elections that, for example, a significant number of Catholics vote for a particular — on the basis of one particular moral issue such as abortion. They tend to vote across a wider array of issues.

SERWER: Right, so an unemployed Catholic is an unemployed voter first and Catholic second. That sort of thing.

FISHER: That’s right. Well, that’s exactly right. But, an unemployed voter might, in fact, see his unemployment in the context of Catholic teachings about the economy. SERWER: Do the parties pay any attention to this at all? Do they talk about we should appeal to the Catholic vote here? Do they do that anymore?

FISHER: The parties pay tremendous attention, because again, the democrats understand there is a Catholic base of voters who are — who have an affinity for the kinds of issues that John Kerry is promoting most fervently. The republicans clearly understand there is a base, and they feel it’s a growing base of conservative Catholic voters who are more likely to enter their camp.

Now, don’t forget, Richard Nixon took the Catholic vote in 1972, and that was year before Roe versus Wade and that was the first time in American history it happened. So, it’s been a gradual shift. Ronald Reagan, of course, took a tremendous swathe of the Catholic vote, the so-called “Reagan democrats” were really mostly Catholic. But, then they came back into the democratic fold for President Clinton. So, it’s a very volatile constituency which could — you know, could — the balance could tip one way or the other and it seems to be pretty evenly divided in this election.

LISOVICZ: Just like every other constituency.

FISHER: Like everything else. Right.

LISOVICZ: And a volatile election. James Fisher, co-director of the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies thank you so much for joining us.

FISHER: Thank you.

LISOVICZ: Coming up after the break: Showing it like they see it: Sinclair is taking sides with an election season broadcast. We’ll check the political fallout.

Also ahead, giving kids the business: We’ll hear from a psychiatrist about how marketers are changing childhood in America.

And what is that thing, anyway? Stick around as Allen Wastler of money.com digs for the truth under what really was under the president’s jacket.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LISOVICZ: Now, let’s take a look at the week’s top stories in our money minutes. Strong auto sales helped boost retail sales by a lot more than expected last month. That’s after they fell slightly in August. Experts say buyers responded to strong incentives from the automakers. There was also a spike in sales at supply stores thanks to those hurricanes in the south.

But those strong auto sales did not come soon enough for lots of GM investors. General Motors says intense competition, price cutting and the higher cost of employee health care led to much lower than expected profits from July to September. Investors punished the stock and sent shares down nearly 5 percent the day the news came out. And here’s some news about outsourcing that you might actually like. Guess who’s getting hit with job exportation now? It’s the lawyers. A number of U.S. companies are now outsourcing routine legal work to India, South Korea and Australia. GE is leading the way with a subsidiary in India that employs about 30 lawyers.

SERWER: Another big story this week was the Sinclair Broadcasting group’s decision to air an anti-Kerry documentary film on all of its 62 TV stations just a week before Election Day. Many Sinclair executives are outspoken Bush supporters, so the decision is being seen in some corners as a violation of Federal election laws. Sinclair shares have been on a mostly steady decline this year. But the question is, will the company’s controversial decision play a role in the stock’s performance? That makes Sinclair Broadcasting our stock of the week.

First of all you guys, this is a pretty small company that is not really on the radar screen. I mean it’s a market value, it’s worth $600 million, which is teensy-weensy in the greater scheme of things. Bottom line is, I don’t think if you own television networks, like this, that you have any business telling people how to vote or how to think. It would be like a cable company putting political ads on. I think it’s wrong.

CAFFERTY: That’s fair enough. But let me ask you this. Was it considered a violation of election laws when movie theaters showed Michael Moore’s 9/11 film all during the campaign season for the last six months?

SERWER: No, they had a right to show it. But they don’t have the same licenses with the government.

CAFFERTY: So does Sinclair Broadcasting.

SERWER: They don’t have the same licenses with the government Jack.

CAFFERTY: I’m not sure that showing the anti-Kerry documentary’s a violation –

SERWER: We haven’t seen this film by the way. No one’s seen it, so no one really knows anything about it anyway.

LISOVICZ: I have to side with Andy on this one.

CAFFERTY: Not a surprise.

SERWER: That’s always tough.

LISOVICZ: We talk about, you know, it’s something that people pay money for. They have a choice. When you turn on the television, free over the air, television, it’s put in front of you. I think that is the difference –

CAFFERTY: You have the same choice there, you can turn it off.

SERWER: Not this show.

CAFFERTY: Not IN THE MONEY. No, we’re talking about Sinclair Broadcasting.

LISOVICZ: They’re granted licenses to serve in the public interest. This is clearly someone with a very sharp point of view and the other thing tied to the stock, this is a person who has a controversial viewpoint and we’ve seen how that can affect the stock in other instances, like Martha Stewart.

SERWER: The stock’s been doing terribly, but basically the company’s not doing well. I mean just last month, they announced their third quarter earnings were going to be lousy. The company is not doing very well. I don’t think it has anything to do with their political views. The other thing is, this is going to be very interesting. They’re announcing their earnings on November 4th. So we shall see what we shall see. The other little thing I think it’s kind of fun is what happens if Kerry wins and then they go to the government and they ask for certain legislative things to happen.

CAFFERTY: Could be a problem.

SERWER: Yeah. Might not be so good. I think it’s an interesting – it’s a little debate though.

CAFFERTY: But it’s a good story.

SERWER: It is interesting. All right. Coming up on IN THE MONEY, the walking wallet. For a kid who’s crazy about a product, a parent is just a bank on legs. Find out how marketing is changing childhood.

Also ahead, scare and scare alike. We’ll look at how Halloween went from small time to big ticket.

And forget the tiger in your tank. See what happens with a monkey in your trunks. Unbelievable. Stick around for the fun site of the week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LISOVICZ: The whining, the nagging, the temper tantrums. It won’t be easy, but next time you go shopping with your little darlings, try not to lose your patience. It’s not their fault they want everything in sight or so says Juliet Schor. She’s author of “Born to Buy,” the commercialized child and the new consumer culture and she joins us now with a look at what makes your kids want. Welcome.

JULIET SCHOR, AUTHOR, “BORN TO BUY”: Thank you.

LISOVICZ: You know, children have always been targeted by whether it’s cereal companies or toy companies. Focus groups, they’ve been around forever. What’s different now?

SCHOR: Well, you have to compare that old environment, which was a couple of hours of Saturday morning TV, maybe a little bit of afternoon TV, a small number of commercials and just a few products, to what’s going on today, which is a total barrage. The average kid is seeing 40,000 television commercials a year. He or she is being advertised to in the schools, on the Internet, even in playgrounds. I took a look in my book at how marketers are infiltrating virtually every nook and cranny of kids’ lives and pitching to them one thing after another. So it’s like comparing the BB gun to the neutron bomb.

SERWER: One of the first companies in charge of the BB gun, I guess Juliet, was McDonald’s. They figured out early on by having a clown out there, they could get kids to tug on mommy and daddy’s sleeve and say, can we go there and visit Ronald McDonald which is very smart. But I think you’re right. I mean there’s a proliferation. What interests me is how marketers are linking toys and junk food into all sorts of different sectors. Take health care, for instance. Can you talk about that, how it’s sort of more of a toy mentality? When kids look at band-aids which have cartoons on them, things like that, right?

SCHOR: Right. I spent time with the company that developed these tattoo band-aids. So it’s not just a utilitarian product anymore, it’s a toy. They call it trans-toying. It’s turning all kinds of things into toys. Food is a prime example of this. Instead of being food that you eat because it tastes good, because it’s good for you, they’re turning food products into toys, things that kids play with. And of course, the whole concept behind the happy meal, one of the people I met in my research was the inventor of the happy meal. And they started that because kids were bored at McDonald’s. And they needed something to keep them occupied while the parents ate and talked. They started with sort of toys they could play with during the meal. And of course, now, it’s the lure of the toy that often gets the kid asking for it. And the result is that we have a generation of kids hooked on junk food. Fifth percent of children’s calories now are coming from added sugar and fat.

CAFFERTY: How concerned are you about the mental health of these kids who are bombarded with all this stuff? Are they at risk in any way?

SCHOR: Well, we see steady increases in a whole range of emotional disorders, whether we’re talking about depression and anxiety. The average American kid now has an anxiety level which is the same as what kids who were admitted into psychiatric hospitals had in the ’50s. So it’s a huge increase in their stress and anxiety. Marketers are very aware of this. And they figure out how to market to stressed-out kids. But the research I did for my book asks the question, are — is this rising depression and anxiety, this rise of psychosomatic complaints like headaches and stomach aches, is it due to kids’ growing involvement in consumer culture? And I found very strong evidence that the answer to that question is yes.

LISOVICZ: OK, then, how so because that’s a big reach. We know, we can see for ourselves, kids are bombarded by marketers. But to say that they’re stressed out, they’re anxious, they’re depressed is another region entirely. How can you defend that? SCHOR: Absolutely. I developed a measure of consumer involvement. It measures how psychically keyed into consumer culture kids are, how much they care about stuff and labels and being cool and having a lot of money and the kind of car their parents drive and so forth. And what I find is that the kids who score higher on that measure are more likely to score higher on depression measures, on measures of anxiety, on measures of psychosomatic complaints like headaches and stomach aches. And I also tested to see, well, is it just a problem that these kids who are already depressed and anxious tend to have higher consumer involvement. And the answer to that question is, no, it’s the consumer involvement that’s driving the depression, anxiety and psychosomatic complaints.

SERWER: Juliet, do you think it’s safe to say that the level of sophistication in marketing to kids has increased faster than the level of sophistication to grownups over the past 25 years?

SCHOR: No question about it. I mean, this is a huge growth area in marketing and advertising. It’s a cutting edge place. It used to be a backwater with very little money, low creativity, not the cutting edge, really talented people and that’s all changed. It’s a really hot place. They’ve got incredible intensive new research they’re doing. And I looked at that. Their messages have gotten so more sophisticated from what they were in the past. That’s another big difference between the marketing that we remember from our childhoods and what’s going on today. They really tapped into kids’ psychic vulnerabilities, their emotional vulnerabilities.

SERWER: To the degree that you’re able to, let’s offer a little hope to parents who might be watching this program. The marketing machine in this country isn’t going to go away. What can parents do in terms of, you know, addressing this concern, if they have it, about their own children?

SCHOR: Two things. Number one, my results — my research shows that the more exposure kids have to marketing messages and commercials, the more consumer involved they’re going to be and more likely to suffer these problems. So reduce the amount of television and screen time more generally.

CAFFERTY: What about a show like IN THE MONEY? Is it OK for them to watch that?

SCHOR: Absolutely. That was a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) on television.

LISOVICZ: Doctor approved. That’s for sure.

SCHOR: The other thing is, look at what’s happening in your child’s school. There’s a huge amount of marketing in schools. They’re going around parents. That’s one of the reasons they’re there. Find out if your child’s being marketed to in schools. Call your senators and congressmen. We’re trying to get some junk food marketing legislation in schools through Congress now.

LISOVICZ: Be involved, in other words. Juliet Schor, the author of “Born to Buy,” the commercialized child and the new consumer culture. Thanks for joining us.

SCHOR: My pleasure.

LISOVICZ: There’s much more ahead here on IN THE MONEY. Up next, more treats than trick. Halloween’s become as much about shelling out cash as it is about handing out candy. We’ll find out how that happened.

And later, pop the trunk and brace yourself. A trunk monkey is the star of our fun site of the week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SERWER: The numbers are spooky, scary, outright shocking, $1 billion on costumes, another $1 billion on candy, $780 million on decorations. Americans are crazy about Halloween and spend big bucks to celebrate it each year. Of course, it hasn’t always been that way. Here to tell us how this ancient observance hit holiday mainstream is Nick Rogers, author of “Halloween, From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Nick is also a professor of history at York College. Welcome, Nick.

NICK ROGERS, AUTHOR: Good afternoon.

SERWER: What’s interesting to me are my kids who insist now, insist on buying Halloween costumes out of catalogs. I try to tell them, throw a sheet over your head and cut out the little eyes and be a ghost. No, no, no. This thing has really elevated to a major commercial holiday, hasn’t it?

ROGERS: It has. It has indeed. And there are a number of reasons why that’s the case. I think it’s being very consciously promoted as a commercial opportunity. But I also think that when you have double-income families, and when you have parents who don’t have time to make costumes as they did in the past, that also is an inducement to go out and buy some.

LISOVICZ: Nick, I’m an adult. I’m a big kid. And I always make my costume. That’s a big part of the sales. I don’t want to tell you what –

SERWER: I see what you are.

LISOVICZ: I’m afraid to tell you, but I always go as a news story, a news person and I’ll leave it at that. Halloween falls on a weekend this year, so that should be another terrific year. It’s adults that are also fueling the sales numbers. A lot of adults like this, and they throw parties to celebrate it.

ROGERS: That’s absolutely right. And 20-somethings actually spend more on Halloween probably than anybody else. That’s been a feature of the period since the 1970s, when the gay community started promoting Halloween. I think other people cashed in and decided that it would be a great sort of bar scene, club scene, street scene, Wisconsin and M in Washington, for example and it’s gone from there.

SERWER: It’s interesting that you mentioned that. I hadn’t made the connection, but now I do. Clearly, the gay community in Greenwich Village here in New York for years doing local news. We always used to send a camera crew down to cover the Halloween parade in the village. And 20 years ago, it was kind of this little thing where a few whack jobs would get together and dress up and so on. Now it is an international event and I’ll bet you’re right. Let me ask you this, though. What is it, do you attribute the sudden presence on lawns all over America of these absurd blow-up figures of Frankenstein and pumpkins and various dumb looking things that just litter up the landscape? Who in their right mind would put garbage like this in their yard?

ROGERS: I don’t know. I think one of the reasons why they – I don’t do it.

CAFFERTY: Andy, do you have any of those?

SERWER: I don’t have a yard.

ROGERS: But I think one of the reasons is that, you know, in the ’70s, when there was a bit of a panic about trick or treating, it wasn’t safe, haunted houses made their appearance big time. And I think people picked up on that. Now the technology is such that you can create your own haunted house. And that’s what we are seeing.

CAFFERTY: There you go.

SERWER: Nick, first of all, we’re going to try to figure out what Susan is going to be this year. How about Martha Stewart?

LISOVICZ: Been there, done that.

SERWER: Oh, you’ve already done that. Well, I’m behind the times. Let me ask you, Nick, is it the case that some Christians in the country are not so keen on Halloween, that they do sort of link it to a pagan ritual? I know a couple who actually turn an eye away from it, and consider it maybe not such a great holiday?

ROGERS: I think that’s right. Not all Christians think this. I think actually it’s the conservative Christians of a Protestant persuasion who think this. They think Halloween encourages the occult. It encourages and peddles evil, basically. And they think and they associate that with its pagan origins.

CAFFERTY: Is it still OK to go through your kids’ trick or treat candy under the guise of protecting them from razor blades and straight pins and steal all the good stuff out of there? Is that ethically still acceptable?

SERWER: No.

CAFFERTY: Because I used to do that all the time. Let me see that. I just want to make sure there’s nothing dangerous in there and then I would find the Tootsie Rolls and their bubble gums and the little things that I wanted and squirrel them off into my own pocket.

LISOVICZ: Nick, since you’re a scholar, and you probably don’t steal your kids’ candy –

ROGERS: No.

LISOVICZ: Like how dependent is the holiday on like really outrageous character, like Martha Stewart, presidential election? Do they connect at all?

ROGERS: Yeah, they do, in a certain way. There’s always been an element of parody, of transgression, about Halloween, and certainly I think that people that are in the news, or characters that are in films get presented.

LISOVICZ: What’s the number one mask right now? Do you know?

ROGERS: Well, I think actually people are picking up on pirates again.

SERWER: Yes.

ROGERS: As a result of “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

LISOVICZ: If Johnny Depp comes to my door, I will make sure to give him a lot of candy. Nick Rogers, professor of history at York College, thank so much.

CAFFERTY: ..give a whole new meaning to the phrase trick or treat, wouldn’t it?

LISOVICZ: Jack? Don’t go there, Jack.

SERWER: He already did.

LISOVICZ: Coming up, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Allen Wastler of money.com looks into the dispute over that mysterious bulge in the president’s jacket.

And tell us what’s on your mind. Please don’t send any e-mail about Johnny Depp or trick or treat. The address is inthemoney@cnn.com. But first, this week’s edition of money and family.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LISOVICZ: Are you overworked and underpaid? Do you deserve more money? Here’s some good strategies on how to ask for a raise and get yes for an answer. Start by documenting your performances. You don’t deserve a raise just because you haven’t had one in a while. Make a list of successful projects, skills and responsibilities that go beyond your immediate job. Know what you’re worth. Check out sites like salary.com for extensive reports, and industry surveys that tell you exactly what you can expect. Then use that knowledge in your negotiations, whether it’s with your current employer or a new one. And don’t take no for an answer. If your request for a raise is dismissed, ask why. You may already be at the top of the pay scale or there is no room for growth at that company, and that means it’s time to move on. I’m Susan Lisovicz for money and family.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAFFERTY: Most Internet rumors are just that, they’re rumors and they tend to die down after a short while. But the Internet fueled story about that mysterious bulge on George Bush’s back during the debates is not going away. I think it was a satellite dish. And it’s even forced legitimate media organizations to check it out. Our webmaster Allen Wastler is here with that story and the fun site of the week. What’s up with the thing on the back?

SERWER: The battle of the bulge.

ALLEN WASTLER, CNNMONEY.COM: Just a casual observation by somebody can turn into this mad craze. Have you seen the bulge? Let’s show the folks. There’s the bulge. You see?

CAFFERTY: What is that?

SERWER: The hunchback.

WASTLER: Right between his shoulders. That’s not a great suit, but it’s a nice suit. There’s something back there. So, of course, the paranoid people on the Internet, and there’s quite a few…

CAFFERTY: Right.

WASTLER: They immediately started blogging about it. What could it be? The leading contender is some sort of radio transceiver and that George Bush had a secret earpiece in there and Karl Rove, his political guru, sort of was feeding him answers and stuff like that. Now, of course…

LISOVICZ: Karl Rove should be fired (ph).

WASTLER: With the availability of information on the Internet, of course, everybody combs through the transcript trying to look for some verifying thing. Here’s a clip from the debate, the first debate, where he could be speaking to voices. Let’s check it out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And that’s not how a commander in chief acts. I — let me finish. The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WASTLER: Now, nobody interrupted him there. He was flat in the middle of his time. The lights weren’t even blinking at him.

CAFFERTY: He was talking to the guy who was interrupting him in his ear. WASTLER: That’s what the -

(CROSSTALK)

CAFFERTY: Let me finish what I’m saying. Everybody’s sending messages.

WASTLER: There’s plenty of alternative possibilities. It could be just a wrinkle in his suit. It could be a back brace.

(CROSSTALK)

WASTLER: It could be body armor. It could be any sort of thing. But the White House said the whole spurious comments are what it could be are just ridiculous.

CAFFERTY: But they didn’t say what it was, did they?

WASTLER: No, they didn’t.

LISOVICZ: This is a man who has custom-made suits. His tailor should be fired then.

WASTLER: And a few organizations hired some tailors and said, OK, OK, look at that suit. Tell us what you saw. And the tailor, oh, it looks like a fine suit, maybe off the rack, but still a pretty good suit, but that’s not tailoring. No, no, no.

CAFFERTY: Let’s move on to the fun site.

WASTLER: I brought you a classic. This is a classic on the Internet. Jack, I give you the trunk monkey.

CAFFERTY: Oh, yeah, you go.

SERWER: That’s great. You know what that is? It gives new meaning to the phrase guerrilla marketing.

WASTLER: You’ve got to love it. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it.

CAFFERTY: I did very much. Thank you, sir.

Coming up next on IN THE MONEY as we continue, it’s time to hear from you as we read some of your e-mails from the past week. You can send us an e-mail right now if you’re so inclined. We’re at inthemoney@cnn.com. Back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAFFERTY: Time now to read your answers to our question of the week about whether presidential debates have helped you decide whom to vote for. Samantha wrote this. The debates have helped me see President Bush as too simplistic and as a person who looks like he’s about to throw a temper tantrum. John Kerry appeared presidential.

Dennis in Florida writes, the debate showed me that John Kerry can’t defend his record spanning 20 years in the Senate. In fact, he hardly mentions it at all. How come he never had a plan until now?

And Jeff in Massachusetts writes, the debates haven’t influenced how I’ll vote, but if I’ll vote. They’ve convinced me that I must vote or forever stop complaining and I guess that applies to all of us.

Now, for next week’s e-mail question of the week. It’s this. Do your religious beliefs affect your vote? Send your answers to inthemoney@cnn.com.

And you should also visit our show page at money.com/inthemoney which where you’ll find address for our fun site of the week, the monkey in the trunk.

WASTLER: Trunk monkey.

CAFFERTY: Thanks for joining us for this edition of IN THE MONEY. My thanks to CNN correspondent Susan Lisovicz, “Fortune” magazine editor at large Andy Serwer and money.com managing editor Allen Wastler. Join us next week if you’re so inclined, Saturday at 1:00, Sunday at 3:00, or you can catch Andy and me all week long on “AMERICAN MORNING.” And this week, we’ll be live in the great city of Chicago, Illinois. That’s the program, starts at 7:00 Eastern Monday. That would be 6:00 Chicago time. Looking forward to visiting the Windy City.

In the meantime, thanks for today and we’ll see you soon.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

Source: CNN IN THE MONEY

Two of L.A.’s finest chimpanzee actors are helping Portland advertising agency R/West and one of its clients get a little global recognition.

Bella and Jonah portray a “Trunk Monkey” in five television advertisements that have generated an almost cult-like following. The result is syndication of the ads throughout the country and in Australia and New Zealand.

In addition to running as paid commercials, the ads have played for entertainment value on European television, as part of training by several police departments and other organizations in the United States.

“It’s an insane story — people really are obsessed with it,” said Sean Blixseth, president of R/West. The 7-year-old agency created the ads for Sandy-based Suburban Auto Group.

“Suburban knew they couldn’t win the media battle with dollars. They’re not even in the top 10 in terms of money spent on advertising by car dealers in the Portland area,” Blixseth said. “But we knew if we came up with something that blew people’s minds, it could be huge.”

Told to “go out on the edge,” Blixseth and his team brainstormed to come up with ideas that led to the concept of building an identity for Suburban.

R/West, with 26 employees, is known for its work with Burgerville, Integra Telecom and Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. The agency recorded $4.1 million in revenue in 2003, according to The Business Journal 2004 Book of Lists.

The agency has worked with Vancouver, Wash.-based Burgerville for years. Recent work with the burger purveyor includes launching a campaign on the company’s switch to Oregon Country Beef — which is raised by independent ranchers who raise beef naturally without hormones.

But the Trunk Monkey campaign has garnered the most attention.

In the first four Trunk Money ads, Jonah hangs out in a spacious trunk of a new vehicle until the driver needs assistance. In one, Jonah catches a would-be car thief and dumps him off a bridge.

At the end of the spots, Suburban’s logo appears.

In the most recent ad broadcast, Bella took over the role. She plays a pediatrician who pops out of the trunk when it becomes apparent that a woman riding in the back seat is going to deliver her baby en route. The ad ends with proud parents standing on the side of the road behind a proud Bella, who’s holding the swaddled infant.

In a different version of the ad, Bella runs off with the newborn.

Two yet-to-be-produced spots call for a “wingman” and a salesman Trunk Monkey.

The first ad aired in Portland during the 2003 Super Bowl, a spot that cost around $3,000.

“We definitely were the most talked about ad that night,” said Nancy Jaksich, who co-owns Suburban with her husband.

“We got a lot of calls. People were asking things like, ‘I just bought one of your cars, you didn’t tell me the Trunk Monkey was an option,’” Jaksich said.

“Then we started getting calls from Great Britain and Australia. It just went crazy,” she said.

One day following the airing of the first ad, the company’s Web site shut down. More than 250,000 attempts to download the ad overloaded the site.

Jaksich said she started hearing from dealers in Ohio and Pennsylvania and elsewhere around the country who had customers in their showrooms talking about the Trunk Monkey.

“That’s when we realized we were probably going to be able to syndicate it,” she said.

Suburban responded by trade-marking “Trunk Monkey” and licensing the concept. R/West works to tailor the ads to auto dealers in other markets.

The result is revenue that helps offset Suburban’s production costs, a steady trickle of work for local production houses, and a higher profile for R/West.

“It gives us global exposure to some extent but definitely a national profile. To date, we’ve really been seen as a regional creative shop,” Blixseth said.

The process has expanded Suburban’s horizons as well.

The auto dealer recently started merchandising Trunk Monkey products — T-shirts, bumper stickers and action dolls — from a shop at one of its showrooms and online.

Source: Portland Business Journal
Byline: Shelly Strom

This local classified ad is a perfect illustration of the crossover consumer we have become, comfortable in so many different areas that marketers find it increasingly challenging to use segmentation effectively.

Add this crossover factor to the new demographics and targeting gets tougher still. A recent article in Financial Times, Samuel Huntington’s “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity,” notes that our demographics are changing, and drastically at that: “The single most immediate and most serious challenge to America’s traditional identity comes from the immense and continuing immigration from Latin America, especially from Mexico, and the fertility rates of these immigrants compared with black and white American natives.”

It’s a time of massive consumer transformation, one we seem to resist acknowledging. Instead of just trying to update an old customer acquisition approach, we would be smarter if we rethought how we go about gathering customers in general.

Yep, pull marketing is back. When the Internet started making waves, marketers claimed that all customers would be pulled into sales over the Internet and that pushing via mailings was dead. An overstatement, yes. But, as it turns out, not far from the truth.

We are over mailing lists, our creative is as distinctive as the hundreds of six-toed cat “clones” in Key West, FL, and we’re all starting to sell the same stuff. Not to mention that message bombardment has forced consumers to learn the art of tuning out all marketing.

Effective pull marketing requires that you know what your customers want before they know they want it.

Here are a few key areas where pull shines.

Web Sites

Larry Dotson reports on Top7 Business.com that the main reason people don’t visit a Web site is that it doesn’t offer free original content. Catalogers tend to be horrid at content.

Rather, consider the British publication More, which allowed visitors to download an instant boyfriend for two weeks with the relationship unfolding every day. The copy: “It’s great – a boyfriend and a screen saver in one! Who says men aren’t useful? But beware, a lot can happen in two weeks. Men are an unpredictable breed.”

Another Web-site draw: films. Budweiser runs ads to invite filmmakers to create films for its site. Having recently gone to an independent film festival and listened to filmmakers talk, I learned that “hiring” someone to create an original film is not expensive. Most produced their films with their own money; the highest budget (for a subsidized school project) was $30,000. Create a theme that makes sense for your company’s image, start a contest using your Web site or catalog and watch the movies roll in.

Viral Marketing

Remember “I told two friends, they told two friends…”? That’s what viral marketing is all about.

Best current example: the Suburban Auto Group and its hilarious Trunk Monkey commercials. Though no longer running, the ads have such a cult-like following they have spawned an entire site and are being forwarded like crazy. Viral marketing caused this tiny auto dealership in Sandy, OR to become one of the most talked-about companies on the Web. Visit Suburbanautogroup.com to find out why.

Tie-ins

Tie-ins offer another reason for consumers to choose you. Industrial supplies cataloger New Pig ties in with Victory Junction Gang, a nonprofit that’s building a camp touted as “a magical place where special kids can just be kids.” As the camp was founded by the Petty car racing family, and New Pig has a habit of giving away NASCAR racing glasses, the pairing seems natural.

Endorsements

There are three basic kinds of endorsements: customer, authority and celebrity. They all work. And you never can have enough of them, especially from customers.

For a celebrity endorser, look for a careful match, one who has long-standing credibility and enhances your brand overall. My agency hired “Wonder Woman” Lynda Carter as the spokeswomen for Lens Express, believing her great big eyes were the key. Combined with the slogan “Would I trust these baby blues to just anyone?” the endorsement overcame concerns about ordering contact lenses by mail.

Public Relations

Historian and author Daniel J. Boorstin said, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire PR officers.” It’s very simple. PR works.

David Hochberg, vice president of public affairs for Direct Holdings Worldwide, the parent company of Lillian Vernon, Rue de France and Time Life’s direct marketing division, says: “A third-party endorsement by the media always adds credibility to your brand. Most consumers view the media as an objective source of information and most Americans get their news and information from the media. A proactive public relations campaign can add considerable pull to your marketing efforts.”

So make sure your PR presence is easy to spot on your Web site.

Humor in Advertising

Delta Apparel, a B-to-B marketer of knitwear products, used the theme “Unusually Heavy T-shirts” for a campaign in a business publication. One ad showed a kid leaving deep indentations in a sidewalk as he ran along.

Another featured a swing hanging very low due the heft of its Delta-clad passenger. Both made it clear that Delta T-shirts were anything but lightweight. The results: a 24% jump in sales, 49% more new customers and T-shirt sales that grew 158%.

Super Bowl commercials have long been considered the place to look for the best in advertising. So how important is humor? Of ESPN’s top 10 ads from this year’s game, eight used humor.

Bottom line? Keep an open mind. And consider anything that will get customers to come to you rather than you having to chase them.

KATIE MULDOON is president of DM/catalog consulting firm Muldoon & Baer Inc., Tequesta, FL.

COPYRIGHT 2004 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved. COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

Source: Direct
Byline: KATIE MULDOON

Attached was a video clip. Turns out, it’s one of four TV spots touting a fake product but a real dealership, the Suburban Auto Group, selling Fords, Chevys and Suzukis in Sandy, OR, south of Portland.

All four ads have aired locally. They were also on www.suburbanautogroup.com. “But in one week on a dedicated server we had 3 million downloads and had to shut them off,” says Les Dalrymple, Suburban’s Internet manager. “We’ll try again soon and hope things have cooled down somewhat.”

They’re not your typical dealership ads.

Each spoofs the vigilance of a trained chimp that protects people and their vehicles, sometimes violently.

The ad that caught my friend’s eye begins with a thief breaking into a car and getting set to take off. The next shot shows the chimp, in the trunk reading, reacting to the theft in progress.

He sneaks up and clubs the guy. The next shot shows the car stopping midway on a bridge. The chimp drags the felon out by his feet. He’s hurled off the bridge and into the water.

A narrator says, “The Trunk Monkey theft-retrieval system. Because sometimes getting your car back is simply not enough. Another revolutionary idea you’ll find only at Suburban Auto Group.”

The spots offend some people. Most evidently find them funnier than a barrel of monkeys.

“The ads are a big hit here,” says Erinn Sowle, Suburban’s general manager. “People love them. We’ve had only a couple of complaints. Some thought Road Rage was too violent.”

In that, a meek motorist, threatened by a bully during a traffic altercation, pushes a Trunk Monkey button in his car. The chimp ends up putting the claw end of a crowbar in the redneck’s neck.

Then the voice-over tagline: “The Trunk Monkey. Another revolutionary idea you’ll only find at one place. Suburban Auto Group.”

One of the funniest (and less violent) spots opens with three kids egging a guy’s car as he drives down a suburban street. He pushes his Trunk Monkey button. Mr. Chimps jumps out and pursues the bewildered brats.

Two hop a fence. The third gets halfway over, but the chimp grabs him. His terrified face is shown in close-up as he’s slowly pulled down.

After what happened to the car thief and the big bully, one may wonder what’s in store for a captured kid. Relax. The spot ends with all three miscreants, under chimpanzee supervision, washing the car they egged.

“Two endings were done for that one,” says Sowle. “The one we didn’t use simply ended with the kid being dragged down off the fence.”

That likely left too much to the imagination.

R. West, a Portland-based agency, did the spots.

“The concept of the ads is that we go above and beyond for the customer,” says Sowle. “Even to the point of offering the Trunk Monkey.”

But there is no Trunk Monkey product. (Why is that a relief?) I clarified that point with Sowle, prefacing my inquiry by saying, “This may be a dumb question, but…”

An interesting question is if it sells cars.

“It’s hard to quantify how many actual sales are a result of the ads,” says Sowle. “They’re not your standard call-to-action dealership ads. But they’ve given us a lot of name recognition.”

Dalrymple says of the pretend product, “I wish there were a real Trunk Monkey. I could have sold thousands.”

The chimp’s name is Jonah. He was in the “Planet of the Apes” 2001 movie remake. He gets VIP treatment when he flies in for the ads. “He stays at a hotel and earns union scale,” says Sowle.

He’s earned something of a following locally – and beyond. “We get comments from as far away as Australia and England and from some of our guys in the Middle East,” says Dalrymple.

The ads are being syndicated, meaning more dealerships are partaking in monkey shines.

COPYRIGHT 2004 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

Source: Ward’s Dealer Business
Byline: STEVE FINLAY

Michael Price’s father offered him $100,000 if he would leave Iraq.

His mother begged him to come home.

But the 33-year-old Concord resident told them he was doing what he wanted to — providing security for a company destroying Saddam Hussein’s munitions caches.

Early Friday, his parents’ fears were realized when their son died of injuries suffered earlier in the week in a deadly roadside bombing.

“We tried to persuade him not to go — it’s scary over there,” said Joyce Bakersmith, who is married to Price’s father, Vernon. “We’re going to miss him.”

His father, who was so upset he could barely speak Friday, had planned to leave that day for Germany where his son was to be flown for medical care.

Before leaving for Iraq in January, Price was a weapons instructor for HALO Group Inc. in Concord for two years. The private company trains law enforcement and others in shooting and defensive tactics.

In January he left to work for Cochise Consultancy Inc. out of Florida, one of many private firms providing security for contractors in Iraq. Cochise is protecting USA Environmental of Tampa as it removes explosives under a contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The roadside bomb that killed Price also killed two colleagues traveling with him. His family has been told that despite severe shrapnel wounds to his head, he tried to help those men.

In an e-mail to friends and family on April 20, five days before the bombing, he described his job as “trunk monkey” or rear security to the convoy.

“Our job is basically to protect the convoy vehicles, personnel and certain cargos from the little nasties that plague us here. I cannot be specific as to who, what, when, or why, so just roll with it.”

Friends and colleagues describe Price as having little fear of things often terrifying to others.

After attending high school near Los Angeles, he entered the Navy as a medical technician on the USS Midway during the Persian Gulf War. He won a presidential citation for pulling two shipmates out of a burning ammunition storage facility.

He then became an expert rock climber and lived in Yosemite National Park, where he and his friend Mark Peters did searches and rescues off the highest rock formations, which park rangers couldn’t reach. Once, Price found a lost boy alive, “which is quite rare for a search and rescue,” said Peters, who grew up with his friend in Dallas, Texas. Their families both moved from there to outside Los Angeles and later the two friends moved to the Bay Area, where Price has lived since 1995.

Price took up the rare hobby of hunting boars with a spear, although Peters said he never actually killed one. He sailed, was an expert scuba diver and once swam the Carquinez Strait from Crockett to Glen Cove during shipping traffic, just for the heck of it.

“We used to ask him if he had a big read ‘S’ on his chest,” said Kevin McMahon, a friend and HALO spokesman.

When he wanted to go to Iraq with Cochise, it didn’t surprise Peters. Price, he said, was a natural protector, and the money was good. He estimates Price was making $12,000 a month. It was enough, his family said, to pay off his bills and get on a firm financial footing so he could take care of his 11-year-old daughter in Southern California. She was born during a brief marriage while Price was in the Navy.

That’s why Price’s father offered to give him $100,000 to come home.

“He didn’t have to do what he did to do that,” Vernon Price said from his home in Pomona.

Price kept in close e-mail contact with both of his parents while in Iraq. When the four American civilian contractors were killed March 31 in Fallujah and their bodies mutilated, his mother, Alice Smith, e-mailed him and begged him to come home. In a response that he also sent to his father, Price wrote in part:

“You must understand that it’s not just the money that drives me here. … I know and understand your concern; if I was in your shoes, I would feel the same way. I am sorry to put you through this stress, and you know it is not my intention to worry you. I just can’t help who and what I am, and as crazy as it may sound to some, there is no other place in the world I’d rather be at this moment. I will be home soon. I don’t know when, but I promise I will be there. I love you.”

Source: CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Byline: Carrie Sturrock

ACTION ALERT:

Suburban Auto Group “Trunk Monkey” Ads
March 19, 2004

An auto dealer in Sandy, Oregon is running a series of ads that pretend to be for a new “safety” device for their autos. This “device” is a chimpanzee who thwarts attempted vehicle thefts. Please let the Suburban Auto Group know that representing a critically endangered species as a cute little joke just isn’t funny.

Nancy Jaksich, Owner
Suburban Auto Group
36936 Hwy 26
PO Box 363
Sandy, OR 97055

If you have extra time, you can also contact the ad agency and producer responsible for the commercials.

Production company:
Joseph Uliano
Crossroads Media
8630 Pine Tree Place
Los Angeles, CA 90069
juliano@x-rds.com
Ad Agency:
Sean Blixseth, President
R/West
1430 SE 3rd, Floor 3
Portland, OR 97214

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