HEARTS FOR HAITI: AN AMERICAN DINING RELIEF BENEFIT LAUNCHED BY BRAVO TV’S TOP CHEF CONTESTANT

• Top Chef Ron Duprat Teams with three Fellow Contestants & Fine Chefs Across the USA Valentine’s Day to raise funds for Haiti
• Up to ten percent of all funds raised will be donated equally to Hollywood Unites for Haiti and Kinship Circle Disaster Relief

Hollywood, FL – Haitian-born Ron Duprat, perhaps best known from Bravo’s hit TV series “Top Chef” has teamed up with three fellow contestants, Mattin Noblia, Hector Santiago and Michael V.  to welcome other fine chefs across the country in an all-chef Relief Benefit on  St. Valentine’s Day for his native land.  On February 14, all participating chefs and restaurants will donate up to 10 percent of their receipts to Hearts for Haiti: An American Dining Relief Benefit.   The donated funds will be divided between two charities: Hollywood United For Haiti and Kinship Circle Disaster Relief.  One hundred percent of the donated funds will go directly to on-the-ground relief efforts.

“Food always brings people together,” Duprat says.  “I hope that this St. Valentine’s Day, every community will have at least one restaurant where people can dine out with their loved ones and share their hearts with Haiti.”

Early participants include:

Andrew Black at Skirvin Hotel’s Park Avenue Grill, Oklahoma City;

Ron Duprat of  Latitudes Beach Café at the  Hollywood Beach Marriott in Hollywood, FL;

Sean Gavin of Graves Restaurant, Fort Myers, FL;

Adam Greenberg of Barcelona Wine Bar (several locations in Connecticut);

Mattin Nobilia of Iluna Basque Restaurant in San Francisco;

Niranjan Perera of Nilus Delights Bakery in Hollywood, FL;

Hector Santiago of Pura Vida – Latino Tapas Restaurant & Bar, Atlanta;

Florida Restaurant and Lodging in Miami

Top Chef Winner (Season 6) Michael V. of The Dining Room, Langham Huntington Hotel & Spa in Pasadena.

“Chefs always care,” Duprat adds.  “I hope chefs across the country will join us in this heartfelt effort for Haiti.  One hundred percent of their donations will go directly to Haitian relief efforts for both people and animals. It’s a win-win for everyone.”

For more information on becoming a participating chef or dining at a participating restaurant, call 415-461-9300 or visit  www.chefronduprat.com

Charitable Beneficiaries:

Hollywood Unites for Haiti is a Los Angeles-based non-profit founded in 2008 by Jimmy Jean Louis, a star of NBC TV’s hit series, “Heroes”. This charitable non-profit organization focuses on enriching the lives of Haitian children.  HUFH has established a relief fund to support the victims of the 2010 Haitian earthquakes.

Kinship Circle Disaster Relief is a St. Louis, MO-based non-profit that deploys volunteer teams certified animal aid workers to disaster-stricken areas with necessary animal food, equipment and veterinary supplies.

For additional media information only; to set up interviews, etc., please contact:  Valary Bremier

PO Box 412, Kentfield CA 94914, 415-686-7470 or valary@mindspring.com

This last week of December is a wonderful time to gather with friends and family, a great time to plan for a new year and close out the old, whatever and however you celebrate.  This year is especially poignant as we close out a decade.

Certainly, it wasn’t all wine and roses. It’s been a tough year for some–many people have lost jobs, others have lost homes and some people see little to celebrate. But I hope that in your reflection, you find thanks, peace and hope.  And regardless of your current circumstances, you strive for great things in your future.

• A special shout out to the hundreds of great agencies I’ve had the chance to meet this year: Thank you for your passion and enthusiasm for what you do.  You make my job a blast!
• To my clients, peers, allies and friends: Thank you for allowing me a window into your businesses.  Together we’ve learned a lot and accomplished so much and I’ve been honored to be involved.  I look forward to working with each of you in 2010.
• To prospective clients of Hitch: I especially look forward to meeting you.  I don’t even know you yet, but I know the challenges you present will be engaging, rewarding and provide opportunity for many talented people.

So Happy New Year.  If your year was up, may 2010 take you higher.  If your year was down, may you swing way up.  May you find meaning in your life and enjoy your work–whatever that looks like.

Peace~

See you all in 2010.  It’s gonna be a great year!

Citrus is a northwest ad marketing agency with 26 people with offices in Portland – Bend – Whitefish, MT (yup, handles the Lottery plus) and soon Memphis. Peter Levitan is its founder. I first met Peter in a recent ad agency search I conducted.

In their capabilities presentation, they were the only firm who actually sent in questions for the prospective client to consider. That was impressive. Let’s see if their answers to our 7 questions are equally impressive. I have to admit, I like the answer to question # 4 and no coaching was required! I also loved their “Dear Agency“ self promo piece.

What was the aha moment when you realized “our company needs to be doing things differently than we have been?”

We didn’t have an “a ha” moment so much as an “a ha” evolution.

In recent weeks, we have gone thorough an internal agency positioning review. We’re finally taking the time to do for ourselves what we do for our clients. This is not easy in the advertising/marketing/digital space because agencies tend to say the same things. Seems like it’s always the same blah blah. I suspect no one knows this better than Hitch.

During this process, we examined a range of positions that came from our brains as well as from the craniums (crania?) of other agencies. We also did quantitative online research with clients and learned that most think that all agencies are full of it. Just kidding. Well, sort of. Truth is, many clients and prospects think all agencies sound the same—no matter what we say.

So we decided to do something bold. Something different. Something a little crazy. We decided to tell the truth. We decided to tell the world what we really do for our clients: We move people. We move people through rational and emotional messaging. We move people from apathy to emotion, inertia to action (a purchase is among our clients’ favorite actions).

I guess you could say that our “a ha” moment revolves around the concept of MOVE.

What books are on your night stand or great blogs on your Google reader.

I believe I’m part of a dying breed: the magazine reader. I am committed—to the point of being slavish—to reading at least 30% of all New Yorker issues (near-impossible if you work), The Atlantic, The Economist, the last issue of Gourmet and stolen copies of Communication Arts.

The last great book I read was, in fact, a picture book. It was a look at how Avedon shot his famous series and book “In the American West.”

Works from the Blogosphere include Jeff Jarvis’s BuzzMachine (we invented the Internet together), random Blogs from the AdAge Power 150 blog list and “Things marketing people love.”

Give me an example of marketing you think is brilliant and why?

I always admire the speed of New York umbrella salespeople to hit just the right intersections when it starts to rain. Super targeted. Well-timed. Compellingly stated. Isn’t this what we all strive for?

We’ve all read that the pitch / RFP process is broken. Many agencies aren’t even interested in competing in pitches. Do you see an alternative to this process?

I’d like to make three points on pitching, all of which are derived from years of pitching as director of Saatchi’s business development group and now as the owner of a small agency.

First, most clients don’t have a clue about what they’re really looking for. It’s not their fault. They’re just trying to select an ad agency based on what are ultimately subjective criteria. Do I think that the agency is smart? Do I believe that the work is strong? Do I like them? Unless we’re talking about digital or direct response agencies that can deliver quantitative stories that directly relate sales increases to marketing activities, these traits don’t help selection a whole helluva lot. Ditto most case histories.

Point two: clients should use an agency search consultant. Selecting an ad agency is an important decision. Chances are, Bob in sales or Margo in procurement just aren’t going to cut it. (No offense, Bob and Margo.) Neither will a CMO who does a search every ten years. Hire an expert, please. I beg of you.

Finally, a note to agencies: Get. Over. It. Most industries use RFP’s. Just get past your egos and decide if pitching the potential client is a sound business decision. Determine if you have a chance based on your work and category experience. Look at the odds and decide if it makes financial sense. Did it make any financial or rationale sense for 1,284 agencies to pitch Zappos?

What does the agency of the future look like?

The agency of the future employs robots and goes to meetings in flying cars. Kidding.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking through for a while. I live in Portland. Portland has one of the highest populations of strategists, creative thinkers, copywriters, art directors and digital magicians in the country—maybe the world. What if we found a way to harness this creative and strategic power under the umbrella of brilliant management to deliver the new agency: Portland, Inc. I’d love to pitch Portland against Goodby, Weiden, Crispin and Ogilvy. Why not— they all use Portland freelancers anyway!

What do marketers need that agencies are not giving them?

Marketers need more smart ideas that will drive sales.

This dearth of sales-driven thinking isn’t due to agencies’ oversight. Marketers have made their own bed by deflating agency profit margins and reducing timeframes. (I just had a major hotel chain ask for a proposal to develop a new website for launch “late this year.” Um, its mid-October [when I'm writing this].) Simply put, clients have reduced our ability to spend the time required to develop the big ideas that are required to really win in today’s complex media space. Period.

Who do you admire and why?

Paris Hilton. I mean it. I have never seen someone build such a strong brand on so little. It was magical.

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I’ve got a new copy of Guy Kawasaki’s great book Reality Check that Guy generously autographed.

Help me use it for good.  Taking suggestions for how to give it away and make it do the most good for the most people.  Please tweet this post, share it on facebook, ask your friends, peers and colleagues to weigh in.  Shoot me an email david [at] marketinghitch dot com or DM me @david_wiggs and let me know your thoughts!

Thanks!

A blog post I read today about the fate of agencies in a digital world sent me scurrying back to my bookmark of the Cluetrain Manifesto I had saved years ago.  

This slideshare I also found will pretty much give you the gist; because if there’s one critcism I’ve heard about Cluetrain, it’s that they could have made their points more succinctly.  This slideshare does that brilliantly.

It reminded me what a forward-looking document the Cluetrain was.  Interesting how it means even more now than when it first came out.  Could it be that so much of it has come true?

What do you think?