It’s October 19 in Minnesota and I have all the windows open. I’m seated on our comfy white leather chair in my lower-level office with the sliding door pulled all the way to the left. Boofus is sitting on the floor, watching the leaves skitter around the patio like brightly colored crabs on the beach. Buster is upstairs, in the upper level of his kitty condo, curled into a ball. He’s good at that. Did I mention it’s October 19 in Minnesota? It is. And it’s 73 degrees.
I mentioned the white leather comfy chair for a reason, and it’s based on nostalgia. We’ve had this chair, and its matching love seat, for a long time. We bought them (at Rooms To Go) back when we lived in Austin. We had two living areas in our nice little home on Lovebird Lane, but only one living room sofa, so we bought this stuff to put downstairs, shortly after we moved in, which was in early 1998. It moved with us to Woodbury in 2002, and we put it in the bright and cheery sunroom we had in the old neighborhood. Every Sunday morning, when we were both home, Barbara and I would read the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, section by section and page by page, on this furniture.
When we moved to Liberty Lake, in 2012, these two pieces got left behind, in a storage unit that also held a small army of Wally trophies and some other odds and ends we knew we didn’t need in the house on Alki Lane. When we moved back, into our new Woodbury home, all of that stuff was sprung free from jail. And today, in 2017, I’m sitting on the same chair that made our house a home, in both Austin, Tex. and Woodbury, Minn. And it still looks basically brand new.
Did I mention it’s 73 degrees on October 19? All the kids have the day off from school, due to a thing called MEA (Minnesota Educator Academy). It’s a huge teacher conference in downtown St. Paul, and with all the teachers down there the kids get today and tomorrow off. Boy did they get lucky this time. Woodbury is a beehive of bicycles, basketball games, and kids just being outside having fun. Lots of leaves, too, fluttering around on a day when the sky is impossibly blue.
Since we were all last gathered here, in Blogville, I’ve been to Dallas. I’ve also been to Ennis, since that’s where the Texas Motorplex is located. I outlined my sneaky plan to stay at the DFW Hyatt instead of down by the track, and that worked out pretty well, except for the fact I had no idea that so many of the major freeways in Dallas are under construction. Instead of it being a 45-minute drive to the track on Saturday morning, it was closer to two hours. A few times, right in the middle of downtown, we came to a complete stop for 12 to 15 minutes. So, all the delays pushed my arrival at the track back about an hour and that put me right in prime time for arriving fans. The backup getting into the track from the west was at least two miles long, with everybody camped out in the left lane, because that’s the way you have to turn to park. So I had to be “that guy” and I’m not proud of it. I don’t like “that guy” when he does it to me.
I swung out into the right lane and probably swooped a mile and a half of cars. I’d made up my mind that if there wasn’t a large gap in the left lane I’d just keep going straight and do a U-turn to come back from the other direction, but right before the left turn there was a driver not paying attention. The opening was huge, and I slid right in. I’m still on alert for the Karma Police.
Saturday was a great day at the track, hanging out with Team Wilk and my former colleagues in the PR world. Yeah, these folks. A great group of talented and dedicated pros, who are all also wonderful people. And yes, this is the Media Center at the Motorplex. It’s out in the pits, with no view of the track. There is a monitor on the wall, with a feed from a static camera behind the starting line, and the building rumbles when the fuel cars go down the track, but no view. And that’s okay. Everyone in there is doing their work and lighting up social media anyway, so all you really need is an unobstructed view of your laptop.
And yep, that’s my friend and publicist Elon Werner, front and center. Holding court, stirring the pot, and doing that Elon stuff that nobody else does as well. Great to see everyone.
I signed quite a few books, as well. LRS does quite a bit of hospitality at the Dallas race, and many of their annual guests remember me, so all the catching up led to a few new sales. One woman said she was going to buy a copy for someone in her family but she came back to the pit with two! So that was fun.
What was also fun was seeing my buddy Dennis Peek. Always great to see him and catch up on things in his world. His world is the one where a lot of great music gets played (even by him!) and things like lights and sound have to be set up, adjusted, and operated for “live” shows. Talented dude. And a rocker at heart.
A longtime friend of Krista Wilkerson’s was there, and I had a great time catching up with her. Her name is Whitney and she lives in Austin now. She brought me up to speed on how fast things have changed in that town Barbara and I loved so much, and most of those changes haven’t necessarily been positive. Huge rapid growth will do that to a place that used to be charming, hip, and a little nutty. I still have a “Keep Austin Weird” t-shirt. Now it’s congested, crowded, and just a big city.
After socializing, hanging out in the Media Center, and signing books, it was time to head back up to DFW airport and the Hyatt. The return trip went much more smoothly, and I filled my rental car up with gas before turning it in at the National area at the big centralized rental car center. Then, on the shuttle back to Terminal C where, if you know what you’re doing and where you’re going, you can walk to the Hyatt via the vast parking garage. I only got lost once. It’s not like the route is painted on the concrete.
In the morning, I went over to the airport early because I had some stuff to do on my computer and there is a Sky Club there. Better to get my bag checked, get through security, and find a quiet corner. Mission accomplished, and I finished my work just in time to walk to the gate and stroll right on. Three hours later I was home.
At that point, I needed to get to work on a big assignment for Tuesday night. Two of our best friends from the old neighborhood are Terry and Lynn Blake. You may recall that the Blakes and Scott and Barb Meehan used to alternate hosting the New Year’s Eve party each year. Fun people, and Terry and I get along fantastically. It helps to have the same skewed (nutty) sense of humor. Terry has been a top-level corporate PR and communications expert for years (he and Barbara actually used to work together, at Lawson Software) and now he teaches a class about all of that at the University of Minnesota, sharing his practical experience and broad knowledge with young students who want to pursue such a thing as a career. On Tuesday night, I was his guest speaker.
I put together a deck of slides to use as talking points, and met Terry down there on campus at 6:00, for the 6:15 class. It was cool just to be on a major college campus again. Lots of youthful energy and too many bicycles to count.
The class, that night, was focusing on how communications and branding go hand in hand. My job was to illustrate that in a “real world” way with my presentation. Having done so many things, in different sports and businesses, and having been charged with building brands in numerous jobs, I focused on that for about half of my 45-minute talk, then switched to my 10 top bits of advice for how these bright young kids could establish a career.
As I wrote about extensively in “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” brand building is critical for so many sports, leagues, and franchises. When I was hired as the first employee by the St. Louis Storm indoor soccer franchise, just about 10 weeks from Opening Night, we not only didn’t have a brand, we didn’t have any players or soccer balls. It was a frantic, yet totally thrilling, race to our first game and we pulled it off magnificently.
We did build a solid brand for the Storm, and we worked at it every day. Our brand was built on affordable family fun, great excitement, high energy atmosphere, and the importance of being solid contributors to our community. I think we achieved all of that. Our challenge was that we were part of the Major Indoor Soccer League and the MISL was spiraling downward. Teams came and went so fast it was hard to remember if the Cleveland team was still the Force or were they, by then, the Crunch. Where did those Hartford Hellions go? They just disappeared. And the Los Angeles Lazers? Did they manage to make payroll? In effect, the league had no positive brand by then. So, as I told the students, sometimes you can do everything right but the things that are wrong are things you can’t fix.
That brought us to brand building with NHRA Funny Car teams. I spoke about the Worsham team, and how we started with a small sponsorship nobody else thought was worth taking, and then built it into something admirable and quite successful. Along with that team branding came a different style of communication. CSK Auto, Inc. owned Checker, Schuck’s, and Kragen then, but the buying public generally didn’t know that. A California customer just knew that he shopped at Kragen, but he’d likely never have heard of the other two. Early on, the CSK guys were adamant that we never refer to them as CSK. It always had to be Checker, Schuck’s, and Kragen. Hence, Del Worsham’s propensity for saying those three names as fast as possible.
Over the 12 years, as the team PR rep and as its liaison with the sponsor, I gently and subtly found ways to inform the NHRA world that this company called CSK owned all these auto parts stores. Over time, many years actually, we finally felt like we’d gotten over that, and that their customers who followed the team knew the headquarters building had the CSK Auto logo on it, not the three individual names. CSK became a thing, and in the last few years they had no problem with me using the acronym in stories, press releases, or quotes.
Then, when I joined Team Wilkerson, we kind of went through it all again. I can’t say I was totally surprised, when I joined Wilk and his organization, to hear so many people ask me if Levi, Ray, & Shoup was a law firm, or something like that. It takes a lot of work to get those messages out, and have them sink in to the point where now, in 2017, LRS has made themselves so much more effectively branded that the cars just have the new LRS logo on them, not Levi, Ray, & Shoup. The race team and the company’s marketing aces worked together to help make that happen, and the cool looking LRS bodies this year are fantastic. Took a while for me to get used to seeing them, but I love how they look.
And no, LRS is not a law firm. They are a global multifaceted tech company, based in Springfield, Illinois. You can read all about the great company that partners with Team Wilkerson on and off the track, right here:
The best part about the class at U of M was how attentive the “kids” were. Really focused on what I was saying and taking copious notes. I put kids in quotes because I don’t think I considered myself a “kid” when I was a college senior, and that’s what this group all were. I had a great time, and told Terry I’d do it again any time he wants me. And next time, I won’t need a map to find the building or the parking garage.
Finally, this isn’t so much a bit from the book that ended up being edited out as it is something that I remembered while watching the MLB playoffs this week. You’re probably familiar with how MLB teams and their grounds crews typically cut the outfield grass in a way that creates designs that can be easily seen. They do that by cutting it in different directions, because a blade of grass isn’t exactly the same color on both sides.
But did you know this? When they do that, it has an actual impact on how the baseball rolls in the outfield. I didn’t know it until my Sauget Wizards played the USA National Team at their stadium in Millington, Tenn., and the outfield was cut in a checkerboard design. The first ball that came to me on the ground, during batting practice, zig-zagged its way to my glove. Not a lot, but it does change direction slightly as it rolls over the grass. It stunned me. That was the first time I’d been on a field where the grass was cut like that and I’d not only never seen it before, I didn’t know such a thing existed.
Now, if you watch the games and look very (VERY) closely, you might be able to see how that ball changes course, ever so slightly, when it rolls on the outfield grass. Just one more crazy thing most people don’t even know about…
So, no race this weekend but we’re off to Vegas late next week. It will be great to see the Hujabre family and my racing family again. Looking forward to it, immensely.
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Bob Wilber, at your service and still trying to catch those ground balls…