mascots

Big, Big, Cigarette

November 19, 2009Leave a Comment

See the cigarette, check out the Great American Smoke out video. This Cigarette is one of ours.

When we got the job to make the really, really big, wearable cigarette, I had to go out and buy a pack of cigarettes. We needed to custom-dye the filter fabric, and needed a color sample.

Then, we had to light cigarettes so that we could understand how the ash bent when it burned.

This was a wonderful project. Making ash on a giant cigarette from fabric, sequins and open cell, charcoal, filter foam is a pretty swell project.

In my tool rack, we have bunches of hammers—ok, 2 or 3 and a mallet, but in the swirl of mascot-making hammers, screwdrivers, scissors, rulers get lost, hide under fur, get involved w/ the velcro, sidle up to the sequins.

Several years ago we made some Glamor Hammers for special, hard-working clients. They were hammers, with spray painted gold heads, bunches of sequins and feather boas. One of the hammers found its way to the tool rack. For a few months, the Glamor Hammer was the only poundy thing we had. Its pretty, but not tough—but it still pounds, I think.

The World Serious

November 5, 20091 Comment

Phanatic in NYC

I’m torn. Who to root for in this Wold Series (or as my father calls it, the World Serious), the Yanks or the Phillies?

I grew up in NYC, got married in NYC, my first daughter was born in NYC and I went to my first game, a Yankees game, in the Bronx!

Before going to my first Yankees game, I had been to bunches of plays on Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway. I had spent hours hanging out with friends at the Museum of Modern Art and I had gone to see art & performance pieces in galleries in SoHo (way back in the day, when there were galleries in SoHo).

In NYC, there is a sense that keeping track of the Art Scene is like watching a contact sport. There is an ever-changing roster of players, there are minor leagues and major leagues.

When I started watching the Yankees, I saw them as characters in a play, or an art performance. I have maintained that Sport-as-Art-Performance sensibility.

Oh gosh, I can sense you sports guys cringing!

…and I make mascots.

Who do I root for?

The Phillies have a mascot. The Yankees don’t.

Both teams have great characters and great costumes. Both teams have a sense of drama.

Hmmm…hard to say.

It’s a great World Serious.

A Mascot’s Summer Adventures

September 18, 2009Leave a Comment

Mascot don’t talk but lots of them are manic twitterers, and one of them, Little Jake, likes to send emails w/ pics to his creators!

Here’s Little Jake’s, What I Did on My Summer Vacation, note home:

Dear Jennifer (or should I technically call you “Mom” since you created me?):

I thought you told me that during the first few months of any newborn’s life, the people around you do all the work and the baby just lays around looking cute and being doted upon.

Well apparently E&B Paving didn’t get that memo.

Have I ever been busy this summer…and I’m only a few months old! What happened to that grace period you promised me??? My summer “vacation” started when those guys from E&B trotted me out to Carmel’s Rock the District festival where you can see that I was quite the hit with the ladies (OK, so that part of being a mascot is pretty cool) and I even appeared on stage to warm up the crowd before the headliner music act (Little Jake rocks! Eat your heart out Mike Jagger…). Check me out on the E&B asphalt paving equipment (rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, keep that asphalt rollin’…).

Then, they pulled me from the comfortable confines of my customized duffle bags where I was snoozing peacefully and took me up to Peru, Indiana for that town’s annual circus parade. I walked the parade route and was definitely more popular than the circus tiger (could it have been because I handed out E&B lollipops to the kids while the tiger just laid in his cage looking bored by the whole event?).

And if that weren’t enough to exhaust a newborn mascot, I became the centerpiece of an advertisement that E&B created to demonstrate their support of Scecina High School’s athletic teams. Uh huh, that’s right, notice who’s standing next to the cheerleaders (Little Jake can be one suave fellow).

OK, so I’ve been a rock star, a parade attraction, and a magazine model…not bad for a youngster. I may need a new pair of those size 14 shoes before long at the rate E&B is going — my feet are getting tired from all of these appearances.

Hope you have had as much fun this summer as I have had hanging out with all of my new friends and spreading goodwill about E&B Paving.

Your pal,

Little Jake

Mascots and Community

April 5, 2012Leave a Comment

Where does community spontaneously happen?

Where do we bump shoulders with strangers?

Where do we just get silly!

When we’re in the presence of a mascot, that’s where!

Where mascots are, community emerges, people gather.

Mascot Camp — Roche Diagnostics – Accu-Chek Peforma insulin meter at diabetes camp in Venezuela

It doesn’t take great talent, superior intellect or an educated eye to joke, to have fun and to pass the time of day in the presence of a mascot. When a mascot is around we have a reason to connect.

A mascot is the perfect, goofy and generous host.

While we may think a mascot is merely a marketing tool, really, a mascot is a hand extended in community.

Organizations that put in the long hours of imaginative, strategic planning, design collaboration and dollars into a mascot program is really holding out their hand in joy, trust and community.

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