Sunday, June 06, 1999
TIPSHEET
CEOs strut upon the stage for fund-raiser
Who says Cincinnati's CEOs don't have a sense of humor? Some of the city's biggest suits were in costume and on stage Saturday night at the Playhouse in the Park to perform a radio show version of Kaufman and Hart's comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner.
Ed Stern, Playhouse artistic director, said the annual fund-raiser has included community folk in the past, but this is the first time it has featured some of the city's corporate elite.
The 20-member cast was to include the likes of Procter & Gamble's Durk Jager, Kroger's Joe Pichler, Cinergy's Jim Rogers, Ashland's Paul Chellgren and Baldwin Piano's Karen Hendricks as well as other celebrities, such as lawyer Stanley Chesley and Congressman Rob Portman.
“The fun is in watching them,” Mr. Stern said.
And was it difficult getting the CEOs to agree to shed their corporate reserve for the chance to make fools of themselves on stage?
“It wasn't that difficult,” Mr. Stern said. “Once people heard Durk (Jager) said yes, they all said, "By God, I can do that as well.'” — Mike Boyer
Where Mr. Dithers shops
There are few corners of the executive's life left undusted in the new Internet portal www.smartexecutives.com from owner Dick Lynch of Groesbeck.
Pregnant wife? Take her to the Kingsmill Resort & Spa in Williamsburg, Va. In the meantime, buy her some candles, toys, home accessories and books for the gourmand.
Find a business loan, lease equipment, ship and track a parcel, take a train ride or reserve a hotel. The site of advertisements and links was praised last month by the magazine Street and Smith's Sport Business Journal after its debut virtual auction for the McDowell Cancer Foundation netted the charity $18,000. Bidders were far-flung, too: from Germany to Michigan.
“We see it as a place where a given demographic can start to get information,” Mr. Lynch said.
There's no doubt about target demographics, either. This one is for bosses who are flush with money and have a compulsion to cybershop rather than window shop. — John Eckberg
Boomer hits the road
Boomer Esiason has for years raised a high profile when it comes to fighting cystic fibrosis. Now he's raising that profile over traffic.
The former Bengals quarterback and his son Gunnar can be seen along roadways in Cincinnati, Dayton, Indianapolis and Nashville, Tenn., as Boomer's Products to Fight Cystic Fibrosis launches its first outdoor campaign.
The billboards are designed to promote Boomer barbecue sauce and salsa, which raise money toward finding a cure for cystic fibrosis. Though more than $50,000 has been raised in three years, sales are short of target, said Pam Miller, a spokeswoman for Sawyer Industries Inc., the distributor.
“We live it and breathe it and bleed it and cry it, but I'm not sure the brand awareness is where we'd like it to be,” Ms. Miller said.
Twenty billboards went up in Cincinnati last week. They join 10 in Dayton and 20 each in Nashville and Indianapolis. Ms. Miller said the campaign will cost in excess of $20,000.
Ten percent of product gross sales go to the Boomer Esiason Foundation. Gunnar Esiason was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in 1993. — Lisa Biank Fasig
New height for Comair
More people got on a Comair Inc. airplane May 28 than any single day before. The one-day record of 24,460 customer boardings beat the previous one set in November 1998 of 23,309.
The ever-growing airline, which acts as a feeder for Delta Air Lines, offers almost 300 daily departures to 65 nonstop destinations.
“The popularity of our regional jets, the convenience of the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and the outstanding services our employees provide made this all-time record possible,” Charles Curran, senior vice president of marketing for the Erlanger-based airline, said in a statement.
Now that may all be true — but didn't the Memorial Day holiday have anything to do with it?
— Amy Higgins
Items for Tipsheet are gathered by Enquirer business reporters and compiled by Lisa Biank Fasig of the business staff.
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