Fruchtman Marketing of Toledo is celebrating 30 years in business in 2011 — and the launch of a national consumer advertising campaign for a major client.

Ellen Fruchtman started the business out of her home in 1981 while raising two children. Fruchtman, who has a background in television production, said she saw an opportunity to make some income through her own business.

“I thought local TV ads were terrible and thought I could do better,” Ellen Fruchtman said.

She established Ad-In Concepts and produced TV commercials for a former retail client in Toledo, using a freelance designer and media buyer for the campaign.

Fruchtman began producing advertising for Harold Jaffe Jewelers in 1994. The firm has also created advertising and marketing for two long-time local clients, Gross Electric and Tom’s Tire & Auto.

Ellen’s husband Michael joined the firm as a partner in 1997 to focus on the business side. He previously served in executive roles for his family’s businesses and has 30 years of marketing and financial management experience.

Today, Fruchtman Marketing is a full-service marketing firm specializing in the jewelry industry, which comprises about 90 percent of its business. She said they represent some of the finest jewelry manufacturers, retailers and industry organizations such as the American Gem Society and Palladium Alliance International (PAI). The PAI promotes the attributes and use of palladium, the third most expensive metal behind platinum and gold, in jewelry.

Palladium reportedly has all the attributes of platinum but is lighter and less expensive.

Fruchtman Marketing launched an $8 million national consumer advertising campaign for palladium that debuted in the September issues of fashion magazines with a digital premiere on Facebook and other social media.

“It’s the big time for a small agency from Toledo, Ohio,” Ellen said. “We wanted to do something totally different to educate people about palladium jewelry.”

They created a campaign that features three well-known celebrities, including actresses Pamela Anderson (“Baywatch”), Rose McGowan (“Charmed”) and Kelly Osbourne (E! series “Fashion Police”), daughter of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.

The full-page print ads feature one of the celebrities wearing palladium jewelry with the headline, “I’m so over heavy metal.” The ads appear in Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Harper’s BAZAAR, In Style, Marie Claire, People, People Style Watch and W.

“The celebrities we selected are very recognizable. We went to LA to work with a world-renowned fashion photographer and had a fabulous experience shooting all three celebrities in one day,” Ellen said.

The local agency also produced a separate trade campaign for the jewelry industry sponsored by the PAI and Stillwater Mining Company, a large palladium miner in the U.S.

The firm was hired most recently by a large foreign jewelry manufacturer that sought them out for their worldwide reputation in the jewelry business, Michael said.

With other new accounts in addition to PAI, the agency recently added several positions and promoted some staffers to cover the new business.

“Like many of our clients, we are growing despite the economy. The growth is a positive trend for the Toledo area,” Michael said.

“Where we come from has never been an obstacle to our business,” Ellen said. “The majority of our clients are not in Toledo but we chose to stay in Toledo because we believe in it and our people are here.”

“Our best ideas come from the people who work here. We really have a sense of family, respect people and their families, and don’t succeed at the expense of family,” Michael said.

“We empower people who work here to be the best they can possibly be professionally and personally with no ceiling or limitations. We built our business by treating our employees, vendors and suppliers as friends and partners in our business,” Ellen said.

Michael said their success has given them “great opportunity to give back to the community.”

The firm supports its employees who do charitable work in the community.

Angela Ash started as an intern in design and is now  a senior account executive. She currently serves as president of the board for Susan G. Komen For the Cure.

The company also supports local charities such as the American Red Cross of Toledo and the Northwest Ohio Chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

In celebration of its 30th anniversary, the firm established a scholarship at the Gemological Institute of America, where individuals receive training to become professional jewelers.

The Fruchtmans pointed out the difference between advertising and marketing. The latter is how you sell yourself to your customers and is a package of advertising, media planning, interactive media, public relations, promotions, research and so much more, according to the couple.

“Think about your marketing as a holistic approach to your business — a unified approach with creativity,” they stated on the firm’s website at www.fruchtman.com.

Tags: American Gem Society, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Ellen Fruchtman, Fruchtman Marketing, Gross Electric, Harold Jaffe Jewelers, Harper’s BAZAAR, In Style, Kelly Osbourne, Marie Claire, Michael Fruchtman, palladium, Palladium Alliance International, Pamela Anderson, People, People Style Watch, Rose McGowan, Tom's Tire & Auto, W

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2011 at 2:40 pm and is filed under Marketing, Toledo Business Link.
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A bonfire of Hallmark greeting cards, bellowing sickeningly sweet drifts of smoke. Cleveland Indians mascot Chief Wahoo lying in drifts of snow, staring at the great wide sky for the last time. Silent stares of contempt and derision aimed at an unhoused man as he walks the Toledo streets.

These and scores of other images were part of a June 16 poetry reading that featured more poets than audience members.

Toledo Free Press sponsored a stop on the June 16 Art Walk, a signature event of the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo. We opened our warehouse on Huron Street, set up chairs and a makeshift podium and invited a group of local poets to read their works. Michael Grover led an outstanding line-up of poets — Arnold Koester, Jonie McIntire, Greg Peters and Bob Phillips.

With the cluster of activity on St. Clair and Adams streets, there was a dearth of passersby on Huron Street to look in and see the reading, but each of the poets gave it his or her best, reading original material that inspired laughter and reflection to the few people who joined us.

There is a thriving poetry scene in Toledo, but it seems like a backburner element compared to music and gallery arts. Most of my exposure to the scene comes from the published works of longtime Toledo Free Press arts writer John Dorsey, who is producing a body of work that is growing in size and national acclaim.

It’s a tougher challenge at home in Toledo.

Phillips told Toledo Free Press Staff Writer Patrick Timmis, “Poetry’s like the poor uncle of the arts.”

Grover is keenly aware of how some people view his art. He said many people stereotype poetry as bad and boring — epithets he thinks many poets deserve. He said he wants to make poetry fun again, although many of his pieces are dark and questioning.

Grover read a number of his “American Outlaw” poems, making each piece a compelling performance.

Peters read an epic poem about being unhoused in Toledo. After working nearly 30 years for Chrysler, he is waiting for news on his pension while he gets by the best he can. Peters told Timmis he has written 800 poems in the past three years. Reading live, the words tumble out of him in a cascade of alternating anger and amusement.

“Poetry is to make a point and make a difference for someone’s life,” he said.

Phillips, with his shock of Einstein-like white hair, read poetry about his backyard observations and baseball memories. His work is specific and intimate yet universal in its wise evocation of the larger gears at work in life.

Phillips told Timmis he started writing poetry as a child. He grew up in Toledo.

“Most everything I learned was at the public library — the poor people’s university,” Phillips said.

His first poems were humorous, but puberty made his poems angsty and depressing, he said with a smile. When he discovered the Beats at age 11, he felt liberated by their style.

“You always thought a poem had to rhyme and be about flowers or autumn or something like that,” he said.

Poetry has always resided just outside my grasp, not as impactful as music but just as mysterious in its creative process. Words are fluid, live building blocks, but the way a poet shapes them isn’t the way I push them around or the way a songwriter manipulates them. And while many people believe they can be writers (I work just a few blocks from some of the region’s most high-profile failures), truly inspiring works of poetry and songwriting (the two are not the same thing, although some lyrics read like poetry) are intimidating.

In an effort to promote this special art, Toledo Free Press is co-sponsoring the Aug. 6 “Zygote in My Fez Poetry Festival,” from 4 to 10 p.m. at the Collingwood Arts Center. Red Fez and Zygote in my Coffee are the primary forces behind the event, which will feature nearly two dozen poets reading their works. We are also looking to find a more high-profile location for our remaining ACGT Art Walk poetry readings, July 21, Aug. 18 and Sept. 15.

Let’s take the poor uncle and show him a few special nights on the town.

Michael S. Miller is editor in chief of Toledo Free Press and Toledo Free Press Star. Contact him at mmiller@toledofreepress.com.

Since you asked, my single published poem, “Newsstand Love,” was published in a modest college anthology alongside real poems from real poets:

“Newsstand Love”

She has a Playboy body,

Penthouse eyes,

And a Cosmo mouth.

Her man had a World News sex drive,

But a National Enquirer mind,

And People depth.

She left him for a man with a GQ wardrobe,

An Esquire lifestyle

And a Wall Street Journal career.

But in her bed: Reader’s Digest.

She left him for a man with Sports Illustrated energy,

Rolling Stone hipness

And Vanity Fair ambitions.

But in her bed: National Lampoon.

Now she’s renewed her subscription with her first man.

If looking at the pictures keeps you satisfied,

Skip the fine print.

Tags: Arnold Koester, Art Walk, Arts Commission of Greater Toledo, Bob Phillips, Chief Wahoo, Cleveland Indians, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, GQ, Greg Peters, John Dorsey, Jonie McIntire, Lighting The Fuse, Michael Grover, Michael S. Miller, National Enquirer, National Lampoon, Penthouse, People, Playboy, Reader's Digest, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustarted, Toledo Free Press, Wall Street Journal, World News

This entry was posted on Friday, June 24th, 2011 at 12:05 am and is filed under Lighting The Fuse, Opinion.
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Vascular surgeon Ralph Whalen of Toledo recently spent two weeks treating wounded American soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq at the U.S. Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC) in Germany.

Whalen, who volunteered last year as well, was in Germany from April 16 to May 1. He is scheduled to return for a two-week rotation in May 2012.

“I was grateful for the opportunity to participate in the care of our soldiers,” Whalen said. “My first experience at LRMC last year was very humbling. The injuries sustained were severe. LRMC has some of the finest trauma physicians I have ever worked with.”

Since 2004, 66,000 military personnel have been treated at LRMC, the largest American hospital outside the United States.

Whalen, a member of the Society of Vascular Surgery (SVS), is one of 72 members to volunteer at LRMC since September 2007, after SVS member and retired U.S. Army Col. David Gillespie of the U.S. Army Surgeon General’s Office asked members to volunteer at LRMC. There is now a waiting list for SVS surgeons willing to volunteer this year.

“Speaking on behalf of SVS leadership and all of its members, we are extremely proud of the vascular surgeons who donate their time to help treat war injuries,” SVS President Dr. Robert Zwolak said.

Tags: Community, Dr. Ralph Whalen, Military, People

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 16th, 2011 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Community, People.
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When Joni Meyer-Crothers got a call from the TV network TLC asking if her family would do an episode of “Extreme Couponing,” she thought one of her adult daughters was pranking her.

She had seen the show — which highlights couponing shoppers who buy lots of groceries for little money — and thought they seemed like hoarders. She didn’t know that several church families had nominated her family for the show.

“I really believe that it was God who opened the door,” she said. “I know that to some people that will sound crazy.”

Jamie Meyer-Crothers lost his job three years ago, a victim of the recession that nailed so many UAW workers. His family had to find a way to save, so Joni asked a friend who shopped with coupons to teach her to use them. Then, she said, she took it to an extreme.

“This is attached to me like my kids are,” she said of the thick, coupon-filled, zippered binder she wears over her shoulder like a purse. Jamie and Joni spend about five hours every week planning, organizing and shopping with coupons. More than your average couple, but the savings are worth it.

Before Jamie lost his job, the family spent about $1,200 on groceries every month. Now, they spend $200 — but they buy between $3,000 and $5,000 worth.

Recently, Jamie paid less than a dollar for over $150 worth of groceries. Sometimes, coupons rack up so much that stores pay him. He recently left a store with $400 worth of purchases and $12 more in his pocket than when he came in.

“I compare it to the loaves and fishes,” Joni said. “Jesus performed a miracle with the five loaves and two fish, and that’s what he’s doing with our coupons.”

Jesus is the real reason they spend so much time on this, Joni said. The couple quickly covered their own needs, then realized the potential for helping others. They now donate about 80 percent  of all their purchases to charity — about $100,000 worth in the past two-and-a-half years — and have a refrigerator, freezer and shelving unit in their garage for community use.

One of the chief recipients of the couple’s donations is Sylvania Area Family Services.

“[Joni’s] just been absolutely phenomenal,” said Jason Robertson, the agency’s executive director. “She and Jamie have been huge advocates for this community and our agency in particular and they have just embraced us.”

The couple sees the show as an opportunity to advance their mission by inspiring others.

“I believe that God tells us that we’re supposed to give back,” Joni said. “It might be something small to you, but giving it to someone, you can change their life tremendously by helping them out.”

The “Extreme Couponing” episode airs Wednesday, June 8 at 9:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. To find out more about Jamie and Joni’s mission, visit SavingAndSharingForChrist.blogspot.com or look them up on Facebook.

Tags: Extreme Couponing, Jamie Meyer-Crothers, Joni Meyer-Crothers, Patrick Timmis, People, Star, TLC, Toledo

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 at 10:12 am and is filed under Community, People.
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There have been many changes in the barge industry over the last three decades. Just ask one barge captain, Randy Earl Rogers.

Rogers has worked on barges for 31 years. He says that in years past “an old country boy could come out here and get a job. He didn’t even have to learn to read and write.”

Rogers started as a deckhand and worked his way up to captain in 1981. He currently works for Mount Vernon Barge Services, piloting the A.W. Bayer on the Ohio River near Mount Vernon, Ind. He is one of three generations of men in his family making a career on work boats on inland waterways. Both his father-in-law, John Wolfe, and his son, Joshua Rogers, are captains on tug boats.

In about four years, Rogers’ grandson, Rocky Rogers, 14, plans to start his career on the river as a deckhand. Following in his father’s, grandfather’s, and great-grandfather’s footsteps to the wheelhouse of a tug boat.

Recent changes made by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security have drastically increased the requirements that must be met to become a tug boat captain. As of 2009, workers on most boats must obtain a Transportation Worker Identification Credential from Homeland Security, as well as a Merchant Mariner Credential.

In the days before 2009, Rogers said, “You got your certified deck time, (took) your test, and you got your license. Now you get certified deck time, and take your test, but you only get a steersman’s license.”

A steersman’s license requires 11/2 years of working under the supervision of a licensed pilot to receive a promotion to captain.

A pair of tragedies — the 1989 oil spill from the wrecked Exxon Valdez and a 1993 crash near Mobile, Ala., that killed 47 people — also have changed how the profession trains and selects its workers.

“Since the Valdez went aground we’ve had to take drug tests, and then since that one boat in Alabama knocked out that bridge with that passenger train and killed all those people, (that) has prompted them to make us get radar certified,” Rogers said. “Now they’re coming up with the physical, and you got to be in pretty good shape to pass your Coast Guard physical to renew your license.”

Rogers spends his days with a single deckhand moving barges around the Port of Mount Vernon for loading, unloading, and repairs at the company’s dry dock. The company occasionally sends him on longer trips.

“I’ve been as far as from Cincinnati down to Baton Rouge (La.) for this outfit,” Rogers said. “I mostly stay around here in Evansville or Shawneetown, or go up to Louisville (Ky.) and back.”

Each barge can carry about 1,500 tons. It takes about 15 railroad cars to fill a single barge, or about 50 semi-trucks. When these work boats aren’t pushing tons of material up the river they are quite similar to a fork lift in a warehouse.

The tug boats move quickly from one task to the next, turning 180 degrees. Then, the tug boats rush up to the barges full-throttle, shifting into reverse at the last second so they lightly bump against the barges.

Then, a deckhand — on Rogers’ boat, it’s Zac Spainhoward — steps from the tug boat to the barge to secure the two vessels with steel cables.

Working as a team, Rogers and Spainhoward release the empty barges from the ties to the bank, and with two engines putting out a combined 1,200 horsepower, the tug boat pushes the heavy barges to their destination further up river with little effort.

The duo repeat this process with the skill of experienced veterans 12 hours each day to keep the river’s heavy haulers on the move.

Tags: Jobs, Ohio River, People

This entry was posted on Monday, April 25th, 2011 at 8:20 am and is filed under Community, People.
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When pro football player Cedric Benson led his Cincinnati Bengals to a long-awaited victory that ended a 10-game losing streak, his eyes grew wet and a tear ran down his cheek as he stood before his locker afterward.

The running back said he felt wonderful, tremendous, joyful. So why the public cry? Relief, strong emotions after a lot of tough times for him and the team, and … well, why not?

After all, Rep. John Boehner, who lives just north of Cincinnati, wept on national TV the night Republican election victories assured he will be the nation’s next speaker of the House. And from the neighboring state to the south, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., choked up as he bid farewell this month to a retiring colleague.

Just a few examples of well-known males turning on the waterworks in a Year of the Tear, four decades after the Temptations sang that “Everyone knows that a man ain’t supposed to cry” and a Democratic presidential contender’s campaign foundered under the weight of reports he teared up.

Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie had plans that morning in 1972 to call out the publisher of the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader over criticism of his wife. But reports that he had tears in his eyes — which Muskie went to his grave insisting were melted snowflakes — raised questions about whether he could handle crises or stare down the Russians.

“Back in the early ’70s, it was male machoism — men were not supposed to publicly display emotions; it was viewed as a sign of weakness,” said Severin Beliveau, an Augusta, Me., attorney who was a Muskie campaign adviser.

But stoicism gave way over the years to sensitivity as a desirable male trait, and by 2010, there were few fears for tears left among well-known American men.

“With the passage of time, we’ve seen that demonstrations of emotions can be viewed as a quality to have as an asset,” said Beliveau. “People see a more human side of the male.”

Actor David Arquette told Howard Stern on the radio in October he had cried in the aftermath of having sex with another woman after his split with Courteney Cox. He lamented the loss of intimacy with the “Cougar Town” star; he didn’t comment on his new partner’s post-coital emotional state.

A country song title says “Cowboys Don’t Cry,” but it’s not among Brad Paisley’s many hits. He lowered his cowboy hat-wearing head as he choked up, recalling his grandfather’s advice to learn the guitar, after receiving the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year award.

“There’s no crying in baseball!” Sorry, gruff, old-school manager played by Tom Hanks in “A League of Their Own,” but today there is, and by some of the game’s best players.

Most Valuable Player Josh Hamilton said he was fighting tears as his Texas Rangers neared the American League championship while he thought about his long struggle to come back successfully from cocaine abuse.

On the National League side, Cincinnati’s Joey Votto acknowledged that he cried after receiving word he had won the MVP award, a year after depression over his father’s death temporarily sidelined him.

Even Rahm Emanuel, whose take-no-prisoners political style earned the nickname “Rahmbo,” teared up on the day he announced his resignation as President Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff.

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck has cried publicly about many things, from past personal struggles to “caring an awful lot about my country,” but he was particularly dramatic in July while disclosing an eye disease he said threatens his sight. He told a tour audience first, then showed a replay on his Fox News show for those who missed it the first time.

But it’s Boehner who cried in public so often he’s already been dubbed “Weeper of the House.”

On election morning Nov. 2, a reporter shouted a question to Boehner outside his West Chester polling station about how his late parents would feel seeing their son’s success: “Aw, now you’re just trying to make me cry,” Boehner replied with a smile.

Turns out it wasn’t hard to do.

That night, Boehner choked up as he recounted his bootstraps climb from blue-collar family of 12 children, working his way through college. Then came this month’s broadcast of a “60 Minutes” interview in which he broke down repeatedly — over his humble rise, about his concerns for children’s chances at the American dream, when his wife praised him. That led to some ridicule by detractors, some questioning his sincerity or emotional stability.

Asked for response, Boehner’s office referred to his explanation to the CBS interviewer Lesley Stahl: “What you see is what you get. I know who I am. I’m comfortable in my own skin. And everybody who knows me knows that I get emotional about certain things.”

Colleagues and other people who’ve known Boehner for years agree that he’s long worn his emotions on his natty sleeve.

“It’s not anything new with Speaker-elect Boehner,” said Gene Beaupre, Xavier University political scientist. “I’ve seen him, years ago, in front of several hundred people at a conference get pretty emotional, talking about his own life and the chances he got.”

Beaupre thinks that people accept such displays as long as they seem genuine, and can even admire politicians who have deep feelings and aren’t afraid to express them. And, the more males who cry in public, the more who are likely to follow.

“I do think when you see people in power showing their emotions the way these gentlemen have, I think it makes it easier for others to do the same,” Beaupre said.

Among those not crying in public? Boehner’s predecessor, Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other prominent women, some of whom wondered aloud about whether women would still be accused today of being too emotional and soft. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin recently took a break from shooting caribou, climbing mountains, and camping out in the Alaskan wilderness to ponder that point.

“I don’t know if a woman would be given a pass necessarily,” the former governor told ABC News, while saying she respects Boehner for showing his feelings about things that are important to him.

“But that’s one of those things where a double standard certainly is applied,” she added. “I’m sure if I got up there and did a speech and I started breaking down and cried about how important it is to me that our children and our grandchildren are provided great opportunities, I’m sure that I would be knocked a little bit for that.”

___

Editor’s Note: Dan Sewell, Cincinnati correspondent for the AP, can’t make it through the end of “Field of Dreams.”

Tags: 2010, Media, People

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 2nd, 2011 at 1:28 pm and is filed under Community, Media, People.
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