KSWB News Director Returns to Former Job in Utah
“Ocean Oasis,” a $5 million film on Baja California that was a joint project of the San Diego Natural History Museum, Mexican conservation organization Pronatura and locally based Summerhays Films, Inc., recently opened in Washington, D.C. It is expected to be seen by 15 million people during the next five years.
The film premiered Sept. 12 at the Smithsonian’s National History Museum in Washington, D.C., and will open to Smithsonian visitors the next day. It will run there through March 2001.
“Ocean Oasis” will come to San Diego in April, when the Natural History Museum opens a 300-seat giant screen theater, part of a new 90,000-square-foot expansion.
The 38-minute film examines the inhabitants , including gray whales, moray eels, corals, communities of elephant seals , and the changing conditions of Baja.
“People who know Baja California have a strong emotional bond with the region,” said Soames Summerhays, the film’s director and president of Summerhays Films. “One of the chief goals of the film is to foster an affinity with the region by a wider audience.”
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Comings And Goings: At KSWB, news director Geoff Roth will be gone by the time you read this. Roth, whose last day was Sept. 15, is returning to his previous station, Salt Lake City Fox affiliate KSTU, where he’ll be executive producer of morning news. His reason: “a personal decision to take life easier for a while,” he said, noting the 24-hour pressures of running a news department. The station’s currently looking for a new news director.
However, the station is no longer looking for a weather forecaster. After releasing Mark Mathis in May, the station had been splitting the week’s weather duties with weekend weather anchor Elizabeth Reyes and freelance reporter Rick Carr.
The station hired Renee Kohn as its new weather anchor. Kohn, who will be on-air Sept. 18, comes to San Diego from KCOY-TV, the CBS affiliate in Santa Maria, Calif. Kohn has also worked as an anchor, reporter and weather forecaster in Huntsville, Ala. She’s earning a certificate in broadcast meteorology through Mississippi State University.
Survey Says: Logos were the focus of a new survey of 700 businesses done by locally based Tyler Blik Design.
Among the results were that 17 percent ofmarketing directors surveyed felt their current logo did not communicate the essence of their company’s brand image, said Tyler Blik, the design firm’s principal.
Other results: 32 percent of the companies surveyed had not changed their logo; 49 percent had changed them more than once; and 30 percent of the companies do not maintain usage guidelines for their logos.
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Status Chart: With a launch that is budgeted for $1 million, Phillips-Ramsey will design campaigns for newspaper customer retention program WAM!
The campaign will begin in San Diego, with the San Diego Union-Tribune, and is planned to expand into 20 markets by 2001.
The agency, whose office is in Mission Valley, has also signed Irvine-based BuyProduce.com, which is expected to bring in $2 million in billings.
The firm will develop brand positioning and will run an on- and off-line marketing campaign for the business-to-business exchange for produce growers and retail buyers.
Phillips-Ramsey also signed locally based Verance Decision Systems, which creates digital watermarking technology that tracks broadcast plays in media markets. The agency will create an overall branding program including trade, online advertising and marketing.
In other local agency signings, HealthDunce.com hired fellow San Diego company Rocket Brand Design to design an E-commerce and information Web site. Also, the Brown & Bostwick Group signed Memphis, Tenn.-based Blues Foundation, and Reston, Va.-based author Joe Blackwell. The Gable Group in Downtown San Diego signed El Segundo, Calif.-based Affinity Internet, Inc.
Testing The Tech Waters: San Diego’s tekkie reputation , high PC usage and Yahoo’s ranking of it as one of the country’s most wired cities , has made it one of three test markets for a San Antonio dot-com company’s ad campaign.
The campaign for bills.com, a Web site on which users pay their bills, started this month.
Bills hired Chicago-based ad agency marchFirst to design the campaign. Bills president David Jones would not disclose the campaign’s budget.
One promotion within the campaign involves a drawing with a prize that pays the winner’s mortgage for a year, up to $15,000.
The campaign will run in newspapers and on radio stations in San Diego, Seattle and San Antonio.
Rodrigues can be reached at (858) 277-6359, ext. 107, or via E-mail at trodrigues @sdbj.com
