Duck Tales

There are few things more exciting for me than putting together a new integrated marketing promotion. But sometimes what looks perfect on paper is anything but when you open your shipment of trade show supplies and see that you might as well crumple up that written plan and throw it in the trash.

As an event project manager for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, a division of Wells Fargo Bank N.A., I had purchased sponsorships to go with our exhibit at the annual Realtors Conference and Expo for years. This year, I wanted an integrated marketing plan that started with a big splash outside the venue and tied to our exhibit theme, "Get Your Ducks in a Row with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage."

After a little brainstorming, it hit me: What better way to illustrate Get Your Ducks in a Row than with a conga line behind a giant, dancing duck? I made arrangements with the show organizer to put a dancing duck entertainer and a support street team with T-shirts and literature outside of the convention center, contracted people for the jobs, and set about finding the ideal duck ensemble.

It turns out that a custom-made duck costume would run several thousand dollars, but I found a much more economical alternative - an off-the-shelf, one-size-fits-all outfit made by a company that specializes in all kinds of character costumes and offers its wares online. With a giant, stuffed head, a round body thanks to springy boning inside, and fuzzy orange legs, the costume was perfect.

The box containing the outfit arrived at my house about 10 days before the show, and I was a bit surprised at its compact size and the fact that it was completely covered with tape printed with Chinese writing. I hadn't realized the item was coming from China, but I was grateful it had arrived in time.

As I snipped away the constraining pieces of tape, my daughters, home visiting from college, looked on curiously. When I opened the box top, the costume literally burst out of the opening like a jack-in-the-box, sending my girls and me backward with a scream. With the boned body sprung into shape and set aside, I reached in and pulled out the stuffed head, webbed feet, and a pair of impossibly small orange leggings.

My daughter, who's about a size 0, put on the duck garb and danced around, sending us into fits of laughter. But as we laughed, a realization was dawning on me that was not very funny: If this costume fit my daughter perfectly, it was definitely not going to fit the two 6-foot-4-inch-tall entertainers I'd hired to take turns wearing it.

To my surprise, "one size fits all" from a Chinese manufacturer is a whole different standard than the North American equivalent. Clearly, I needed to come up with a solution - quickly. I decided that the roomy body might still fit the hired entertainers if I could replace the skinny little leggings with a larger pair of sweat pants or something. So I rallied members of my team at our Odebolt, IA, office and got them on the horn to scour the state for a pair of orange pants, but to no avail. After days of searching they hadn't turned up a single pair that wasn't emblazoned with some kind of marketing message. I turned to the only option I had left: skinny people.

I checked the sizes of contracted staff I had for the street team and found there were a couple petite workers I could repurpose for a shift in the suit. But I knew the weight of the outfit and the temps in the show city would make it tough for two tiny contracted staffers to don that getup five times a day for five days, so I turned to the Wells Fargo exhibiting team with a tape measure and a pleading smile. It's not the easiest conversation to tell professional colleagues that you need them to dress like a duck instead of a mortgage consultant, but I had a few pint-sized candidates who were good sports - at first anyway.

For the show, I had juggled my original would-be duck entertainers to be part of the street team that would hand out T-shirts and literature to those willing to join the conga line. Instead of wearing the costume, they would take turns toting the boom box that blared the tune "Hot Hot Hot" while our enthusiastic duck rallied people to conga behind it.

On the opening morning of the show, my first dancing duck stand-in changed into the suit and took the first conga-line shift outside. She danced her little heart out for 30 minutes, and from this first time out, we immediately learned two things: People loved the dancing duck, and wearing the suit was truly miserable.

Not only was the suit insufferably hot after 30 minutes, but the head was also heavy, and the football-helmet-style support inside was ill-fitting. When the first contracted staffer emerged from the suit, she looked like she'd lost a brawl, with hair rubbed into a matted mess and the skin rubbed off between her eyes.

I basically called in every favor, every ounce of charm, and every Band-Aid I had to get more people into the costume. I shortened the shifts to just 15 or 20 minutes each to keep people's brains from boiling, and I tried to protect their skin from being rubbed off by applying bandages between their eyes before they put the head on. Even so, everyone who came out of the duck suit looked like hell, and as the show wore on, it was getting harder and harder to find
willing ducks.

But, as they say, the show must go on, so I begged, borrowed, and stole to get people to fill the shifts. I promised drinks. I promised to not ask again if someone would wear it just once. I sent a couple of folks out wearing black pants instead of the orange leggings when they were willing to take a turn but not able to fit in the tiny leggings. I even stole a booth worker's husband and dressed him up for a time slot.

In the end we got it done, and while the dancing duck was the hit of the show, it definitely wasn't a hit from the inside of that costume. Still, the people who wore it were such good sports that attendees never knew the misery on the other side of that happy duck face. As the event project manager I was relieved that it all worked out, but along the way I learned a lot about problem solving, team spirit, and Chinese size charts. I know it took a lot of uncomfortable people to make us look good for that show, and for our exhibiting success I just have to say thanks to the little people.

- Kathleen Gunderson, event project manager, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, a division of Wells Fargo Bank N.A., Odebolt, IA