tenderlovingcake.com gives a delicious 35oz. pound cake to the Mid South Food bank for every 3lb coffee cake sold online! Click on the logo above to see the video.
Wild Dream Book page 21, Tender Loving Cake
Tender Loving Cake (tenderlovingcake.com) was launched in early December 2011, inspired by the Tom’s Shoes model. Tom’s gives a new pair of shoes to a needy child with every pair sold.
Oates Design has enjoyed a long client relationship with long time friend, Ed Crenshaw, who runs a local (Memphis) wholesale bakery called The Butcher and Baker. They make terrific cakes from scratch, which he provides to restaurants and small groceries.
He had recently developed a special recipe for two flavors of coffee cake, Cinnamon Pecan, and Sour Cream Blueberry Pecan, which he wanted to introduce to the South. They are the best cakes you have never tasted.
Why not add a charity component like Tom’s, and serve also the less fortunate with every cake sold? SWEET!
For every coffee cake sold at tenderlovingcake.com (online only), The Butcher and Baker gives another cake, a delicious 35oz. pound cake, to the Mid South Food bank. The video features a behind-the-scenes look at business model, the Mid South Food Bank, and the process of making these wonderful cakes.
Wild Dream Book is produced by Oates Design. See wilddreambook.com/archive to see more videos in the series.
Wild Dream Book page 20, The Night Gallery
Click on the photo to visit the Gallery.
Wild Dream Book page 20, The Night Gallery
We used to have a Halloween party when the girls were little. It was a great opportunity for showing off my creative chops on the invitation, and decorations, and come up with the wildest costumes I could imagine. Click the photo (or link) above to be taken right to the video.
I had always wanted to do large paintings with neon paint, which would show up under a black light, an interesting challenge because you have to think of light and dark in reverse. The video shows off these “Night Gallery” pieces a lot better I’m afraid than some of the inspired costumes.
The first year, Mitzi was a slot machine, complete with working pull handle and rolling icons, and a toy fireman’s helmet spray painted silver for the top. My costume borrowed from the Benny Hill Show skit in which he rides around piggyback on a little old woman- it’s a one-person outfit with a fake head in front and little legs for the rider. It was an election year and that costume played off the invitation theme, “Who’s Party is Scariest?” I was Clinton, riding on Hilary’s coattails- we all thought there was some truth to that.
The next year I started to play with upholstery foam. Mitzi was a couch potato– she wore a foam couch sprayed painted brown, that featured a lounging body on it that shared her head. I was Big Foot, and wore a gigantic foam foot with a nail in it, and a bloody trapdoor (to enter it) at the ankle with bone fragments sticking out.
The next year, A mannequin I had rescued from the dumpster became a amputee leaking sangria from her arm into a ice chest. Mitzi was Marge Simpson, with 3-foot tall foam hair. I was The Lobster Boy, another foam suit inspired by a news story of the time about a carnival freak show performer who was killed by his wife in their mobile home because he so often abused her with his “pincers”.
No season has more license for creative freedom; hope we get back to the parties some day. The couch potato survives and all the posters, but not much else.
Wild Dream Book is produced by Oates Design. What’s in yours?
Wild Dream Book page 19, the Go Neighbor Network
Digital billboards inside high traffic stores were to feature 6-second video ads of neighborhood businesses. The above link goes to a 2-minute video we produced to show the neighborhood merchant customer how a 6-second video could be effective. A moment later begins another quick piece to show the host store how this could work, and also demonstrate the self-promotional and community service opportunities for their store to be a good neighbor.
Wild Dream Book Page 19, Go Neighbor Network
Vending machines like Coinstar and Redbox do a great business taking advantage of the consistently high volume of traffic attracted to grocery and drug stores.
The Go Neighbor Network was a business model inspired by this idea, and by a common theme in the marketing of large grocery store chains, best expressed by this line from the website of Kroger, one of the largest ($82.2 billion in sales in fiscal 2010):
“We believe in building strong local ties and brand loyalty with our customers”
Last year four partners and I approached Kroger and several other large grocery chains with an offer to lease space inside their stores for large video displays, digital in-store billboards, that would play a continuous loop of six-second video ads back-to-back, which we would develop for local merchants (in the same strip center or within site of the store). The program we came up with promised the host store $13,000 annually per display, and offered two of the spots per minute reserved for the store’s own in-store promotion or public service ads, also produced by GoNN at our cost. Video advertisers could opt to attract customers by offering a small discount when a customer shows their grocery receipt. Win-win for everybody, right?
To demo the concept I made a couple of videos: the first showing how our advertisers’ messages would look, and the second showing the displays around the store, playing both co-op marketing and public service ads. I built a quick website, developed a brochure handout and we ran off some business cards— we were ready for our close-ups with store officials.
Luckily, talk is cheap; we didn’t put much money into it. Kroger said it would “clutter” up their stores and confuse customers. Target emailed me back a bunch of legalese about company policy being against it. Home Depot never returned our calls. We were spinning our wheels.
Then, a reprieve: Schnucks gave us the go-ahead, and we began planning to install a display in a local store. A week later they backed out without explanation. The partners decided to put on their thinking caps and reconvene “in two weeks”. That was in January 2011… Today it’s just another idea gathering dust.
Wild Dream Book is produced by Oates Design.
Memphis lawyer Steve Taylor started Youth Leadership of Memphis in 1999, called by divine inspiration to develop a plan to shepherd kids in the poorest Memphis neighborhoods away from the gangs and the endless poverty cycle, toward a responsible Christian life. Some of his kids are in college now, and the ministry changes the lives of all who share in it, not the least of which are the volunteers, to their own surprise and delight. Click the photo above, or here to see “The Silver Lining”, a video about this unique and life-changing program.
The Silver Lining; Wild Dream Book page 18
This is the most important story I’ve told. It is about lives changed, mine included, by service to others.
The failure of our inner cities in this country is a train wreck half a century in the making. While the causes might be arguable, the consequences are not: children being raised in fatherless homes, unprecedented teenage pregnancy and high school drop-out rates, all which become breeding grounds for gangs and crime. It is a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and despair, which seems insurmountable to most of us.
12 years ago Memphis attorney, Steve Taylor, began his personal quest, certain only that God called him to somehow expand the value system he learned from his father to inner city kids growing up in such tragic circumstances. So, he gave up his entire weekends, Saturday to teach a work ethic and respect for others, and Sunday to reinforce it with by exposing them to faith and Christian fellowship.
Today, Youth Leadership of Memphis works and worships with 70 + young men ages 6-21. Many of them have been in the program more than half their lives, and several have gone on to college.
The title of his recent program outline, “The Silver Lining, A unique plan to reform the inner city”, suggests to me that we who are so blessed already have the tools we need to change our community, and I co-opted it for this brief video portrait. Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is regularly echoed by all the (125 plus) volunteers: we are personally and forever changed by our connections with these beautiful kids.
YLM started as one man’s Wild Dream. Steve is still “in the trenches” every Saturday and every Sunday; he doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and challenges every new face to get out of his comfort zone. If we (board members) would let him, he would be using the resources of YLM to promote his newest Wild Dream (ministry), The Girl’s Garden Club, a vision now getting underway to reach the young girls of the inner city 6 and up. But that’s another story…
Now, that’s how to change the world. By example.
Find out more about this unique ministry by calling the ministry coordinator at (901) 591-1905. Youth Leadership of Memphis is a 501c3 organization and is supported by your tax-deductible contributions. Get out of your comfort zone by your service as a volunteer, and/or sending your check to Youth Leadership of Memphis, 1044 Brookfield Road, Suite 101, Memphis, TN 38119.
Wild Dream Book is produced by Oates Design. See earlier Wild Dream Book stories in the archive.
The Kicking Tee mp3 player- my concept for a personal stereo licensed sports product. Click on the photo or the link above to see the story of a great idea that flamed out before it got going.
Wild Dream Book page 17, Kicking Tee mp3 player
In 2004 I called on a Memphis based company called Team Sports America, that makes products licensed to bear NFL, NCAA, and MLB logos. We developed an agreement spelling out royalties should they ever pick up one of my ideas, and I started sending them concepts. The very next year they started to produce a clock idea I submitted called The Scoreboard, a digital clock showing the time where the score would be, and date and temperature. It has become the best-selling NFL-licensed product ever (another story). Hmm, this sure beats working. I started sending them dozens of product concepts for licensing.
One of my favorites is the Kicking Tee concept series [click link to go straight to video] that imagines a personal stereo in the shape of a football. My first drawings show it as a AM/FM radio, but with a twist, the remote also features buttons for custom sound bytes, such as a roaring crowd. Seems kind of weird to me today, but at the time I thought it was a great idea— the market as I saw it was tailgaters.
This was about when iPod personal stereos started to appear. Could one be made in the shape of a football? I drew and rendered a few models in football shapes covered with college and NFL logos. Team Sports really liked the idea, but as I was to learn later, is very gun-shy when it comes to R&D costs. They said- YOU research outsourcing the manufacturing, and the iPod licensing and the import and landed cost, etc.
I started by visiting the web sites of electronics manufacturers, and soon was in a dialog with AudioVox engineers. They sent me to a outsourcing agent in Chicago who calculated costs- which ultimately turned out to be far more than TSA wished to invest in a speculative product. Oh, my gleaming naiveté! I did not take this lesson to heart, but have been through the process several times since (see especially WDB page 5, and WDB page 10!). Oh well… if it’s meant to be… it will be.
Wild Dream Book is produced by Oates Design. Join the Facebook group for easy access to all story videos.
