Interview 4973 – Caption Index: 398
Did you plan events around the press?… Read More
Did you plan events around the press?… Read More
Yes, absolutely. And in fact, when we had certain things that we wanted to do, we’d have a press release, we’d invite the press in and I or somebody from the board would speak if it was dealing with a political issue or if it was dealing with some animal… Read More
Politics, we really- As a preface society, we had very little pressure from the politicians, but of course, when we went to pass a levy and we started getting county tax dollars, we then started to feel some, ’cause politicians started getting pressure. So we had to provide certain free… Read More
Most of the employees were city employees. But it was a good place to work because you had enough layers of people to do the grunt work, and I didn’t have to bother with a lot of the nitty-gritty that I did in Cincinnati. Cincinnati I had to watch the… Read More
What kind of presence did you have in the media?… Read More
I had a good- The bear accident changed things, but until the bear accident, I had a pretty good rapport with the politicals, with the newspapers, the media. And the bear accident, I got a couple people on my case and eventually, you know, these things worked out, but for… Read More
Were there certain strategies for getting community involved in the zoo that you remember that were really well done?… Read More
Well, as I stated earlier, the Festival of Lights was a good one because that brought in attendance at a time when our attendance would have been the lowest and days became the highest in zoo attendance history. We also had- I think when we had, obviously, the giant panda,… Read More
How did politics, either city or state, affect the working of the zoo?… Read More
We were gonna bring in a group of- Sometimes it would be non-zoo affairs. We started bringing in singers, popular singers at night. Anything that we could turn those turnstiles and keep the attendance above budget level. Therefore when we had enough funds, we could do other things with them. Read More
What were the strengths of your marketing department?… Read More
My first marketing director was Ted. He was good and my daughter worked under him and she eventually took over the marketing part. I did not hire her. The marketing committee suggested that we hire her. So it was just to keep, you know, the nepotism out of the picture,… Read More
To generate ideas on bringing new people in the zoo, I depended largely on a good marketing department. We would do this basically at staff level. Read More
We would think of ideas, you know, how are we gonna program the zoo for that year?… Read More
What were we gonna use?… Read More
I mean, I could make it happen. I have the knowledge to make it happen thanks to the Japanese. Little change of subject. Read More
What new ideas did you bring to get people to come to the Cincinnati Zoo?… Read More
How’d you get them in the door?… Read More
The salamanders were- The salamander initiative came as a result of not many people being able to keep them. The challenge was there to develop husbandry protocols and get them going. And I accomplished that, published a lot of information that I had. Bred some very, very difficult species. And… Read More
And somebody came along and was cleaning the floor and had a hot water hose and left it in the tank and killed three animals, and one of which was a male and two females, and I had one male left. So we had a breeding- We took them through… Read More