RIESTER

From spearheading a worldwide effort to eradicate polio to sponsoring a pancake breakfast to raise funds for a kids’ playground at a local park, Rotary Club members are at the forefront of public service.

They put into action their mantra of “service above self.”

In the truest sense, Rotarians (1.5 million members in 33,790 clubs worldwide) are volunteer activists — doers and believers — for numerous causes, be it buying wheelchairs for underprivileged children, combating hunger, improving health and sanitation, providing education and job training or teaming with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ($335 million donated) to provide polio vaccines to tykes in the ghettos of less-developed countries.

A classic example of Rotary-style activism was aptly expressed in an article by Dr. Scott Leckman that appeared in the Salt Lake City daily newspaper, the Deseret News, on Oct. 23, 2009.

A physician and member of the Salt Lake Rotary Club, Dr. Leckman wrote of an experience he had earlier in the year after immunizing kids for polio in Firozabad, a ghetto of some 400,000 inhabitants 40 miles from Agra, India, home to the storied Taj Mahal.  He was one of a group of 16 from Utah who paid their own way to India to partake in a Rotary International humanitarian effort.

"Namaste."

Dr. Leckman wrote: “Indians have a wonderful greeting, ‘Namaste.’  When spoken to another person, it is commonly accompanied by a slight bow and made with hands pressed together, palms touching and fingers pointed upward.  It means ‘I bow to the divinity inherent within you’.”

He recalled this exchange following a day of giving babes-in-arms polio vaccine drops in the squalor of Firozabad where mud-brick shanties front on alleys lined with troughs full of sewage:

“As I walked through Firozabad to catch the bus, an Indian gentleman rode his bike past me, then stopped to talk.

“Why are you here?,” he asked.

“I am here with a group of Rotarians to give children polio vaccines.”

“What do you get out of it?”

Dr. Leckman responded: “A world free of polio.”

“He (the stranger) thought for a moment and said ‘namaste,’ then rode off,” the doctor recalled.

In that brief exchange, Dr. Leckman epitomized Brand Activism in its basic form.  He had a good product, he strongly believed in that product and he conveyed its value succinctly to his audience — who obviously was sold on it.

That is similar to the studied approach RIESTER takes in advocating Brand Activism about products and services it successfully touts to targeted audiences on behalf of its clients. RIESTER (with 100 employees in offices in Phoenix, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City) develops advertising, public relations, web, social media and public policy  messages that resonate.  Just like Dr. Leckman’s.

Rotarian and RIESTERite Mike Korologos administering polio vaccines in India in 2008. This is Brand Activism.