“Smokin’ Deal!” Merlot Marketing featured in The Sacramento Bee

This story is taken from Sacbee / Business / Bob Shallit: Published Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Sacramento’s Merlot Marketing continues to rake in contracts to promote upscale home products. The latest deal: an agreement to represent PR-111, a Brazilian manufacturer of exotic and sustainable hardwood flooring.

Merlot execs recently flew to Miami to pitch their ideas for the account and apparently wowed BR-111’s president with proposals to stage product showcases in crowded venues such as Times Square – and to build “floating” glass ceilings above the displays that visitors could walk on and then gaze down at the flooring.

As company president Debi Hammond recalls it, BR-111’s Ricardo Moraes at first found the ideas a little, uh, wild.

In a heavy accent, he inquired: “So exactly what do you guys ‘grow’ in Sacramento?” Implying that the Merlot team might be smoking what it was growing.

Hammond replied that wine sometimes stimulates ideas at the company. Never anything stronger.

The team left on a high note, so to speak, with what Hammond calls a “very big account.”

For the Original Story: http://www.sacbee.com/shallit/story/2300988.html or back columns: www.sacbee.com/shallit