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Non-Tech : The Children's Beverage Group (TCBG) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mark cox who wrote (2062)	11/8/1998 1:23:00 AM
From: Dave Shoe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2452

Personally, I really appreciated those publicized queries to the VP. The info posted to the thread resolved some crucial uncertainties. It sounds, however, like any phone calls nowadays should probably be directed toward marketing, not the mucky-mucks. The marketing department would be keyed in to all TCBG goings on by now, and would have 'sufficient' answers, without breaking into any golf scrambles. I'm taking the passive 'wait and see' approach to client communications. The track others take is their business. Just wanted to pass along one of the things Scott mentioned. I brought about 20 questions to the meeting Tuesday, but never quite got to the list. I sorta thought it might go this way. Too much info and intro and too little time. I asked about WalMart, and Scott interjected that Winn Dixie is close to breaking loose, too. Scott seemed to want to discuss the status of some of the other contracts, but I'm hesitant to pass tentative info along, so I kept skirting the topic to conserve time. With the exception of Nestle. I grilled him a large bit on the Nestle press release and asked who was responsible for it. Apparently, he did not write it, and he proclaimed some of the logic behind it, but the details went over my head, so I can't relay the points too well. Bottom line: The Nestles deal is inactive. Scott has been involved in the IRL for three or four years. He represents Minneapolis' "Rachel's Gourmet Potato Chips" with the Eddie Cheever contract. Yup, Rachel's (a startup like TCBG) won the Indy 500. Typical figures for maintaining a car for a season in IRL is five million bucks. The main sponsor typically picks up a a third of the tab. A typical IRL motor runs about $100,000. A tiny fraction of what Formula One racing costs. Using lightning quick math skills, and observing that TCBG and WalMart shared the team for half the season, I estimate that TCBG's participation costs were about, um, well, lightning math was never my strong suit. Scott emphasized there are costs to any national advertising campaign and IRL participation is a very effective way to get an image out. Scott is also actively involved with internet technologies and race car telemetry. This cross involvement is seeding a project of his which may offer interesting commercial communication potential. It's presently unrelated to TCBG, and I'm not sure if he want's it blurbed too much, so I'll leave it at that. Scott mentioned that he'd just received a big buncha video tapes of the 10-minute TV spot for TCBG and he gave me one. He's got all the Cheever paraphanalia, too. I like the looks of the TCBG/Cheever Racing clothing. The TCBG 'Brainslush' logo and Cheever 'Eagle' logo complement each other very well, and the material seems good. Photos available at the TeamCheever web site. The hat I scored is autographed by Robby, too. I'm impressed. Oh, that reminds me of what Scott said about the sub-zero degree BrainSlush product. It's not being pushed in this early part of the campaign, because it offers a comparatively high sugar content. The initial image for TCBG products will lean toward juice and spring water. I ended up not writing anything down, so I probably missed a few topics here. The time flew by. Scott represents about 35 client companies, to what degree I don't know: He always seems to be working on TCBG stuff. Or, at least ready to talk about it. Bottom line: I appreciated the meeting and Scott's ability to tolerate some of my novice questions. Oh, I almost forgot...I previously mentioned that Scott appears to be involved in TCBG more than I'd expect an IR to be involved. He's apparently orchestrated some of the Volpak and 'Prototype, Inc' (of Minneapolis, as mentioned before in AC's now infamous post) packaging machinery implementations for TCBG. The details are beyond me, but he is involved with the machinery vendors somehow. Scott also mentioned that TCBG expects to have 10 Volpaks by the end of March. I think that covers it. Oh, I asked about details of the TCBG stock float, but it pretty much went over my head, too. I need to learn the basic definition of what 'float' and other types of stock means. If someone could post a summary of their best guess as to what TCBG's stock situation looks like (with definitions), I'd appreciate it (accuracy is optional). I bought a few books on the stock market, but they're at home and I'm slacking at work right now. Seems the books are never handy when I have a specific question. And when I'm home I have other stuff to do. Shoe.