You know somebody is rich when they have a foundation named after them. You know somebody is really rich when their kids have their own foundations. That was the case with Andrew W. Mellon. In 1940 his daughter Ailsa Mellon Bruce established The Avalon Foundation, and in 1941 his son Paul Mellon established The Old Dominion Foundation. In 1969, with the combined value of the foundations at $220 million, the children decided to merge their foundations in honor of their father. That seems to have been a good decision considering that The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which is based in New York City, has assets totaling $6.5 billion in 2007. In case you don’t know who Andrew Mellon was, you can read his story here. The short of it was that he was held in the same esteem as men like Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, Morgan, and Frick, but he differed in that “he excelled in four fields of endeavor: as a businessman and banker; as a politician and statesman; as an art collector; and as a philanthropist.”
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I’m still working through my favorites from Fast Company’s list of “The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies,” and today we have a firm that came in #3 on their list for Design companies. It’s New York City’s Rockwell Group, which is the company behind my favorite airport terminal (jetBlue’s JFK Terminal 5) and many of Starwood’s hotels. They also did this year’s set for the Oscars and a groundbreaking playground in partnership with KaBOOM!. It may sound like they’re an architectural firm, but Rockwell Group is more than that—they also do product design and set design. It’s all about creating “immersive environments.” They even have a book entitled Pleasure: The Architecture and Design of Rockwell Group
that showcases “the hotels, theaters, restaurants, stadiums, casinos and other public spaces created by David Rockwell and Rockwell Group.”
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I know how tough the job search is, so I’m not going to pull a prank on you. It would just be mean to tell you about some awesome jobs and then say that they don’t exist. Instead, I’m going to stick to what I’ve done for the last two April Fools’ Days and introduce you to some jobs with a humorous side to them. Two years ago we took a look at Motley Fool, and last year it was College Humor. This year we’re going to check out The Second City, which is “the leading brand in improv-based sketch comedy.” They have theaters in Chicago and Toronto, along with Training Centers in those cities and Hollywood too. The Second City is also where famous comedians like Bill Murray, Dan Akroyd, Harold Ramis (Ghostbusters!), Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, and Chris Farley cut their teeth. (My buddy Jason Seiden also did a little work at their Training Center.) It is the place for comedy, and it’s all located a mile up the street from where I live.
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One of my earliest memories is from Detroit’s Thanksgiving parade. I think that I was about 2 years old at the time, and I saw Oscar the Grouch on some sort of float. I don’t remember much more about the parade, but I remember that. I guess that I’m an experiential marketers dream since I managed to remember that over all of the other cool things that happened when I was two years old (another early memory was getting my head stuck between the bars on a McDonald’s playground—another branded memory). I think that the people at VEE Corporation would be especially happy to hear about my early memory since they’re the company behind Sesame Street Live. They’re a Minneapolis based firm that provides “live entertainment, promotion and event marketing services for America’s most respected brands, properties and agencies.” They’re big on full-body costumes and mascots as well as merging marketing and entertainment.
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One of the coolest things about big cities is that they have unique neighborhoods and districts. Small towns are lucky to have one theatre, but New York City has an entire theatre district, which is called 42nd Street. It’s kind of a misnomer, because the whole street isn’t filled with theatrers, but around the area where it intersects with Broadway at Times Square they get pretty dense. Unfortunately, in the 1980s a large swath of 42nd Street became neglected and blighted. With so much great theatrical history there, New York City and New York State got together to found a non-profit organization to revitalize the area. This organization is now known as The New 42nd Street. The organization “oversees the redevelopment of seven historic theaters on 42nd” and operates these three projects: New 42nd Street Studios, The Duke on 42nd Street, and The New Victory Theater.
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