Pub. Note: Nominations are being accepted for the next two inductees into the pantheon of MARKETING IMMORTALS. They will be announced and profiled in the 2020 edition of The LINK, which will be published only in digital form. Send your nomination to larrycoffman@frontier.com by Aug. 31. Name only will suffice, but feel free to explain the reasons for your nomination.
Since 2009, MARKETING has been inducting leaders in the marcomm community into the pantheon of MARKETING IMMORTALS, based on their career accomplishments. The eight categories include Advertising, Public Relations, Design, Direct Marketing, Film/Video/Audio, Graphic Arts, Media and Corporate/Client. The total of inductees now stands at 67.
As stated in the Welcome message on www.marketingimmortals.com, “The intent of this Website is to preserve the memories of those who have contributed so much to these various fields of endeavor, as we know them today and as they will evolve in the future. Besides ‘immortalizing’ the work of those who have gone before, the site also is intended to inform current practitioners of the legacies upon which their work is founded and to have significant educational and historical value.”
We revisit a different MARKETING IMMORTAL each week. This week’s featured IMMORTAL is Steve Darland, now a balsamic-vinegar baron in the “other” Monticello (New Mexico). Before reading his inspiring and informative update— watch this Emmy-winning video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KKWGMwMyMo
Update: “Imagine that you‘ll live to age 100. Like me, you will spend your first quarter going to formal schooling and the school of life. Next, you will apply what you learned and try to reach your apex.
“Then, if that goes well, you can choose to make a radical change to do what you alone want. You can strive to do it well. Then, you’re 75, healthy, alert and ready for your last quarter. That’s where I am.
“My wife, Jane, two kids and I left Seattle in the mid-Eighties for the Bay area. We loved it for nearly two decades, then Jane and I headed for New Mexico, where we started a small organic farm in a mile-high historic adobe village (pop: 45) and, for the past nearly 25 years, where we made America’s only true traditional balsamic vinegar. And the world’s only certified organic traditional balsamic; a small, but distinct (and delicious) accomplishment (see www.organicbalsamic.com for more details)
“Key fact: traditional balsamic must be at least 12 years in the aging process. No product, sales or revenue for that period. But it also means, for us, that we now have a backlog of 12+ years of balsamic aged for 21 years—the classic aging sweet spot of this product with a thousand-year history.
“We sell a lot online and at the nearby farmers’ market, but also to upscale restaurants and retailers. And since we developed many other products over the years (fresh & dried herbs, harissa, fruit preserves, fresh fruit and nuts etc.), we have a steady stream of wholesale orders
“Seems perfect, right? Just do this till you’re dead.
Well, that wouldn’t fit our pattern. We’re still vital, healthy, curious and now want to make travel, mainly international travel, our main thing. So, we’re selling our hacienda, vines, vinegar loft, large guest house, etc.—and moving down the road 200 yards to a smaller herb, fruit and nut farm, which we’ve owned for 20 years.
“We just built a 1500-square-foot barn on a separate 50-acre adjacent farm to handle transition from big to smaller quarters.
“We have 10+ years of balsamic to sell, plus all the other things we make and grow. But we can cut the work significantly—doing what’s more suited to those in their seventh decade of life. Our daughter, Amy, and son, Garrett, have their own dreams, which they are successfully pursuing, so, unlike the Old World, we won’t try a forced hand-off to them.
“Over the last 20+ years, we have traveled every region of the U.S. and the world, going at least twice overseas each year, plus more than a dozen trips exploring most all of the Yucatan as a handy winter retreat for us.
“We like the exotic spots, yet several recent return trips to East Africa and Iceland suggest no pattern to our destinations—only that we want longer stays when we go. So, soon we can be gone longer. And have simpler duties when we return home to our village of Monticello, NM.”
