Chuck Lohre, president of Lohre & Associates, Inc., put some bark into technology's bite for a client with a robotic dog named Spike. The East Walnut Hills advertising and marketing firm recognized last month that the most effective way to drive business to the company at a trade show was to find a new gadget.

        Retrofitting a next-generation Sony AIBO robotic dog was the plan that Mr. Lohre offered to the prospective client.

        Executives at Post Glover Resistors Inc., an Erlanger manufacturer of components used to protect electrical systems at industrial plants, liked what they saw.

        “These trade shows are extremely mundane, but we figured this would draw attention to our new product, and it did. It worked,” said Mark Meister, vice president of sales and marketing for Post Glover Resistors.

        It is a good lesson in how creativity married to technology can generate attention and buzz.

        Spike was outfitted with a wireless LAN card, a microphone and red bandana for a groovy look to give extra pop to the client's booth at Electric Show 2001, a trade show in Orlando, Fla.

        The dog was programmed to deliver an entertaining series of monologues and choreography to tout the client's equipment, called the Digital Ground Hound, which protects industrial plants from electrical ground faults.

        The presentation serves as a great reminder that while technology is usually just a tool, creativity should always be one objective of that tool to sharpen a competitive edge.

        “They wanted something to knock the socks off the folks at the convention. They wanted to make sure their new product was introduced with a bang,” Mr. Lohre said.

        “The booth was continually crowded. A metal dog standing on top of the product and talking to the audience, well, nobody could walk past the booth without stopping.”

        The cyber-critter represented a hefty $3,000-$4,000 expense. Figuring out how to get people to see a demonstration is always hard, Mr. Lohre said. Potential clients get brain-dead after hours of wandering a convention floor.

        “You try to have a product in the booth, but it's difficult with this product,” he said.

        “We needed a barker, and a robotic dog made up for something that might not have been all that engaging in and of itself.”

        But when a client is conservative — this firm has operated in Greater Cincinnati for more than a century — getting company officials to embrace an approach that is both new and different can be a challenge.

        “This is a conservative industry,” Mr. Meister said. “And different is not always better. But if different is done right and done professionally, it can work.”

Shrinking bonus money
               So last year the bonus was sweet — enough to buy a motorcycle or maybe a new set of golf clubs.

        Don't expect the same this year, advises Keith Fortier, compensation consultant with Salary.com, a Wellesley, Mass., company that provides online compensation data.

        “Depending on the industry, we are seeing a trend toward smaller bonuses, and in many situations, bonuses are just going away,” Mr. Fortier said. “Cost-cutting is the mantra right now because companies just don't have the money.”
        E-mail jeckberg@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/eckberg.

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