On March 23, past and present clients, employees and business partners gathered at Terranea Resort to mark the beginning of the third successful decade of Paolucci Communication Arts. The communication-arts firm with an advertising, public relations and interactive specialty celebrated at a private, oceanfront party. For more than two decades, PCA has served local and international clients in industries including luxury real estate, resorts, private clubs & spas, and consumer products.
“We’re very proud of this accomplishment,” said Mark Paolucci, president of PCA. “It is a reflection of the high standard with which we hold ourselves, in terms of creating the work and conducting our business. If our clients are successful, we are successful, and happy clients lead to more business which has fueled our growth over the years.”
Of course, PCA photographer Peter Cooper captured the event on film. A selection of his party photos is viewable on PCA’s Facebook page.
Plato wrote that the ideal ruler was a “philosopher king,” whose power was matched by wisdom. In William Fulton, the city of Ventura has a planner mayor. He’s the author of several respected books on urban planning, including The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles. While other U.S. cities are suffering from the recession and budget slashing, Ventura, through smart planning, is hurting relatively less. That, at least, is the premise of this recent piece on KCET TV’s SoCal Connected show. The city’s policy of “moderating real estate growth during the boom years,” by not overbuilding houses that were sold elsewhere through risky sub-prime loans, has helped avert calamity, as has its fairly secure government job base. Fulton also helped plan and recently launch Ventura Ventures Technology Center, a high-tech incubator sector backed by the city with affordable office rentals.
Can we please learn some lessons from our current mess, people?
Full-of-himself New York Times writer Thomas Friedman really hits the nail on the head with his recent column about global-warming skeptics. In case you’ve been buried in snow for the past week, you should know that several blowhard pundits - Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and plenty of Republican pols who should know better – took Washington’s blizzard as evidence that global warming is a hoax. That’s not just ignorant; it’s dangerous. So Friedman has a plan to counter the nonsense (some of which was encouraged by blunders in the climate-science camp).
“The climate science community should convene its top experts… and produce a simple 50-page report summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable, peer-reviewed footnotes.”
Friedman also urges replacing the term global warming with “global weirding,” to capture how climate change is producing the disturbing anomalies we’re seeing in Vancouver and the East Coast. And he gives one of the most practical arguments for taking action: renewable energy, energy efficiency and mass transit are insurance that will make us richer and more secure…. including by diminishing “the dollars that are sustaining the worst petro-dictators in the world who indirectly fund terrorists and the schools that nurture them.”
Of course, will any of these reasonable ideas prevent Limbaugh, etc. from seeing reason? Only when it’s a cold day in hell.
Timonthy Egan’s New York Times commentary, Slumburbia, is more than just a tour through a post-bubble housing development. Yes, the Lathrop, California project he visits has one in eight homes in foreclosure, with a spiking crime rate. And yes, the development appears to confirm Brookings Institution’s Christopher B. Leinberger’s 2008 prediction that the collapse of the new-home market could turn many of today’s McMansions into tenements. But Egan goes deeper than the bubble for the cause – and a possible cure – for foreclosure alley: “In California, the outlying cities themselves encouraged the boom, spurred by the state’s broken tax system. Hemmed in by property tax limitations, cities were compelled to increase revenue by the easiest route: expanding urban boundaries.”
Also, the most stable or recovering home markets – San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, San Diego – have the strictest development codes to curb sprawl, according to Egan. This is the reverse of what some suburban-development advocates (cough, cough, Joel Kotkin) warned about when they said coastal cities would price out the middle class and start to empty. Says Egan, “The developers’ favorite role models, the laissez faire free-for-alls – Las Vegas, the Phoenix metro area, South Florida, this valley – are the most troubled, the suburban slums.”
Strong land-use regulations, he seems to say, combined with a growing population and stabilization of prices, may help correct a “free market” in freefall.
The best party of the year also celebrated what’s best about Los Angeles. ULI Los Angeles’ inaugural LARC (Los Angeles Real Creativity) Awards dazzled a full house at 5900 Wilshire Blvd late last year with a high-concept awards experience that stimulated the mind and the senses. Even the pre-event wine-and-martini hour (with hors d’oeuvres by Wolfgang Puck) was artful and interactive, held across the street at Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “Urban Light” courtyard.
ULI Los Angeles just published some of the best event and party photos from LARC. And media coverage of the event was universally glowing… as in this article by Alissa Walker in Fast Company. The ULI LARC Awards will be presented annually to four recipients who, through their extraordinary vision and creative action, are helping to change our world (and our lives) as Angelenos, Americans and global citizens.
The broken economy and the resulting mood of pubic bitterness are more and more evident in advertising. One of the industry’s truisms – positive messages are more motivating than negative – is losing ground to ad themes that are blunt, in your face, even caustic. New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott looked at the trend as it appears in annual post-New-Year-resolution fitness ads, concluding, “The tone in many campaigns is less cheerful than in previous Januaries.” He cites the new Nicorette campaign that CNBC’s health-industry writer Mike Huckman has been blogging about. Its crude tagline – almost shocking hear in a broadcast commercial - is “Nicorette makes quitting suck less.” (Facing resistance to the crude language, Nicorette has euphemized the S-word in newer versions.) But if edginess sells these days, The New York Times’ Elliott quotes several executives advocating a more nuanced edginess. Wheaties’ very effective new tagline is “prepare to win.” It seems to say: expect to win, but also prepare well for the competition. But it says that without sounding rosy. As with much good advertising, it strikes a fine balance of messages.
While most people scurry through Disney theme parks enjoying the fun and spectacle, urban planners and architects notice Disney’s complex design. Sam Gennawey goes even deeper, stopping to inspect hidden strategies or whimsical details. His blog, Samland’s Disney Adventures, is a daily dissection of these intricacies. Recent posts include: what happens when you eavesdrop on Main Street’s old-fashioned hand-crank telephones; Disney’s Tiki Room interpretation of a traditional Hawaiian lanai; and Walt’s innovative strategy of a single park entrance leading to Main Street which “hubs” into the various lands at Disneyland, each of which lures and orients the visitor with a dominant architectural icon, e.g. Sleeping Beauty’s Castle. (This approach has become a mainstay of new urbanist city planning.) As Gennawey says, “Samland is an urban planner’s view of the history and design of Disney’s North American parks plus some helpful touring tips.”
As the economic landscape continues to shift, Paolucci Communication Arts (PCA) continues to share its creative talents. (See our video on strategic partnerships, The Vault, here.) The most recent example of this pro-active business approach is the new PCA Strategic Alliance Program launched with long-time marketing professional D.E. Barber Company Inc. (DBC) www.DianeBarber.com.
The PCA Strategic Alliance Program provides like-minded marketing professionals the opportunity share contacts and resources, offering the best-quality work to their clients. The Agency has commissioned a select network of PCA ambassadors to make introductions into previously undiscovered fields. These individuals and smaller firms will then partner with PCA – its creative resources and integrated marketing approach – to boost business for these clients in cooperation with PCA Ambassadors.
”The world today is very different than it was just two years ago. Strategies, demands, budgets – all have changed. What hasn’t changed is the power of relationships. That’s why we choose to launch Read More
Used to be that Disneyland was Orange County’s only place for futuristic rail: You know, monorails, people movers. But the county will soon get two huge and transformational rail improvements. Anaheim will be the southern terminus of California’s high-speed rail, super-charging the city’s role as a transportation hub. Meanwhile, Metrolink commuter rail is about to expand daytime service, catalyzing smaller but equally important transit hubs in communities such as Fullerton, Orange and Santa Ana. It’s in these cities where new economic activity in the region will happen, via Transit Oriented Developments, or TODs.
The high-speed rail planned to connect Anaheim (and Los Angeles’ Union Station) with Las Vegas, San Francisco and Sacramento is one component of the emerging Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center. A kind-of West Coast Grand Central Station, it will bring together Amtrak, Metrolink, bus service, shuttles, bikes/pedestrians, the high-speed rail and a “fixed guideway” train connecting to, naturally, Disneyland.
Paolucci Communication Arts’ Jack Skelley gets on board all these new developments in this article just published in Riviera magazine.
25 years ago, Sonic Youth invaded the Los Angeles music scene from New York. They played a series of riveting shows (some of which this writer was fortunate to perform in with in another band) and established themselves as a new force in what became known as indie rock with albums such as Bad Moon Rising, EVOL, Goo and Sister. Sonic Youth returned to Los Angeles at the Wiltern Theater on January 9, focusing on new album The Eternal, but with encores featuring material from the mid-80s. Guitarist Lee Ranaldo mentioned to me after the show that the band decided to perform songs such as “Death Valley 69″ — also from the early period — to remember their first L.A. shows. The Wiltern performance was as powerful as ever. If anything, the band attacked the jagged rhythms and melodies even more fiercely. But it was the pensive intros and extended endings to each number that offered the most jarring beauty. Abstract, colorful, surging, transcendent… these instrumental waves of guitar bliss would surge into pure psychedelia if they weren’t also so deep, hard and heavy. Ranaldo’s “Walkin Blue” was a highlight: A wise and empathic message of comfort to friends. Which kind of sums the whole show.
Steve Appleford from Los Angeles Times also wrote a review, here.
On March 23, past and present clients, employees and business partners gathered at Terranea Resort to mark the beginning of the third successful decade of Paolucci Communication Arts. The communication-arts firm with an advertising, public relations and interactive specialty celebrated at a private, oceanfront party. For more than two decades, PCA has served local and international clients in industries including luxury real estate, resorts, private clubs & spas, and consumer products.
Full-of-himself New York Times writer Thomas Friedman really hits the nail on the head with his recent 
Timonthy Egan’s New York Times commentary, 
The best party of the year also celebrated what’s best about Los Angeles. ULI Los Angeles’ inaugural 
The broken economy and the resulting mood of pubic bitterness are more and more evident in advertising. One of the industry’s truisms – positive messages are more motivating than negative – is losing ground to ad themes that are blunt, in your face, even caustic. New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott 
While most people scurry through Disney theme parks enjoying the fun and spectacle, urban planners and architects notice Disney’s complex design. Sam Gennawey goes even deeper, stopping to inspect hidden strategies or whimsical details. His blog, 
As the economic landscape continues to shift, Paolucci Communication Arts (PCA) continues to share its creative talents. (See our video on strategic partnerships, The Vault, 
Used to be that Disneyland was Orange County’s only place for futuristic rail: You know, monorails, people movers. But the county will soon get two huge and transformational rail improvements. Anaheim will be the southern terminus of California’s high-speed rail, super-charging the city’s role as a transportation hub. Meanwhile, Metrolink commuter rail is about to expand daytime service, catalyzing smaller but equally important transit hubs in communities such as Fullerton, Orange and Santa Ana. It’s in these cities where new economic activity in the region will happen, via Transit Oriented Developments, or TODs.
25 years ago,