High 5 Consulting Feed

Does this picture look familiar to anyone? This was printed in the December 17th, 2008 issue of the Cincinnati Enquirer. Link here.

Bengals fan leading Revolution

Web site has followers on a weekly mission

By Dustin Dow
ddow@enquirer.com

Andrew Simon is the founder and president of a consulting firm in Washington. He has plenty of work to keep himself occupied every day.

But Simon, a Cincinnati native, is so unhappy with the Bengals that he has gladly added to his workload and become the unpaid leader of what he calls “Project Mayhem.”

Simon, 26, directs WhoDey Revolution, a group that began as an online blog nine months ago and has since grown into a guerrilla marketing organization targeting frustrated Bengals fans.

Through campaign tactics that have appeared on local billboards, hand-held signs and even restrooms, the group has relentlessly lobbied Bengals owner Mike Brown to hire a general manager.

So far, Simon says WhoDey Revolution has raised and spent almost $6,000.

“The point of our group and our Web site was to change the management structure of the Bengals,” Simon said. “We decided recently to take it out of the Internet and into real life.”

Brown and the Bengals front office declined to comment for this story, but Simon took satisfaction when Brown recognized WhoDey Revolution’s efforts earlier this month. In a Dec. 1 Enquirer interview, Brown acknowledged that he was aware of some billboards that protested his ownership style. Those billboards - all four of them - were produced by WhoDey Revolution and read, “Dear Bengals, Hire a general manager. Love, Your fans.”

To raise the $4,500 required for the billboards, which went up in mid-November and will stay up through the end of the season, WhoDey Revolution tapped into its Web site and solicited donations of $18 - $1 for every year of Brown’s ownership. Nearly 200 people donated at least that much, some gave more, and the group easily covered the cost for the billboards, Simon said.

Last Sunday, WhoDey Revolution recruited about 100 of its readers to smuggle nearly 1,000 urinal cakes into Paul Brown Stadium, which were deposited into the men’s restrooms. The cakes, which cost about $2,000, contained a personalized message, “98-186-1,” which was the team’s record under Brown going into Sunday’s game.

Dave Orne, 48, of Fort Thomas, joined in Sunday’s operation with his son, Jeff, 12.

“It felt like we were supporting a great cause,” Orne said. “And I’m very proud that my son took part in it with me.”

Both operations are elements of WhoDey Revolution’s Project Mayhem. Other tasks have included flooding the Bengals gameday hotline - better known as the Jerk Line - with customer complaints about Brown’s ownership, and a special sign project.

The core of WhoDey Revolution consists of Simon and 13 other writers who contribute to WhoDey Revolution.com. Most of them are men in their mid-to-late 20s.

“Having a lot of writers enables each writer to write once or twice a week,” Simon said, “so our burden is spread out. We all have other jobs; we have to make a living.”

Christian End, a Xavier University professor, specializes in fan psychology and said those who help Simon are probably “high-identifying fans who think their actions will affect the team’s performance.

“And so with all the other people on board, they probably think that dropping urinal cakes into urinals is going to contribute to the betterment of the team.”

In another instance, followers transported protest signs to Indianapolis for the Bengals-Colts game.

The signs contrasted the Colts ownership situation with the Bengals. Both owners took over the teams after their fathers, who previously owned the teams, passed away. Unlike Brown, Colts owner Jim Irsay hired a team president, Bill Polian, formerly a general manager at Buffalo and Carolina, to run football operations. Two seasons ago, the Colts won the Super Bowl.

“We’re not doing this to fire Mike Brown,” Simon said. “We’re saying, ‘Hire a GM. Do things that will help the team in the long run. Get football minds making football decisions.’ ”

Writing on behalf of DC School Reform Now, this letter to the editor was printed in the December 13th issue of the Washington Post. Check out the link here.

‘Up Close,’ and Big Fans of Rhee

Saturday, December 13, 2008; A13

The Dec. 8 Metro article “Up Close, Rhee’s Image Less Clear” didn’t give enough attention to the perspective of the thousands of D.C. residents, including the more than 600 members of DC School Reform Now, who are supportive of Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s bold plans to improve the city’s public schools.

Rhee has received such laudatory national attention because she deserves it; disrupting the status quo in the District’s deplorable educational system is worthy of our praise. Rhee has made it clear that there are no excuses for failing to educate D.C. children. Decisions must be based on how best to improve student achievement across the board and to close the achievement gaps among Zip codes.

Unfortunately, according to the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores, just 12 percent of D.C. public school eighth-graders tested “proficient” in reading and 8 percent tested “proficient” in math. Current statistics show that among all D.C. public school students who enter ninth grade, less than 3 percent will graduate from college.

It will take transformational, not incremental, change to turn around our schools. Chancellor Rhee is on the right track.

– Andrew Simon

Washington

The writer co-founded the group DC School Reform Now.

High 5 Consulting Vice President Alex Lawson is also the head of the advocacy team for DC for Obama, a group of Obama Volunteers working to keep the enthusiasm alive around President-Elect Obama’s historic campaign. Alex’s work in health care was discussed in a recent New York Times article. Check it out here.

Here is the quote:

Alex R. Lawson, a volunteer in the Obama campaign now trying to build public support for Mr. Obama’s agenda, said a public plan would give people a choice they do not have.

“A public insurance plan would not take anything away,” Mr. Lawson said. “It just adds another option.”

On World AIDS Day on December 1st, DC Fights Back joined with the Campaign to End AIDS, the Metro Washington Public Health Association, AMSA and the Student Global AIDS Campaign for a rally outside the HUD office to call for affordable housing for people living with HIV/AIDS. Over 100 people participated, with the event receiving great press. Check out the story in the Washington Post here and on WJLA (ABC here.

On Saturday, December 6th at 11:30am the Sunburst Youth Academy in Los Alamitos, CA will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony and luncheon on at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base. The program works with high school dropouts from Southern California by providing at-risk youth a 17-month voluntary intervention program established to provide training and education.

VIPs who will speak at the event include Major General William H. Wade, II, The Adjutant General, California National Guard, Congresswoman Grace Napolitano (D-CA-38), Dr. Ken Williams, Board of Directors, Orange County Department of Education Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose, Kelly Perdew, winner of The Apprentice 2 and Jennifer Buck, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs,

But the real stars of the event will be hearing from current Sunburst Youth Academy Cadet Lysett Villagrana and Grizzly Youth Academy Graduates Carrie Garlick and Jake Cote. Carrie graduated from the program in San Luis Obispo in 2001 after failing out of high school. After graduation, she served for 5 years in the Coast Guard and today works in a pre-school and attends college full time. Jake dropped out of school his Junior year, but after graduating from the Grizzly Youth Academy, he is now attending college, working a full time job and running his own music production company. Lynsett is 17 and dropped out of high school in LA County during her sophomore year. Because of the Sunburst Youth Academy, she will be returning to school and wants to be a physician.

It is programs like this that are working to give at-risk youth a second chance.

The PR campaign around the WhoDeyRevolution.com billboards and team boycott has caught like wildfire. The story has been covered on ESPN News, Sports Illustrated, the LA Times, New York Times, Deadspin, ESPN.com, SI.com, Yahoo!, ProFootballTalk, Big Lead, With Leather, Hugging Harold Reynolds, FanIQ, Cincinnati Enquirer, 700 Level, AOL Fanhouse, the AP and the blogs for 1530AM-HOMER hosts Lance McAlister, Mo Egger and C. Trent Rosencrans. WDR members have done interviews with 5 radio show hosts in Cincinnati, one in Lexington and one in Philly. Feature stories about the effort were aired on WLWT (NBC) and WCPO (ABC) in Cincinnati.

Click here for a full report and for clips of the segments.

As my friends and family know, I have long been a diehard, suffering Cincinnati Bengals fan for years. In the last 18 seasons, the Bengals have made the playoffs once. Not coincidentally, Mike Brown has been the owner and GM for the same stretch. Earlier this year, I started the blog WhoDeyRevolution to organize Bengals fans to call for change with the Bengals management and player personnel decisions.

Well, the Bengals are once again horrible, starting 1-8. So we decided to up the stakes to bring local and national pressure on the Bengals to hire football minds to make football decisions. Today, 4 billboards will be going up around Cincinnati asking the team to hire a General Manager. Check it out here.

We are asking that Bengals fans donate $18 to keep the billboard up through the regular season and post-season, or $1 for each year of Mike Brown’s rule of the Bengals. To promote the site and get national and local attention, I will be on 1530AM and 700WLW in Cincinnati.

This campaign utilizes the grassroots organizing and PR skills High 5 Consulting offers its clients, using the right messenger, the right message and the right medium. Bengals fans joining together to demand change is the only way we fans will see any changes.

How can High 5 Consulting help your organization?

-National Interest Security Co. LLC, acquired federal IT services firm Multi-Threaded Inc, a firm based in Herndon that supports the intelligence and defense community through systems engineering and software development for secured data management.

-Jose Rodriguez, former Director of the CIA National Clandestine Service, has joined NISC as a Senior Vice President.

On Monday, October 27th from 6:30 -8:00pm at the Francis Stevens Education Campus (2425 N Street, NW), DC School Reform Now is hosting a panel discussion with the At-Large Candidates for DC City Council on education and school reform issues. Co-Hosts include the Community Foundation of the National Capital Region, FOCUS DC, DC Parents for School Choice, DC Children First, DC Education Compact, and the DC Parent Information Resource Center. Leah Fabel, education writer for the Washington Post, will be the moderator.

Check out the flyer for the event here.

High 5 Consulting’s Alex Lawson has just been named by Greater DC Cares to its 2008 Class of Change – Honoring New Leaders in Philanthropy! Alex will be honored at an event on October 22nd in DC for his work confronting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in DC.

You can read more about Greater DC Cares here and about Alex’s fellow award recipients here.

It is exciting to see Alex’s hard work and dedication around his work on DC’s HIV/AIDS epidemic being recognized. To support Greater DC Cares and to purchase tickets to the reception on October 22nd at The Park on Fourteenth click here.

Congrats Alex!