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The business of being Marty
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Chris Seper
Plain Dealer Reporter
Las Vegas -- Once a year, Marty Winston's office is a marble-topped bar in the heart of the opulent Venetian Hotel and Casino, where patrons drink 18-year-old Scotch near a shopping mall with a canal cutting through the middle.
It's early January and Las Vegas is packed with porn stars and technology mavens. Both groups have come for their own separate, gargantuan trade shows. But at night the groups mix at the Venetian in a stew of Chinos, collagen and alcohol.
"More business deals have been made at the circle bar than on the show floor," Winston says repeatedly.
On this night, he's a preacher and a dealmaker. He's working Richard Lloyd-Roberts, who charges companies $10,000 to get their products in celebrity gift bags at events like the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Winston says he knows a camera company that would kill to get in that gift bag. There's also a pen maker that would go for it, too. But if you're really smart, Winston tells him, you'd double your fee and get stars to do short television spots talking about their gift-bag goodies. Then give those spots away to local stations.
The other man thanks him.
"No problem," Winston says. "Ideas are free. Ideas are easy."
"Wait, I have to ask you something," Lloyd-Roberts says, guzzling Budweiser as Winston cradles a highball glass of Macallan Scotch. "What exactly do you do?"
Brazenly successful
In the niche world of technology public relations, Winston is one of the most polarizing deans.
Slices of the tech industry consider the 56-year-old Russell Township resident their most trusted pitchman. His weekly newsletter goes to everyone from computer magazine editors to Today Show producers.
But his brazen style and rapier wit can make him a pariah. He gets under people's skin.
But he can become so necessary that they can't -- and don't want to -- get rid of him.
"One phone conversation made me so crazy I didn't return all his other phone calls," said Terry Shea, general manager for corporate communications at the consumer electronics giant JVC Co.
But after calling his office for a year, Winston got a hold of Shea's mobile phone. "I have no idea how he got that number," Shea said.
Winston offered JVC exposure on national television. Shea heard Winston out.
A few months later, JVC paid for Winston to represent the company at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
"He knows important people," Shea said. "And not just trade editors. But people at major daily newspapers and network news programs.
"They are the people in the PR world, on the tech side, that you are always trying to reach. And they are the toughest to reach.
Marty seems to be able to get them to stop and look and listen to whatever it is he has to say."
Tenacity pays off
Daniel Dubno, a producer for CBS News in New York, joked that he listens to Winston more than others "just because of the volume." But he also considers Winston a friend and describes him as smart, fun and a "gentle soul." Winston presents him unique products before anyone else and often from companies that Winston doesn't work for.
"Other publicists think he's stepping on their toes," Dubno said. "But they should be half as tenacious as Marty. He is the most tenacious publicist I've ever seen."
Winston knows everyone because he's met almost all of them. He represented his first technology company in the mid-1970s. For a time, he helped run public relations for Radio Shack. Decades ago, he worked alongside reporters at fledgling trade magazines who are now the media elite.
"He knows where all the skeletons are," said Richard Doherty, director of the Envisioneering Group, a technology market research and consulting firm in New York, and a friend of Winston's for more than 20 years.
Journalism and jingles
Winston, a Lyndhurst native, has bounced from advertising to television to journalism and back again. He worked for several Cleveland-area advertising agencies and concocted scripts for Northeast Ohio television news shows.
He has worked in California, Texas and Connecticut and started another public relations firm that operated in Texas and then Ohio before going out of business.
"I'm not good at the money," Winston said. "But I am good at this business."
In 1982 he shared a Clio award, an advertising honor, for writing the words to the slap-bass-heavy jingle "Now is the Time ABC is the Place." He helped write a television jingle that aired in the 1980s and '90s:
Makes no difference where I go
You're the best hometown I know
Hello Cleveland. Hello Cleveland.
Channel 5 loves youuuuuuu!
Today, Winston runs a one-man public relations firm, Newstips Inc., by leveraging his extensive Rolodex and runaway personality.
He shuns press releases - a staple for most PR agencies - and spreads the word instead via the Newstips Bulletin, an e-mailed newsletter that goes out weekly to more than 2,000 journalists. The bulletin is nothing more than a list of one-paragraph product descriptions and his clients' contact information.
"I realized the press releases weren't getting read," Winston said. "So I called an editor friend and asked him what makes news."
The editor told him that reporters don't like to feel like they're simply rewriting releases. They'll take the idea, but want to gather the information and report it themselves.
In 1983, Winston compiled his first bulletin, which at that time was called "Tips, Tidbits and Teasers." It took him 19 hours to write, included 18 items and was sent to about 30 people via fax and to a minuscule number of e-mail accounts.
Every item in it received news coverage.
"Efficiency is the enemy" for most public relations firms, Winston said. Companies usually bill companies by the hour, which encourages firms to involve themselves more instead of getting out of the way and letting their customers connect with the media they want to meet, he said.
Winston, on the other hand, charges his clients a flat $2,500 monthly fee.
Blustery bulldog
The approach, coupled with his bluster, scares some people off. And he takes criticism about as well as he takes no for an answer.
"I just don't understand him," said David Mansbery, president of Brecksville-based TMIO, which makes a pricey Internet-connected refrigerated oven.
Winston wanted to represent TMIO at the Consumer Electronics Show. Mansbery said he didn't want to work with someone he had never met.
So let's meet, Winston said - but he added that Mansbery should bring his checkbook. Mansbery didn't have to buy his services, Winston said. But because Winston was taking time out of his day to meet, Mansbery should be ready to decide at their get-together.
There was more tense back-and-forth via e-mail. Winston was already talking to reporters about TMIO, and Mansbery worried that journalists might think he already represented the company. After another curt exchange, Mansbery canceled their meeting.
Winston now has about a half-dozen unflattering nicknames for Mansbery.
Shaking up PR
Winston also has hard feelings about Pepcom Inc., a Florida agency that sponsors a large private event for the elite press at the electronics show. Pepcom wouldn't let Winston in because he isn't a journalist.
Winston considered trying to crash the event with a Vegas showgirl on each arm. He backed down, but he later mentioned the Pepcom event in his bulletin, including the phrase, "We have never met a Pepcom person we liked . . ."
Andy Marken, a longtime technology public relations consultant in California, said Winston is a bulldog.
"We approach things differently," Marken said. "I look and say 'What does the editor want to hear?' He doesn't hear that. He comes head at you. Some people say he just wears them down."
Winston said he considers Marken "a nice guy, but a stiff."
Later on, he added: "Anyone who likes Andy Marken is probably dead."
Personalities aside, Winston said there's a reason other public relations firms don't like him.
"A PR agency is going to resent me because I skip steps," he said. "They use voodoo with a client that takes longer and will not be more effective."
Packaging himself
Winston's perhaps at his most tenacious during conventions like the Consumer Electronics Shows, because that's where he makes his money. It's a rare chance to schmooze contacts face-to-face and book new clients.
Months before a major trade show, he said, he starts lifting 10-pound dumbbells to strengthen his shoulders in order to carry a convention bag filled with media kits, DVDs, giveaway gadgets and documents. He'll do a series of 10-minute walks at 4 mph on his treadmill to better navigate sprawling convention halls.
At trade shows, khakis and a polo shirt are considered dressy. But in Vegas, Winston wore a full suit, drank Macallan and smoked $6 Macanudo Portofino cigars.
"Packaging," he said.
Once he's at a show, he rarely stops moving. Even before the CES was open, he ran a press tour there that connected 22 companies with national media.
Once the show was under way, he hopped from event to event. He wooed broadcasters at an 8 a.m. JVC breakfast and spent every night at the Venetian bar - sometimes until 3 a.m. - cajoling and entertaining tech executives and friends who inevitably swung by.
At the end of the show, he had his results: an inch-and-a-half-thick stack of business cards from reporters, each marked with the names of clients that reporter wants products from.
"I measure my success by new business opportunities," he said. "I measure success for my clients by their coverage opportunities."
It has been a few weeks since Winston patrolled the Venetian and gave Richard Lloyd-Roberts his free and easy ideas.
Winston talked with NBC; the Today Show is considering showing off those celebrity gift bags. That's the public relations equivalent of winning "American Idol."
The camera and pen companies Winston mentioned are considering paying to get in the gift bag, too.
The gift bag's promoter knows what the PR man does now. "He's quite the man," Lloyd-Roberts says.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
cseper@plaind.com, 216-999-5405
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Plain Dealer profiles Marty