By Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
In the next few weeks, Downtown Vision Inc. will be doubling its number of Ambassadors, the orange clad people helpers that roam the downtown area, but don’t expect the new crew to walk you to your car or offer you an umbrella when it rains.
In fact, don’t expect the new Ambassadors to do anything at all but stand around and smile at you. They won’t even talk to you for that matter.
But try not to get mad at them. They were just printed that way.
The “new” Ambassadors are part of a new advertising campaign promoting DVI’s Ambassador service.
The new crew of about 10 Ambassadors are actually posters featuring almost life-sized photos of many of the 12 real Ambassadors. The posters will be placed in plexiglass display cases in buildings around downtown and will hold numerous informative brochures regarding the Ambassador program and information about the downtown area.
Lyn Briggs, director of marketing for DVI, said the new poster series will help to expand the Ambassador program without actually adding more Ambassadors, well, human Ambassadors that is.
“We would really like to have the budget that would allow us to employ and add more Ambassadors,” Briggs said. “But because we don’t have that, this is a way we can duplicate them. We are cloning the Ambassadors with posters.”
Besides featuring large photos of the Ambassadors, each poster also features a unique quote, some of which were conjured up by the Ambassadors. Briggs said the posters were fun to create and they truly embody the personalities of the individual Ambassadors.
For example, a poster featuring Ambassadors Lydia Cobbert and Celeste Harrell says “Have a question about downtown? Ask the downtown divas.” Another poster featuring the ever gregarious Ambassador Victor Rodriguez states “Looking for downtown information? I’m full of it!”
The release of the new Ambassador poster series is coinciding with the launch of a new informative program at DVI called “Ambassadors on the Road.” Briggs said the new program will periodically take the Ambassadors to other areas and neighborhoods of Jacksonville to explain what they do downtown.
“They will go to the Mandarin Area Council of the Chamber of Commerce for example and talk about who they are and what kinds of resources they provide for people coming downtown,” Briggs said.
Between the poster series and the new informative program, Briggs said she hopes both will qualm disinformation and misconceptions about the Ambassador program and better inform Jacksonvillians about what Ambassadors really do.
“We hope by having them on the poster with their face and the pith helmet that people will realize that these people in orange shirts are not meter maids or other types of workers that they are commonly mistaken for and that they are there to help,” said Briggs.
The idea for the poster series is the brainchild of Walter Thomas, DVI’s manager of operations. Thomas said his main objective from the posters and the “Ambassadors on the Road” program was also to squash misconceptions about the program, but was mainly to spread exposure for the Ambassador program and the downtown area.
“Since I started at DVI, I have noticed that people downtown still don’t know about the Ambassadors,” Thomas said. “You have people in the Wachovia building that still didn’t come out for the ArtWalk or the Farmer’s Market right down the street on Fridays. You have thousands of people coming downtown everyday. They probably see the Ambassadors downtown, but don’t know what they are about.”
He said the posters will get the image of the Ambassadors “off the first floor and get them into the buildings so more people will understand that downtown is a clean, safe and hospitable place to visit.”