Work record / Development / Greensburg, Kansas
Greensburg, Kansas: I sold the cameras to rebuild the town green
A tornado flattened Greensburg and the town chose to rebuild green with nothing in the budget to buy the materials. I led preconstruction and general construction for Tellus Design and Build, and I decided to sell manufacturers the broadcast instead of asking them for charity.
The seat
I was the preconstruction and general contracting lead at Tellus Design and Build. Tellus went to Kansas in June 2007, and I led both the preconstruction and the construction teams on the rebuild.
| Sector | Disaster rebuild and sustainable construction |
|---|---|
| Type of work | Sponsor and supplier partnership program |
| Where | Greensburg, Kansas |
| Years | June 2007 to December 2008 |
| How long | Eighteen months |
| Through | Tellus Design and Build |
| Credits | Common Ground Jesse Fowler, Preconstruction and general contracting lead |
What I was brought in to decide
On May 4, 2007 an EF5 tornado wiped almost all of Greensburg, Kansas off the map. The town chose to rebuild green. It set a high-performance bar, and its public buildings were to aim at the top of the LEED scale. It had no money to buy the materials that standard demands.
At that time Tellus Design and Build was the only firm marketing itself nationally as a green builder. Discovery Channel found us because of that visibility and contracted us for its coverage. Planet Green then built a series about the rebuild, called Greensburg, which ran three seasons from June 2008 to May 2010.
What we did
- I led the preconstruction and general construction teams on the rebuild, and I coordinated the town's green redesign.
- I saw that the donation appeal was pointed at the wrong budget. A philanthropy desk at a manufacturer is built for small gestures. The money that buys reach sits in its brand and category marketing budget, and a committed broadcast was reach no media buy could deliver.
- So I sold the rebuild as a way to distribute a brand. There would be one manufacturer for each product category, exclusive, on camera.
- I ranked the categories by what a viewer could identify on screen, whatever the material cost. A house wrap carrying the maker's printed name outranked insulation sealed inside a wall, and DuPont anchored the program.
- I negotiated the national supplier partnerships behind the donated materials. For months I made the calls myself and skipped any agency, hunting down the brand or category marketing lead inside each company. DuPont closed first, so every pitch after it had a live example. A tire and rubber manufacturer and several building-supply companies followed, each exclusive in its category, and we turned away no manufacturer who wanted in.
- We checked every donated delivery for fit, so that products from many manufacturers still met one green standard. We also timed the installs so that each sponsor's product was on site during the stage the crews filmed.
- The town's green standard never moved. We did not let anything in the sponsorship program buy the specification down. The broadcaster's production schedule was the fixed clock, and it made every delivery date a marketing obligation.
Results
- The program started with no purchasing budget and produced more than $30 million of donated sustainable materials at wholesale value, going into thirteen rebuilt homes and commercial structures.
- We got coverage on Discovery and Planet Green, among it an episode of Build It Bigger with Danny Forster.
- We came away with the category-slot method, a repeatable way to pay for a rebuild by selling a brand what a committed broadcast is worth. Since then I have run a golf sponsorship program on the same logic of selling the slot, and it held.
The lesson
Sell the asset the cameras can actually use. A manufacturer buys distribution, not a sympathy appeal.
Public record
Stories from this work
Questions about Greensburg, Kansas, answered
Firm record
Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: Greensburg, Kansas on the Common Ground wiki.