Aflac ad creator among WISE conference speakers

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Mar 21, 2008 by Reinhardt, Eric

SYRACUSE - The woman who co-founded the advertising agency responsible for the popular Aflac quacking-duck TV campaign will be among the speakers at the 6th annual Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship (WISE) Symposium April 1 at the Nicholas J. Pirro Convention Center at Oncenter in Syracuse.

Robin Koval is the president of New York City-based Kaplan Thaler Group (KTG), an advertising agency she co-founded with Linda Kaplan Thaler in 1997.

Koval says Aflac was one of the agency's first clients. The Columbus, Ga.-based insurance company was looking for a better way to brand its product. As her creative people were organizing their presentation for Aflac, they found themselves forgetting the name of the company. To help them remember, Koval began to repeat the name over and over again.

"One of them put their finger over my nose and said say that again," explains Koval, whose creative people told her she sounded like a quacking duck. "That's literally how the story went. It came out of a random occurrence."

The quacking duck was one of five proposals KTG provided Aflac. The quacking duck tested better than any insurance commercial the testing company had ever done. And within 10 days of putting it on television, Aflac had more hits to its Web site than it did in the previous year.

Koval is set to speak in the middle part of the afternoon session.

Conference lineup

The WISE Conference will run from 8:30 a.m to 5:30 p.m. and is being organized by The Falcone Center for Entrepreneur-ship in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University in collaboration with KeyBank.

WISE is an organization created by the Falcone Center to promote and expand women's entrepreneurial activities. It brings together speakers and aspiring entrepreneurs to discuss ideas on creating, maintaining, and growing a business.

Nola Miyasaki, executive director of the Falcone Center, will begin the program with remarks entitled "Women and Entrepreneurship: A Life Philosophy." Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor will then provide the welcome. Reporter Donna Adamo of Syracuse TV station WTVH-5 will be the emcee for the event.

The day's keynote speaker is Maxine Clark, the founder and CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshops. She founded Build-A-Bear in 1997 and is seen as a true innovator in the retail industry. There are 370 Build-A-Bear stores worldwide, include a location at Syracuse's Carousel Mall. Clark has won several awards in the past five years, including in 2008 being named one of "The 25 Most Influential People in Retailing" by Chain Store Age, a magazine for retail executives. She will share her story of "Building a Company One Teddy Bear Hug at a Time."

Other notable speakers during the. morning session include Beth Mooney, vice chair of KeyCorp, along with Cindy Solomon of Solomon & Associates, an energy industry consultant, and Dr. Sharon Hadary, the executive director of The Center for Women's Business Research, a nonprofit research institute in Washington, D.C. that helps women entrepreneurs develop business ideas.

Those attending will then break up into smaller sessions focusing on entrepreneurs who are just getting started and those who are looking to grow their businesses. The morning sessions will include a roundtable discussion on obtaining government contracts and a talk on generating sales. The afternoon sessions will focus on topics dealing with insurance for startups and using a business Web site effectively.

Between the morning and afternoon sessions, a networking lunch will include the presentation of the Ann Michel WISE Distinguished Entrepreneur Awards. They are named for the late founder and long-time president of Knowledge Systems & Research, a Syracuse-based consulting firm

Registration for the WISE Conference costs $55 through March 25 and $75 after that. However, full-time SU and Le Moyne students can register for $10.

For more information or to register, visit http://whitman.syr.edu/eee/wise