Favorite baseball team? Tampa Bay Rays soar in annual Harris survey

As Major League Baseball heads into this evening's All-Star Game, the New York Yankees find themselves on top as the favorite baseball team among those who follow Major League Baseball for the seventh year in a row.

Well, duh. But the real story is the same survey shows the Tampa Bay Rays moving up a rather remarkable 11 places from No. 28 to a tie at No. 17 (with the Baltimore Orioles). Amazing what an American League Championship and a first World Series appearance can do. (Photo:St. Petersburg Times.)

No other Major League Baseball team made such a positive leap in this year's poll. The Rays have never ranked higher than No. 25 (in 2007). Such are the findings of The Harris Poll, a new nationwide survey of 2,177 U.S. adults surveyed online between June 8 and 15 by Harris Interactive.

The Boston Red Soxmove up one spot to 2nd place while the Atlanta Braves drop one spot to No. 3. Rounding out the top five are the Chicago Cubs (a franchise ironically contemplating bankruptcy, news reports say today), and the Los Angeles Dodgers both tied for 4th spot on the list. Last year the Cubs were at number 4 and the Dodgers were at number 5.

Among other findings:

* The Cleveland Indians made the largest move, down 18 places from a tie at No. 7 to a tie at No. 25.
* The Colorado Rockies have dropped ten places from a tie at No. 13 to a tie at No. 23.
* The Kansas City Royals dropped nine spots from a tie at No. 20 to No. 29.
* The Seattle Mariners (from No. 17 to No. 10) and the San Diego Padres (from No. 27 to a tie at No. 20) both moved up seven places.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

A New York City cuppa joe... in a Raymond James Stadium cup?

Wake up and good morning. Get Raymond James Financial chief Tom James in a chatty mood and he will bend your ear about what a marketing coup it's been for his regional investment firm to have the naming rights to the Raymond James Stadium, Tampa's home to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. (Stadium photo: AP/Chris O'Meara.)

So it must be pure gravy to find out miscellaneous cups emblazoned with the Raymond James Stadium are showing up in vendor carts in New York City where city dwellers can swill their iced coffees and the like while curiously perusing the "Raymond James" name right in their hands.

This quirky story appears in the New York Times, telling readers that the "corner coffee vendors have brought another distinctive style of cup to the New York morning ritual: random." 

In its best investigative style, the New York Times decided to call Raymond James Stadium and ask whether management knew how those cups got to Times Square. Was it, the Times queried, a post-Super Bowl promotion of sorts? Stated the story:

"Barbara Casey, the spokeswoman for the stadium, said there was no promotion, but was amused to know that hundreds of New Yorkers that morning were walking around with the Raymond James name during their morning commute. 'I love it,' she said. 'It’s basically nice to know that someone is thinking of us somewhere else.' "

It's a win-win for Raymond James. Not only is is this an unintended (and free) extension of a sports-focused marketing strategy. But it also spreads the Raymond James name in the one city that is the financial center of the America, if not the universe. Touchdown, RayJay.

(Tom James photo courtesy of Raymond James.)

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

83 Degrees: Online magazine to debut on Tampa Bay job growth, development

They're calling it 83 Degrees. That's the name of a new Tampa Bay weekly online magazine "focused on area growth and development" that is slated to launch in August with backing from local founding partners that include the Tampa Downtown Partnership. It's called 83 Degrees for the region’s average April high temperature -- no word on why they did not choose August temps. But the free-to-subscribers venture will replace the Tampa Downtown Partnership's eight-year-old monthly online newsletter, InTown Tampa.

The parent company of 83 Degrees is Issue Media Group, is a Detroit-based outfit led by Paul Schutt. Tampa Bay joins Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and a handful of other markets where IMG has launched online products. 83 Degreessays it will cover Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando, Sarasota, Manatee, and Polk counties with "positive news of job growth and business investment, particularly in the New Economy."

The publisher is Diane Egner, a former bureau chief, editor, and editorial page writer for The Tampa Tribune who then worked as WUSF director of production funding and content director. Creative Loafing visual arts critic Megan Voeller (who tells us she will continue that job as a freelancer) is managing editor. Read more here.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

In Tampa, GM plays underdog role well amid cutthroat competition

 Wake up and good morning. General Motors landed in force in Tampa this week by showing off its 2010 line of Camaros as part of the "new" reincarnation of GM and to celebrate the debut of the Camaro-laden Transformers sequel movie opening today. Here's the column I wrote in the St. Petersburg Times on Tuesday's splashy moves in Tampa by GM. And here's the St. Pete Times movie critic's review -- but don't click here if you want to see the movie. It's not a pretty review.

Full disclosure. I have very mixed emotions about writing about the debut of the Camaro and GM's new underdog persona as a Chapter 11 bankrupt company desperately seeking a strategy to survive and prosper. As a columnist, I wrote a piece way back in 2001 defending GM's decision at the time to stop making the Camaro and the Pontiac Firebird as sports cars that had seen their day in the sun. That column generated well in excess of 1,000 protest (that's a polite way to describe it) e-mails. Funny how the response was all about me and my foolishness and not about GM's actual decision to stop making the vehicles after 2002. (Ieven got a "Dear Moron" e-mail last month about the '01 column. I guess someone out there was late to the Internet.) It was a great lesson for me in the depth of muscle car loyalty out there in the country, even as Camaro sales back then were plummeting. Go figure. 

And obviously GM, too, got the message by opting to bring back the Camaro, even as the company decided to call it quits on the entire Pontiac brand.

 I've added these two photos from Tuesday's Camaro-palooza in Tampa (both photos shot by Kathleen Flynn of the St. Petersburg Times) because they personalize GM's plight. The top shot shows two GM designers who helped bring back the Camaro. Jeff Perkins (leaning on the yellow Camaro fender, and in second photo in blue shirt) re-energized the Camaro interior with a simplified dashboard and touches like "Inferno Orange" (see second photo) colors on the seats. Jeff's Dad also was a GM designer.

The other designer (top picture, yellow Camaro, in background) is Humberto Ortiz, a whiz kid GM found in its Mexico business and brought to Michigan to spearhead the Camaro restyling. Humberto spoke Monday evening to the Latin Chamber of Commerce in Tampa where a surprising number attendees brought their children (apparently all Transformer movie fans). Humberto is a design-sketching maniac, so a long line of kids with parents formed after he spoke to have Humberto quick-draw some cars on any available scrap of paper. Pretty cool.

So what's the point of all this hoopla? Chrysler is becoming an arm of Italy's Fiat. GM's selling its Saturn line to auto baron Roger Penske who plans a revival big on electric vehicles. The feds are lending billions to Ford, Nissan (a Japan auto maker, go figure) and Tesla Motorsto goose fuel efficient car manufacturing in America. Exxon Mobil just teamed up with a Canadian battery maker to produce battery-driven cars called Maya 300s. GM, now 24 days into bankruptcy, absolutely must keep waving its Hey Look At Me flag to consumers just to get their attention. After that, it's up to the company to (1) make attractive, fuel-sipping vehicles people actually want, (2) produce quality vehicles priced with a sense of real value and (3) stop resting on yesteryear models. I'm cheering for GM's Great Rebound but it's gonna get bloody out there in the auto wars of the coming years.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Golf and CEOs: Are links between the two waning?

Wake up and good morning.Tuesday morning pop quiz! Name the activity CEOs are most likely to publicly engage in amid this recession:

1. Fly on the corporate jet to testify before Congress.

2. Play a round of golf with some business clients.

3. Send the corporate grounds maintenance employees over to the home and spruce up the landscaping.

The answer, of course is No. 2 (though with some CEOs you never know what they'll choose). But CEOs playing golf, once a basic slice of upper management's lifestyle, is increasingly becoming an endangered pastime as more chief executives have been shamed into playing less golf, or at least humiliated enough by their tanking public image to play their rounds on the sly.

So says a USA Today story examining the treasured CEO perk of playing golf in a time of extraordinary public scrutiny. The story quotes Steve Bennett, who retired as CEO of Intuit in December 2007 after being ranked by Golf Digest magazine as the ninth-best golfer among large-company CEOs in 2006:

"CEOs are golfing less … and those that are still golfing are probably talking about it less."

A 2006 USA Today analysis of 115 golfing CEOs of large companies found 25 belonging to three or more country clubs at the same time. But an unscientific survey for the newspaper of 163 CEO golfers by the CEO organization Vistage International this month found that 29 percent had reduced their rounds and another 11 percent have stopped playing altogether.

In Miami, the new contract for the CEO of the Beacon Council, the area's principal economic development group, excludes a traditional golf course membership, says the Miami Herald.

More businesses also shun golf sponsorships these days. But one CNBC sports business reporter suggests a smart CEO would show up at a recent U.S. Open hospitality tent, for example, invite the media and explain the marketing benefits of sports marketing at major golf tournaments.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Odyssey Marine Exploration's Mark Gordon: How technology keeps us on cutting edge

Odyssey Marine Exploration president Mark Gordon offered a glimpse at how cutting edge technology gives his deep water treasure-hunting firm a competitive advantage at last week's coolTECH show at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. (Gordon photo by Atoyia Deans, St. Petersburg Times.)

First of all, Gordon differentiated Odyssey Marine from other named underwater treasure hunters like Mel Fisher who concentrate on shallow water shipwrecks.

Odyssey goes deep because that's where the greater numbers of untapped shipwrecks lie, and that's where Odyssey has more expertise and less competition.

Certainly a mainstay of Odyssey's tech advantage is ZEUS, its 8-ton remotely operated vehicle (in photo, courtesy of Odyssey Marine) that lets the company scour the ocean bottom many thousands of feet below.

Gordon also told his audience that recently acquired technology now lets Odyssey "look" several meters beneath the ocean floor. The firm already is finding shipwrecks buried beneath the ocean floor in places the company has already looked and, previously, saw nothing.

Meantime, Odyssey continues its legal defense against Spain over who has claim to findings of the shipwreck Black Swan. And the company will open its Shipwreck! Pirates & Treasure exhibit in Charlotte, N.C., on July. 4

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Tampa Bay business/creative leader Deanne Roberts fighting cancer spread

It's been 552 days since I wrote about one of Tampa Bay's renaissance business leaders, Deanne Roberts, who had checked into a Houston specialty clinic to fight an aggressive form of cervical cancer. Deanne was very proud that she had successfully arranged the transition of Roberts Communications, the PR/strategic marketing firm she founded, by recruiting successor Colleen Chappell years before and arranging for it to become ChappellRoberts.

Well, Deanne fought well and rebounded. I was chatting with a lively Deanne in April about her latest project, the Florida Boomer Lifestyle Conference (it was a successful event last month -- here's a recap of what I saw -- right here in Tampa Bay) that she co-captained with Michelle Bauer.

Now Deanne (this photo's from March of this year) reports her doctor has found her cervical cancer has spread to her lungs. "Two small spots" is how she describes it. Says Deanne:

"Since my docs have had me on a short leash, the problem was at least caught early and they believe we have a shot at zapping them."

Deanne will be treated in Maine where she summers, to her delight and her Tampa Bay friends' envy, and will be joined by her two sons. She's a dynamo and made Tampa Bay a far better place because of her energy, ideas and a passion to share. I know the business community will be sending her its best wishes.

--- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Hey grads! Come to Tampa Bay where home prices are 'insane'

Wake up and good morning. Anybody remember the wild marketing style of New York City area electronics chain Crazy Eddie? On TV, a guy would yell how low Crazy Eddie prices are. So low, in fact, that they are "insane."

Well, we need a Crazy Eddie of our own right here in Tampa Bay. A new survey ranks the 10 most popular cities that this year's college graduates are flocking to in order to start their careers. And, no, Tampa Bay is not one of them. New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles made the top three slots.

No surprise there. But the only city in the entire Southeast to rank among the top 10 is Atlanta. It comes in ninth. Hey, it's tough to compete for the minds and hearts of the young and educated with the likes of the Big Apple, the nation's capital and California.

Except for one important thing: affordability.

For the past three years, Tampa Bay's housing prices have fallen faster than Wile E. Coyote stepping off a cliff with an Acme anvil in his arms. In 2006, the area's median home price approached $240,000. Now it's $138,000.

That's painful for existing homeowners but sweet music to promising young people looking for places to live that, unlike New York or San Francisco or Los Angeles, do not require six people to share a one-bedroom apartment.

Tampa Bay's Crazy Eddie, where are you? Why are we not yelling our home prices are so low they're "insane" at every college recruitment office from UCLA to UNC? Read my complete column in the St. Petersburg Times here. And here's the ranking of cities where grads are flocking.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

At a Mass. plant closing, Jabil Circuit recruits area tech companies to hire workforce

The saga of St. Petersburg-based Jabil Circuit's job cuts, notably the planned shutdown of its plant in Billerica, Mass., deserves a closer look at the lessons it offers. In Billerica, they're doing things right and other downsizing companies should pay attention. Venture first brought this to reader attention in a February posting when Jabil said it would cut more than 300 jobs at that Massachusetts plant.

Plant managers did not take this event passively. When Jabil announced the closure in February, plant operations manager Bill Frake took out a half-page ad in the Boston Globe praising the workers about to lose their jobs, and asking other companies to hire them. That's the ad above. Here's the key sentence in it:

For employers wanting to hire exceptionally skilled and experienced workers with outstanding service records,Jabil strongly encourages you top contact our Human Resources department number listed below.

The strategy seems to be working for some who are losing their jobs. As reported by WBUR, Boston's NPR station, when Jabil Circuit decided to close this plant, it asked the state’s rapid response team for aid. Team leader Ken Messinahelps workers about to lose their jobs find new ones. If a company asks, Messina goes in to set up an emergency assistance center right in the plant. He says most companies are embarrassed that they have to lay people off, so they just don’t call him. This plant, he told the radio  station, has gone way above the norm.

Messina told WBUR he’d like to see more companies avail themselves of this opportunity: “We haven’t seen one of these in a long time. They’ve opened the doors to us.”

WBUR says Jabil is so happy with Messina’s work that the company has asked Massachusetts if the state might be able to provide assistance in other stateswhere Jabil is laying people off.

On a recent Friday, Messina brought in a recruiter from Raytheon to the factory. Jabil also invited iRobot and three other companies. For two hours, the closing factory held its own little job fair.

Every bit helps. It's still rough out there. Earlier this week, Jabil got downgraded by a Credit Suisse analyst who bumped Jabil to Neutral from Outperform. Its stock fell.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist

Minutes of Visit Florida board of directors reveal rifts in firing of tourism agency chief Bud Nocera

Wake up and good morning. It seemed only moments ago that Visit Florida chief Bud Nocera was toasted as one the country's top state tourism officials. But that's so yesterday. Now Nocera is out at the state tourism marketing agency and the political heat is focused on his departure pay package.

Visit Florida's decision this month to can Nocera without cause will cost the publicly subsidized agency $537,000 in severance payments. But that decision, as reported by the Orlando Sentinel's "Tourism Central Florida" blog, wasn't a unanimous one. The blog reports that minutes of Visit Florida's May 8 board of directors meeting show that Kevin Healy, an executive at Orlando-based AirTran Airways (shown in second photo), voted against firing Nocera, who had spent six years at the helm of the state's tourism-marketing agency.

Healy's was the sole no vote against 15 yes votes, the tourism blog says. But the minutes show several other board members raised questions about why they were being asked to fire Nocera, who was named the state tourism director of the year in 2007 by a national tourism industry trade group. 

For example, reports the blog, "after being told that Visit Florida's executive committee had unanimously endorsed the decision to fire Nocera, Glenn Hastings, the chief executive of the St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra and The Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau, noted that he had always heard only glowing performance evaluations for Nocera. He said he was 'concerned' that future internal evaluations be better explained to the full board of directors."

Richard Goldman, the chairman of Visit Florida's board and the chief marketing officer at Amelia Island Plantation, repeatedly told board members that Visit Florida's executive committee decided it was time for a leadership change and that the move was not solely to appease state lawmakers, many of whom grilled Nocera and Visit Florida over agency spending during legislative hearings earlier this year, the Orlando Sentinel blog reports. Here's Goldman's statement on the matter.

The blog goes on to describe a clearly uncomfortable board of directors meeting in which some members chafed at the idea they were firing Nocera to soothe elected officials. Goldman called the move "an industry decision." Nocera was criticized by state lawmakers this spring for his management of the tax-subsidized tourism marketing organization. Among other things, legislators faulted Visit Florida for having spent tax dollars on a customer-service call center located outside the state.

The minutes also show Visit Florida expected that firing Nocera would spark a public backlash. Nocera's contract entitles him to a lucrative severance package that includes continuing his roughly $220,000 a year salary -- and $700 a month car allowance -- for the next two years, among other benefits. The funds are reported to be from private contributions, not taxpayer sources.

In a brief press release, Nocera was replaced as Visit Florida CEO by Chris Thompson (shown in last photo), the former chief operating officer.

-- Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist