Faced with a sharp fall-off in tourism after 9/11, the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau turned to brand management expert Bruce Turkel.
"We knew we had to act quickly and decisively to change perceptions and reinvent the Miami brand," says the 49-yearold founder and CEO of Turkel advertising agency.
"Miami offers a very rare combination of a cosmopolitan and a tropical experience," he says. "In fact, Miami is the hottest, hippest and most fashionable place in the world."
Using that platform, Turkel developed a campaign promoting Miami as a fashion brand, rather than a travel destination. He placed ads in fashion magazines featuring beautiful models wearing ultra-trendy fashions in uniquely Miami settings.
Five years later, the results of that campaign speak for themselves. Miami-Dade boasts the nation's second highest average hotel daily rate, over $100 a night, and the fastest-growing revenue per room in the country, he says.
That's a prime example of how Turkel has taken a creative approach to helping clients, while redefining and polishing his own career along the way.
"As his friend and working partner for years, I consider Bruce one of those rare people who is doing exactly what they should be in life – what their DNA compels them to be," says freelance creative director Kirk Kaplan. "And clients and audiences instinctively love to be around that."
Born in late 1957 to a pair of activist parents (see "On the Frontlines," this page), Bruce was the oldest of three siblings. His brother Doug DJ's for Love 94 as "Doug Lindsay" and sister Amy, former CEO of design firm BridgeHouse, now lives in Los Angeles.
With a life-long interest in art and design, Turkel earned a bachelor's degree in graphic design at the University of Florida, and returned to Miami after a brief stint in New York. He worked for several local agencies before opening his own advertising firm in 1983.
"I had the confidence of ignorance," he recalls of his start-up days. Six years later Roberto S. Schaps came aboard as partner and managing director; he now serves as president. A seven-year partnership with veteran Miami advertising professional Phil Schwartz, who retired in 2002, "brought in a high level of media savvy, which made a great fit with our design experience," says Turkel. "I found I really enjoyed the strategic side of building a brand."
Turkel's team now consists of 39 people, plus a media buying service in Chicago, and membership in an international network of independent ad agencies. "Bruce and I have been partners for 18 years now, which is pretty rare in any industry," says Schaps. "It works because we share unconditional trust in how we represent and manage the business and keep it moving forward."
A man of many creative interests – and the awards to prove it – Turkel is an accomplished musician who plays harmonica with his band, Bluescaster, on a regular basis. Over the past few years he has also authored three books – "Brain Darts," "New Design Miami" and "Building Brand Value" – as well as an unpublished novel. He's currently writing a fourth book about marketing to a Hispanic audience.
While his business is in Coconut Grove, Turkel lives in Pinecrest with his wife Gloria and two children. "Both kids have been well inculcated with social responsibility," he says. Danny, 18, supports the Save Darfur campaign and Aliana, 13, is a fundraiser for Heifer International, which provides poor families with livestock.
Turkel, for his part, serves on the boards of Our Kids, an organization that helps children in foster care, and the Center for Non-Profit Management at the University of Miami.
A successful businessman, public speaker and global branding consultant, he writes down his goals and posts them over his desk. First on his list is the 2007 revenue target for the agency. That's followed by goals like finishing his next book, generating more speaking engagements and mastering the harmonica.
Demonstrating creative leadership is high on his list for the year. "A lot of businesses struggle because they look at the same things in the same old way," he says. "I believe business success stems from coming up with new ways of putting old things together."
ON THE Frontlines |
Miami's civil rights pioneers
When Leonard and Annsheila Turkel moved from New York to Miami in 1956, segregation was one of the foundations of the city's Southern society. Intensely opposed to treating blacks as second-class citizens, the Turkels helped organize the Miami chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which encouraged nonviolent civil rights protests and sit-ins across the country.
In 1959, they were instrumental in desegregating lunch counters in downtown Miami's Woolworth, McCory's and Grant's stores. "Sometimes they would keep their seats until the waitress finally took an order for their black friends," says son Bruce Turkel. "Or they would give up their places at the counter so blacks could sit down."
Turkel notes with pride that his parent's actions took place a full year before the 1960 sit-in at a North Carolina lunch counter that grabbed national headlines and became a landmark in the civil rights movement. For their work, the Turkels recently received a lifetime achievement award from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). A short documentary of their activism, "The South's First Sit-In," can be seen on youtube.com.
"My parents have always been involved in community issues … like civil rights and the nuclear disarmament movement," says Turkel. "And it's important to remember that desegregation in Miami went more smoothly than almost anywhere else in the South."
Today, Annsheila is a social worker and therapist, focusing on addiction counseling and women's issues. Leonard, a successful builder and businessman, runs the Center for Non-Profit Management, and is active in Instant Vision, a program that provides free eyeglasses to needy Miami-Dade elementary students.