Columbus Monthly / October 2010 / Spinning for dollars

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Spinning for dollars

With their flipping, twirling and flying signs, AArrow Advertising's crew of young, athletic "spinners" are turning street-level marketing on its ear in Columbus.

It’s the Captain Blender that first catches the eye.

Then a Helicopter Pop Off prompts a pause, and the Inverted Sword Slash leads to stares.

But it’s Spanking the Horse that pulls people in—so they can’t seem to look away.

And that’s the whole idea.

In what truly can be called a “sign of the times,” Columbus has become the latest region to welcome AArrow Advertising, a worldwide phenomenon in guerrilla marketing. AArrow takes the concept of a lone person on a street corner with a promotional sign and figuratively turns it on its ear . . . or on its head, chest or back. Young, athletic “spinners” use their 6-foot-long horizontal advertising signs like batons—flipping and twirling, flinging and catching—to promote a business.

Talk about putting a spin on a message.

“Similar to guerrilla warfare, this is unconventional, extremely targeted, in your face,” says Carson Woods, a former member of the Columbus Blue Jackets marketing team who bought the Columbus AArrow franchise in June. “It’s the ultimate direct marketing.”

Sign spinning has been popping up all over the place. You can find it in commercials for Ford’s Fiesta and McDonald’s new $1 coffee, and the band 311 has an AArrow spinner showing his moves in the video for “Hey You.”

Sign spinning came to Columbus by way of San Diego, where AArrow founder Max Durovic—bored while working his 1999 summer job as a corner sign holder—got creative. He started to use his sign as a dance partner, twirling and flipping the message board. It was easy and entertaining money, which led his friends to give it a try. Following the California skateboarding craze of the day, they soon developed tricks, such as the “helicopter,” spinning the sign overhead like a rotor, and “around the world,” keeping it twirling on a fingertip while turning their bodies 360 degrees.

Durovic and partner Mike Kenny expanded AArrow into a worldwide enterprise, with franchises in 35 U.S. markets as well as Canada, Puerto Rico, South Korea and Australia, employing more than 1,100 spinners.

Woods came to AArrow Advertising through his ownership of a Liberty Tax franchise in Hilliard, which he opened after parting ways with the Blue Jackets. Liberty, known for its own curbside promotions—namely a waving Statue of Liberty figure—suggested AArrow as a unique way for its franchisees to promote the businesses at tax time.

“I thought it was awesome,” he says. “In today’s nature, everything is electronic and not very personable. This is old-fashioned in a sense. We have attractive, youthful, athletic individuals, making eye contact, interacting with potential clients. A lot of purchases are based locally. We are impactful for the client. We are putting a promotion right on the corner of your company to drive in traffic.”

And the promotion is coordinated right down to every turn and flip. AArrow has trademarked signage, which features an arrow-shaped sign made of lightweight plastic and framed in custom ductlike tape to help with the spinners’ grip. The spinners can be dressed either in the AArrow uniform of a red logo shirt and black pants or the outfit of the company they are promoting.

“We’ve all seen the guy or gal on a corner holding a sign, looking like they would rather be anywhere else,” says Woods. “Our business is helping to generate foot traffic and manage the brand. That’s what sets us apart. We are an extension of a store’s employees—we’re your receptionist on the street.”

The spinner tricks are all named and documented, with more than 500 stored in the top secret “Spintionary” and taught to recruits by certified “spinstructors” who come in from more established AArrow markets to train the newbies.

Since June, Columbus has been home to Joe Ambert and Greg Hakanson, both of California, and C. Bruno Albert of North Carolina, who have spun their stuff on Columbus streets and worked to recruit spinners. Along intersections at High Street, Lane Avenue, Hilliard-Rome and Roberts roads, the trio has been attracting both future spinners and AArrow customers. There is no standing around with a sign for these guys. Each one has a repertoire of tricks—modeled after gymnastics, cheerleading, parkour and break dancing—that they perform, virtually nonstop, for multiple hours per session. (Advertisers pay $50 for the first hour, plus the cost of the sign, which is crafted by Next Day Signs in Grandview; each subsequent hour goes for $30 to $40 per spinner.)

And when they are not flipping or dancing, they are literally working the corner—smiling and waving at those driv-ing by, encouraging drivers to honk or cheer. “The corner is my stage,” says Albert. “We are the true definition of a street performer. And we are far more powerful than a static, outdoor billboard.”

Albert adds that awareness determines how long to do a spin versus when to hold the message still. “If they are on a cellphone, you do a trick to attract attention,” he says. “When you see or feel their eyes and you know you have them, then you stop.”

In front of Woods’s Liberty Tax office in Hilliard—which doubles as the local AArrow home base—Albert demonstrates some of the more common and popular moves, including the Inverted Sword Slash, in which the sign is spun, flipped up in the air and slid along the spinner’s back to a flashy finale.

Behind the Liberty office, Hakanson has a handful of recruits—called “spinfants” in AArrow speak. There are teens looking to supplement their high school income and twentysomethings on the verge of careers. They run through calisthenics and practice simple spin-and-fling combinations in the hopes of making the AArrow team.

If they have the talent and dedication to wear the red and black, they can make between $10 and $15 per hour, while listening to their favorite tunes and spinning into shape. Nearly 60 people had come through for tryouts by mid July.

“The only thing limiting someone being a spinner is strength and agility,” says Woods, who has found recruits via Craigslist, job fairs held through the Central Ohio Workforce Investment Corp. and, appropriately enough, Ambert and Albert spinning “Help Wanted” signs around town. “Right now, we have a good number who were athletes—football players, a swimmer,” he says. “We work hard on discipline and fitness, but we also want it to be fun.”

That discipline and fitness, however, prepare AArrow employees for another part of the spinner culture—the competitions held locally and nationally to find the best tricks and executors. After tournaments held in every franchise area, the best spinners meet in either the East or West—last year it was Miami during the Super Bowl week festivities—for a Final Four-style spin-off.

But the true success of sign spinners comes in how well they pull in customers to the represented business. To that end, AArrow audits its spinners every shift on such categories as energy and enthusiasm, reliability, creativity, advertising ability and interaction with the public, with higher scores equating more pay.

“Before we do a campaign, we sit down with a client and go through the process to thoroughly understand their brand,” says Woods. “I know there is a fine line between being very visible and being annoying. We want to be sure to understand their objectives and how they want their brand presented—is it in-your-face or do they just want some attention?”

Creative marketing was the goal of Mechalle Nix, marketing coordinator for Mike McClaskie Insurance Agency-State Farm in Hilliard, who hired AArrow to promote the office at the suburb’s July 4th parade and for a subsequent appearance outside the office. Nix says she felt potential customers needed something different from direct mail or cold calls.

“When I saw a [spinner], he had a sign that said, ‘If you are reading this, you know it worked,’ and it was true. It attracted me and I wasn’t looking to buy anything,” she says. “I hope when people see our sign they think we are a company that’s different—a company that will do things outside the norm.”

“The personal interaction is what sets us apart,” says Woods. “We have the ability to give someone a unique experience every time they drive by—it is, in essence, performance art. Stagnant signs and billboards get stale, but spinning will stay fresh and have a shelf life.”

“At the end of the day, when it comes to advertising, everyone wants to capture someone’s attention and receive a positive response,” he adds. “That is the experience we provide.”

Nicole Kraft is a freelance writer.