At 77 years young it is time to give back and I as a long time serial entrepreneur want to help the Generation Z with what I have learned from both failures (MANY!) and successes.

50 years ago after graduating from the University of Illinois in 1973 with Master’s in Advertising & Public Relations, I opened a public relations consulting business in first my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida and then in Hotlanta as it was called when I arrived in 1978 to handle the public relations and publicity of the Original Marlboro Man, the late William Thourby.

There I also co-owned an ANALOG video production company with our first client being the late Ron Rice’s first Coppertone beauty pageant. Then we did Road Atlanta races where I met the late Paul Newman.

While in Atlanta I became a certified Comcast TV producer and co-produced and co-hosted the award winning Today’s Health series for three years.

I was a pioneer in Corporate Sponsorship Marketing working with Ford, Chevy, Kroger, Kedds, Coke, Subway, etc. I co-owned and co-produced the Great American Footrace, which was a warm-up 10k to the legendary Peachtree Road Race. I co-owned and co-produced the Atlanta franchise of the English Leather Calendar Challenge beauty pageant.

One of my public relations clients was the legendary ultra marathoner Stan Cottrell, where we produced Run Across America, which took Stan from New York City to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in record time. CNN Sports covered it as their first live event. Then Stan went to China and became the first person to run across the China Wall!

Another client was the sci-fi DragonCon in Atlanta. We grew it from an attendance of about 10,000 to its current one of over 100,000! I brought in Coke and Subway as sponsors.

I was a huge James Bond fan and decided to use the DragonCon model to co-create and co-produce the largest spy convention on the Queen Mary – SpyFest – with 60 TV, film and real spies in attendance! Even George “007” Lazenby made an appearance! The Central Intelligence Agency brought its private spy collection.

If I help you as a CREATIVE in public relations consulting, video production, event production and or corporate sponsorship marketing, email me at info@creativityxtreme.com.

Hugh Simpson