Who knew the dog could play guitar?

Rockin' with SCOTT EPA Protocol Gases

I admit it. Specialty gases can be somewhat boring… to some people… okay, to most people then. So imagine being the dude charged with dreaming up promotional ideas, and writing sizzling copy that entices perspective customers to stand in line to purchase our premium priced products. That would be me.

Seeing the handwriting on the wall, about two or three years into my tenure here,  I resurrected a mascot Scottish terrier that had been used previously to promote our SCOTTY™ Transportable (disposable cylinder) products. At that time our company name was Scott Specialty Gases. Scott… Scotty… get the connection? Up until then the company had used some rather crude looking line art to represent “Scotty.” I’m just sayin’, it was pretty crude and primitive  compared to where I wanted to take our marketing communications. I wanted to use a real live dog: to better establish our brand ID, to breath a little life into our promotions, and to have a bit of fun in the bargain.

The graphic panel shown above stars the third Scotty dog we’ve used since those days in the mid 1990s. My fingers are twitching as I type this because I  want to refer to Scotty as a ‘he’. Dare I admit that Scotty is actually a ‘she’? Lassie was really a male in real life and not a female, was she—I mean he not? So maybe Scottie should be spelled with an ‘ie.’ What’s the big deal?

Many of our graphic panels, and trade ads, and calendar pages feature a dog named Gigi. (Uhuh, a French Scottish terrier—go figure.) Without seeing the raw photos my photog captured during several photo shoots, just looking at the finished graphic, I’m hard-pressed to tell if it’s Gigi or Lulu doing the rockin’. After Gigi retired, we turned to her protégé, Lulu, to continue the legacy. And selfless canine that she is, Gigi took time away from her squirrel chasing to attend our photo shoots to lend moral support and a few modeling pointers to Lulu.

So what the heck does a guitar playing dog have to do with specialty gases? Ummm, lemme think for a sec. Oh yeah, here’s my thought process:

1. We’re exhibiting and hosting a hospitality suite at the annual Electric Power Research Institute* conference to be held in Cleveland, Ohio in May—>
2. Acid rain utilities (power plants and others—you know who you are) are required to periodically undergo Relative Accuracy Test Audits (RATAs) essentially to determine if their Continuous Emission Monitors (CEMs) are working properly—>
3. If you calibrate your CEM with a SCOTT™ RATA Class™ EPA Protocol, you can actually save yourself  substantial $$$ in repeat RATAs  (really, you can)—>
4. Cleveland, as you may know, is the unlikely home of the Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame.

Bingo! Quite obviously this calls for Scotty to be jammin’ and generally rockin’ it out. Well, geez, in my mind it makes perfect sense!

*The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is an independent, non-profit company performing research, development and demonstration in the electricity sector for the benefit of the public.