Tag Archive for: Barry Stout

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Summer is Smiling on The Stasko Agency!

It’s been a busy summer for The Stasko Agency. In addition to expanding our service offerings, we’ve also added a new client and reconnected with a client whose relationship with our firm dates back nearly 20 years.

After a year of social distancing and remote work, we were thrilled to actually take a trip to Hotel Colorado to help the hotel’s resident polo professional Barry Stout promote the Devereux Cup, a long-running polo tournament named for the hotel’s original owner, Water Devereux. Devereux, a silver baron and founding father of Glenwood Springs, brought polo to the Roaring Fork Valley, organizing a match for the Hotel Colorado’s opening ceremonies in 1893.

First played in 1902, the Devereux Cup has served as a festive summer tradition in Glenwood Springs and an event that The Stasko Agency has been proud to publicize since 2007. After a multi-year break, the tournament returned this year with a two-team competition at Stout Ranch, outside New Castle, Colorado. Because of the tournament’s deep roots in Glenwood Springs, this year’s event benefitted the Glenwood Springs Historical Society and the Frontier Museum, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

The event drew a sizeable crowd and positive media coverage, including this recap in the Grand Junction Sentinel.

 Our recent work also includes several campaigns for Pearl Certification, an innovative startup that is empowering homeowners to improve the energy efficiency and sustainability of their homes through a unique certification program. We spent much of the last few months helping Pearl with outreach to the HVAC, solar and energy industries to help contractors in those sectors understand how Pearl’s certification can help their customers.

Our media placements have included:

We were also successful in securing LeBaron and fellow Pearl Founder Cynthia Adams as guests on the Building HVAC Science podcast, where they discussed how HVAC contractors can use certifications as a competitive advantage. You can listen to the podcast here.

Our success with Pearl demonstrates our expertise in helping clients reach key B-to-B audiences to grow their business.

If there’s any way we can help you attract attention and gain exposure for your products and services, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can contact us here.

 

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How to use your history to help promote your business . . .

When you’re struggling to find new ways to promote your business, it sometimes pays to let history be your guide. The 125-year-old Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs offers a good example of how your past can provide powerful inspiration. When we started working with the hotel more than a decade ago, we quickly began brainstorming about events that could celebrate Hotel Colorado’s rich history, while providing guests a new reason to visit.

After a little research, we discovered that Glenwood was one of the first places in the United States to experience the sport of polo, thanks to Hotel Colorado’s founders, Walter Devereux and Harvey Lyle. The pair were championship polo players and formed the Glenwood Polo and Racing Association. When the hotel was completed in 1893, Devereux and Lyle included polo grounds on-site for the use of the guests and staged the area’s first polo match as part of the opening celebration.

Polo eventually gave way to other more popular pastimes in Glenwood, but we thought it might be worth resurrecting the sport to attract polo fans from near and far. So, we helped the Hotel Colorado re-launch the Devereux Cup and promoted the event every summer for several years. The tournament was held at Stout Ranch at Baldy Creek, owned by Hotel Colorado’s polo team captain, Barry Stout. At 8,000 feet, the site has the distinction of serving as one of the highest points where polo has been played. Click here to read this colorful article from the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent about the first Devereux Cup tournament at Stout Ranch.

In addition to non-stop action, the Devereux Cup also featured a meet-the-players gala and an awards banquet, both hosted by Hotel Colorado. We developed and marketed a special polo tournament package for visitors to capitalize on all the activities available. Our efforts to promote the event elevated Hotel Colorado’s profile in many local and regional publications and garnered attention in polo industry media outlets as well.

          Celebrating Hotel Colorado’s history allowed us to create a new attraction for the hotel that drew interest from locals because of its novelty, while also offering polo aficionados another opportunity to support their sport. And because Hotel Colorado was once a polo hub, a revival of the sport made perfect sense.

We’re convinced that every business owner should consider mining their heritage for promotional ideas. Even if you’re a relatively new operation, the town or city where you’re based might offer historical nuggets worth exploring. Our experience shows that taking a walk down memory lane is worth the trip.

 

 

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