The NMDRA Marketing Bear Award Story by Ron Herdt

The North Metro Denver Realtor Association  (NMDRA) has an interesting annual traveling award called the Marketing Bear.  It is a highly coveted award given out each year to one of their Realtor members who has shown creative marketing efforts during the year.  Few of their members, however, know the whole story behind it's origin.  So, without any delays, here's the scoop!

I bought a plaid wool patchwork sportcoat at the Broadmoor while attending the Colorado Realtor Convention in Colorado Springs.  This was sometime in the 1970's.  I wore this coat to the North Suburban Board of Realtors marketing meetings throughout much of the 1980's to gain attention and market my property management company.  The coat became well recognized at the meetings.  It helped me get new property management leads from the Realtors at the meetings.

A few years later, Carra Riley, one of the member Realtors, bought a patchwork plaid jacket while on vacation in Hawaii.  Her contribution was to give out the jacket each year as a traveling trophy reminder of my crazy jacket.  Many of the members thought that this was my jacket.  A few years later, someone washed the jacket and it shrunk, so the fabric from the jacket was made into the cute bear shown in this  photo.  This bear became the traveling Marketing Bear trophy.  It became a custom for each annual winner of the trophy to add to it.  So, it now has an assortment of buttons, pins, a tiara, a backpack, and more.  Inside the backpack is a diary.  The winners have written in the diary now for a number of years.

This photo is of me holding the bear at the 2009 NMDRA Christmas party.  Although I have never won this award, it pleases me to be a part of it's origin.  Where is the original jacket?  It's hanging on the back of Rosie's office door at the board office.  Next time you are in the NMDRA office, ask Rosie if she'll show it to you.