About Us - The Company's Founding, Background And Strategic Mission

Empowering principals and agencies with long-remembered, effective outdoor aerial marketing, advertising, public relations and promotional campaigns that get you the results you want and need is our company's mission.

The bottom line . . . our Video Airships Marketing Group will get more business coming to you . . . without spending a fortune or sacrificing your time because we handle all the details for you.

The Video Airships Marketing Group's Founding

The Video Airships Marketing Group was founded by "Master Marketer" Ron Schmidt, a 40-year star-studded career sales and marketing executive, whose extensive background includes management positions with industry-leading Fortune 500 companies such as Fram Corporation, Boise-Cascade Corporation, Honeywell, Inc., Bausch and Lomb, Inc., Cooper Vision, Inc., Amstar-Domino Sugar and direct sales in excess of $252,000,000. 

Quite by accident, one of the company's early supporters innocently said at a Marketing Consultants Group brainstorming meeting, "Now that you've mastered voice communications; what are you going to do next? Blimps?"

Taking her not-so-serious query seriously and without a moment's hesitation, Ron Schmidt, the company's CEO answered a definitive, "Yes!"

Looking for an effective, memorable way to promote businesses, products, systems and services and avoid the typical clutter of most advertising mediums, the team began exploring opportunities in this often-ignored, misunderstood, yet highly-effective advertising medium.

The Marketing Consultants Group team conducted extensive research about the airship industry, including ad campaigns that were launched, types of airships used, and the companies that launched the aerial campaigns.

What they found were two common threads running through all of the campaigns.

First, all of the ad campaigns were successful, and the clients were well pleased with the results. 

Second, the only objection to aerial advertising

was COST.

Upon learning that virtually all the branded airship ad campaigns with larger airships had gotten the desired results and advertisers were pleased. The team knew they were on to something not commonly known among advertisers, the airships were highly effective.

They scoured the world in search of a reliable source of smaller airships and located a well-known airship manufacturer in Canada who was said to have the potential to manufacture a commercial-grade, cost effective smaller airship to solve the cost barrier associated with the larger airships.

Much to their surprise, when the Canadian manufacturer recommended one of their customers in the U.S. as a referral for their airships, the team discovered from the customer that the airship was totally unreliable and simply couldn't perform.  

The customer, two U.S. commercial pilots who had purchased the Canadian manufacturer's airship for aerial photography found out that their new purchase was "only a $35,000 toy" and couldn't be trusted to be flown commercially. 

Quite an expensive lesson, but never-the-less the pilots were not about to give up on their airship investment. 

Being familiar with avionics and aircraft design, they worked for five months redesigning their "Canadian toy". 

The airship had to be airworthy and trusted to perform in all kinds of conditions, just like the large commercial jets they were used to flying.

An airship prone to crashing and unreliable in terms of it's maneuverability just wasn't good business and totally unacceptable.   

What they did do was come up with a successful design for a smaller airship which could mirror the effectiveness of the traditional airships at less than 1/50th the cost and started Carolina Airships to manufacture and promote smaller airships in the U.S. 

Even though they had developed what amounted to be the perfect smaller size airship and sold about 20 airships to various remote control enthusiasts in the U.S.; they had no manufacturing or marketing experience to effectively teach their customers how to run a successful aerial advertising business. 

Disheartened, the pilots closed up their airship manufacturing business and went back to their primary careers. 

Along about the same time, Ron Schmidt and his Marketing Consultants Group team had been developing a working relationship with The Lightship Group, the world's leader in airship operations, who have managed the world famous Goodyear, Metropolitan Life, Budweiser, Sanyo, Monster.com lightships as well as Holden's and DirectTV's new Lightsign Lightships among others.  

The Lightship Group developed the world's first Video Lightsign Lightship™ and test marketed this revolutionary new airship with a 30 foot by 70 foot full color video screen attached to it's side in a marketing campaign product launch of a new automobile along with Holden, GM's subsidiary in Australia. 

The results of the 2006 Holden Lightsign Lightship aerial campaign were astonishing. Flying all throughout Australia for the better part of many months, Holden's Lightsign Lightship achieved an astonishing 65% recognition factor and got so much consumer attention that Holden's competitors petitioned the Australian government to ban it. 

Ron and his staff realized that The Lightship Group's Video Lightsign Lightship could easily cut through all the traditional media clutter, get everyone's attention and be used as an effective centerpieces to one of the most effective multi-media marketing campaigns ever devised.

Since Ron was a member of The Salvation Army Advisory Board in Ogdensburg, upstate New York, he developed a strategic marketing plan to raise tens of millions in much needed funds for The Salvation Army in the U.S. named "THE REALLY BIG IDEA - Every Eye, Every Ear™" using the Lightship Group's Lightsign Lightship as the centerpiece to the campaign, which includes a comprehensive multi-media marketing, public relations campaign, national and international tour. 

You can watch a short concept video of Holden's (GM's Australian subsidiary) Video Lightsign Lightship, how it was used in Australia, and how it can be used as the centerpiece to one of the most effective marketing and public relations campaigns ever devised the Salvation Army's REALLY BIG IDEA™ - Every Eye, Every Ear™ Campaign.

If you would like to discover more about how our cost-effective Video Airships will help you sell more, create tons of public awareness, cut through the traditional media's clutter and get everyone's attention, gain an "unfair" advertising advantage over your competition, and get more bang for your marketing and advertising buck, then: 

Simply e-mail us at Staff@VideoAirships.com or call our Support Staff at 888-574-8257 Ext. 57 and we will work with you and handle all of the details for you.

The Video Airships Marketing Group Division's Strategic Mission

As dedicated business professionals, we seek to provide the highest quality marketing and advertising services to our agency customers and their clients. 

As members of the international business community, we seek to give back to our community and serve others.