ORIGINAL ARTICLE
By: Gail Appleson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

CREATIVE PRODUCERS GROUP
CHIEF HAS ALWAYS LIKED PUTTING ON A SHOW

Tucked away on a Central West End residential street off Euclid sits an unassuming white stucco building that houses Creative Producers Group, one of the country's leading producers of conferences, conventions, corporate videos and branding programs. Clients include BMW, Mini Cooper, Curves, H&R Block, USBancorp, United Van Lines and Panera Bread Co. The company, which also produces public events such as Live on the Levee and the 2004 New Year's Eve centennial celebration in Forest Park, is the brainchild of Keith Alper and Steve Friedman, senior vice president, who were teens when they planted the seeds for the venture. For Alper, the joy of entertaining started even earlier. But he didn't want to do the singing and dancing. "It was more putting on the show than doing the show," he said.

How did this revelation come about?

I was a kid who did the show in the parents' basement. Ever since I was young, I knew I wanted to be involved in entertainment, media, communications, whatever it was. As a kid, I was very involved in the technical stuff. Another friend and I had a birthday party company. I was probably the only kid who asked at the holidays for microphones and extension cords.

Did that desire to put on the show continue in high school?

I got a part-time job at Six Flags theme park and met my business partner. We were working backstage for the entertainment department. I think they were paying us 25 cents an hour or whatever. It was not about the money; there were large concerts. It was a great experience to do kind of big-show stuff, big-show opportunities when you are 18 years old.

What was your first venture?

The general manager of Six Flags asked us to do a slide show. At the time there was no video. We did an orientation slide show for all the incoming 2,000 teenagers that worked at Six Flags. It was kind of a precursor to an MTV video. That's how we started our business. We worked at Six Flags doing this for them and other Six Flags around the country. That was the DNA of the business.

What happened after college?

I went back to Six Flags full-time as head of entertainment. After the first year, I got promoted to a project bringing back the S.S. Admiral, a boat on the river, as an urban entertainment center. There was some construction dispute that shut down the whole project. We were all laid off. That's actually when I started our company full-time. That was the best day ever when I was forced to go out on my own. We each put about $200 into the company to get it started. That's something we're very proud of. We have no debt.

How did you get clients?

We would just talk to people. One of our first projects was for the St. Louis Zoo. We did a slide show converted to 16 mm film. The committee really liked us and liked our idea. We had never produced a film before.

How did your business evolve?

We really morphed into a video production company. We would bring ideas, writing, directing. For a company, we would produce the video and the event where the video was going to play. As we added more clients, we added more employees and a sales force.

Then what happened?

Our business shifted in 1995-96 when we were 10 years old. Because we had so many corporate clients, our clients asked us to do certain things for them that we weren't at the time doing. The core thing that continues to drive us is that we're flexible with our clients. But we never go the leading edge. We have a little bit of a conservative nature. We're not looking 10 years ahead because our clients don't want 10 years ahead right now.

Did your client base change?

Our core business for a long time was corporate and nonprofit business in St. Louis. Unfortunately, a lot of the companies we did work for are no longer around. Now, more than 80 percent of our business is no longer in St. Louis. It's great we have a national scope, but we still have St. Louis clients. One of our oldest clients is United Van Lines.

How do you describe your business to potential clients?

We'll serve as your creative producer or your executive producer and we can handle a number of things to make sure we connect with your audience. When we boil it down and tell people what business we're in, we say we're storytellers. Every day we're given a different challenge of how to tell the story and where to tell the story and whose story is it. And whose mind are we trying to change.

What have been some of your most difficult days?

Our saddest day in business was 9/11. We were producing a very large event that day for American Airlines in Dallas, and the doors opened at 8:30 in the morning. You know when you're in a meeting you don't know what's going on in the outside world. We had to call them and tell them what was going on.

There were about 1,000 people, a lot of senior management of American Airlines and their business partners. There was nowhere for anyone to go so we opened up the doors, we put CNN on our big screens.

Our thing was we were there to serve American Airlines, and we had a job to do to help them.

What is the best part of your job?

There's no better reward than to see your work work.

When there are hundreds of thousands of people at an event and they are having great time or you are directly impacting the economy of a city or the economy of a company. It's very easy to see the results right away.

If I go to a show or meeting and get that handshake and sometimes a hug from a CEO, there's an energy there. People put a lot of trust in us.

We're there to make someone laugh, to make someone cry. We're there to turn someone away from anger.

CPG’s corporate offices are based in St. Louis, Missouri, with regional affiliates throughout the U.S. For more information, contact Lorie Raileanu at 314.367.2255 or visit their award-winning Web site at www.getcreative.com.