Saturday, June 20, 2009
Caught in the "Aha!" moment
A team from Mutual of Omaha is on a mission to collect stories about the moment the light bulb goes off -- the moment that makes you exclaim, "Aha!"
Photos by KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times
Pamela Tipsword shares her "aha moment" with a team from Mutual of Omaha on Friday. The team is on a national tour collecting personal stories for an upcoming ad campaign and will be in downtown Roanoke through 6 p.m. today.
Leah Quam describes her "aha moment" — the moment she realized a childhood pal was the love of her life. She and that pal, Brian Quam, are now married and have two young sons.
Mutual of Omaha's "Aha Moment Tour" will stop in 25 states collecting personal stories during its 7,800-mile tour. "If we have 300 stories that are fantastic, they'll make 300 commercials," said Katie Kirby, the tour manager.
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As the temperature climbed inside the Airstream trailer, Leah Quam held her notes in hand, looked into the camera and said, "My name is Leah Quam, and this is my 'aha moment.' "
Then, without glancing at those notes, she told the story of the moment she realized that her childhood pal was the true love of her life. She and Brian Quam had been friends since the seventh grade, and they stayed in touch after she left Roanoke for Atlanta during middle school, seeing each other every Christmas for years.
Then while in their early 20s, they spent some time together in Charlotte, N.C., and that's when it hit them.
"We were talking about relationships and the perfect mate," she said. They listed their qualities for "what made the perfect mate, what they'd look like, what we'd look for ... then we stopped talking. We both realized, 'Oh my gosh, you are the perfect mate!' "
Aha! That's just what Katie Kirby wanted to hear. Kirby is the tour manager for the "Aha Moment Tour," a 25-state journey sponsored by Mutual of Omaha that stopped in Roanoke for two days. The tour consists of a tricked-out 34-foot Airstream complete with a mobile television studio built to capture the "aha" stories of ordinary people.
Aha moments are "moments of clarity that people experience and act upon," said Kirby, part of a four-person team that will stay in Roanoke through today. People are invited to visit the trailer on Franklin Road near the SunTrust building and tell their stories between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
In short, they are the stories about the moment the light bulb goes on or when lightning strikes. The moments that make you exclaim, "Aha!"
The tour is collecting stories for possible use in an upcoming Mutual of Omaha advertising campaign.
"If we have 300 stories that are fantastic, they'll make 300 commercials," said Kirby, a former publicity director for the Chicago White Sox, who is spending six months collecting the stories.
About 20 people had signed up to record their stories Friday afternoon. Before sitting in front of the high-definition Sony camera, each person was interviewed by associate producer Juliana Broste, who helped the interviewees fine-tune their remarks.
Inside the trailer, the noisy air conditioner was turned off, which, combined with the portable studio lights, caused the temperature to rise rapidly during a steamy lunch hour. The participants were given miniature clapper boards (modeled on the familiar movie-set devices that are slapped together before the director hollers, "Action!") and then invited to tell their stories.
In addition to Quam's heartwarming saga of puppy love becoming true love, Friday's stories included Roanoke lawyer Clark Worthy's account of how he was inspired to do more for charities after hearing a speech by Peter Lewis, who runs Apple Ridge Farm, a nonprofit camp that provides recreational opportunities for at-risk youth.
Pamela Tipsword, a project manager for Norfolk Southern, recounted how joining the Toastmasters, a public speaking group, boosted her confidence. She had considered herself a terrible speaker until she watched a video of one of her first speeches.
"Oh my gosh, I'm actually relatively good at this," she remembered thinking. Toastmasters has clearly paid off -- she breezed through her story without a hitch.
Quam, who also works for Norfolk Southern, eventually married her childhood sweetie and now has two young sons. When she told her husband about her "aha moment," he replied:
"You mean it's not 'Oh no! moments,' " she said.
