Published: January 2001
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Florida Favorite employee T.J. Woodward chalks up his modeling debut in one of the company?s Listening Campaign ads to sheer chance.
?I was surprised when professional photographer Jim Flynn, asked me to pose as a model, but I cannot take any credit for my brush with fame,? Woodward said. ?I happened to be at the right place at the right time.?
The Listening Campaign ? launched in February 2000 ? shows Woodward standing in the middle of a cornfield staring pensively off in the distance.
It all began in the winter of 1999 when the 41-year-old rancher took Flynn out to meet the farmer who was supposed to pose in a cornfield near Lake Okeechobee in southwest Florida. The farmer never showed up for the shoot.
Woodward, a sales representative with PCS? Florida Favorite Fertilizer, and the owner of a 500-acre cattle ranch in Moore Haven, Florida, waited patiently with Flynn. From his own experiences ? raising 100 head of cattle and growing sugar cane ? Woodward understood that the farmer was probably too busy to meet them that day.
Finally, the photographer asked Woodward if he would mind posing for the ad.
Right Man for the Job
Woodward stood among the rustling corn stalks on that warm, cloudy December day for over four hours while the photographer shot roll after roll of film.
The process fascinated him.
?I?m just a country boy and this was new and interesting to me. It was really neat,? said Woodward.
A month after the photo shoot, he received a sample of the photo that would run in magazines in the United States and Canada.
?My family was very excited about the ad. My kids really thought it was something and insisted we save the pictures,? said the modest rancher turned model.
Of course, Woodward was not quite prepared for all the good-humored ribbing he received from his co-workers at Florida Favorite Fertilizer once the advertisement appeared in several fertilizer publications.
?Some of my friends asked me, ?What were you doing in the middle of a cornfield?? and another told me it looked like I had just lost my truck,? said Woodward with a laugh.
Florida Favorite Sales Manager Jack Zorn, who is Woodward?s supervisor, said that at the first sales meeting after the PotashCorp advertisement came out, it was passed around to all the employees.
?They teased him big time,? said Zorn.
Zorn always had faith that Woodward would be able to pull off any assignment he was given, be it as a model or as sales representative. In fact, when Flynn asked him if they could use Woodward in the ad, he said that he could not think of a better model for the advertisement.
Woodward has been a sales representative and certified crop advisor for Florida Favorite Fertilizer for 12 years and is well respected in the community, said Zorn.
Even after family and friends plastered his picture all over Palm Beach County last year, Woodward continued to quietly go about his work in the fields.
The brief brush with fame had not changed this country boy.
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