AZ Pest :: Exterminators in Arizona

Chadwick was the winner of Arizona Pest control’s 1997 contest, for being the fastest cockroach around. A team of 21 students from Steele Elementary, who found him in a school restroom, coaxed him into scurrying 2.1 miles per hour. They also won $1,000 for their efforts.

Then there was Roachzilla. The contest didn’t turn out exactly as Tennebaum had planned, but that’s all right. A winner went home happy, the community had a great time chasing an elusive cockroach, and Arizona Pest Control received an amazing amount of publicity.

This year’s contest actually involved the use of bar codes. Tennebaum and one of his partners in crime, Dr. Carl Olson, released 100 German roaches (previously caught in other accounts) with bar codes cemented onto their backs. If someone brought in one of these roaches, he or she won $100. If it was the one roach that had the winning bar code, he or she won $50,000. Did we mention that the Pima County Wastewater Management Department had to issue a memo against citizens opening manholes and wandering through the sewer systems? (No roaches were released there anyway.) Tennebaum reports that Tucson was a city gone mad.

“One lady tried to duplicate what I had, putting a bar code on a roach, and it wasn’t the one,” he says. “People were even taking these roaches to the grocery store and scanning them.”

The bar codes were purposely hard to see, Tennebaum admits, and the idea was for people to come down to the Arizona Pest Control office and check under a special scanner. The came in, all right – Tennebaum ended up with more than 500 roaches in roughly a six-week period.

One group of students from Mission View Elementary brought in a five-foot-long paper mache cockroach. They were hoping to have a winning entry to help a classmate who needs a kidney transplant. While they didn’t qualify, Tennebaum did contribute $300 to their cause. He also set up a table for donations when he went to announce the winner at the Tucson Sidewinders (AAA league) baseball game June 29.

Because there were no bar-coded roaches among the 500-plus entries, Tennebaum awarded the largest cockroach. Roachzilla (who was named in a special contest in August) measured in at 2.1 inches. Roachzilla’s capturer, Domingo Ramas Jr., won $1,000. He had found the big fellow in a water meter.

“You couldn’t ask for a better winner,” Tennebaum recalls, adding that Ramas had recently become unemployed and could really use the cash. ” I called the guy to tell him he had the biggest cockroach, and he said, ‘I don’t have enough gas money to get to the game.’ I said, ‘Just borrow the money, I’ll give you some when you get down here.’”

How It All Began
Three years ago, the name of Tennebaum’s company was Arizona Chemical Co. He actually started there as a technician in 1979, after coming to Tucson on a lark from New York. In 1985, he bought a minority share in the company, and has since become the owner. The firm has approximately 26 employees, and is split evenly between commercial and residential.

Tennebaum disliked the word “Chemical” in his company’s name, but it had been a mainstay in Arizona for more then 50 years. In 1996, when he decided to change over to Arizona Pest Control, he realized he needed an attention-grabber. The cockroach contest was then born.

“So over the years, people keep asking, what are you going to do this year?” he concludes. “Once you do a contest, you have to outdo it every year. So, I was sitting around, trying to think of what we could do. I just thought, like a fishing derby, we could code a roach and release them, 100 different places in the community, and make one of them worth – well, I originally wanted to do for $1 million, but nobody would insure me.”

Tennebaum received an unusual amount of attention this year because it was picked up by the local media, which practically anticipated another summer Arizona Pest Control contest.

“This is how I got involved this year,” he explains. “My kid plays baseball with the kid of the local newspaper editor; Not thinking anything of it, they’re over for dinner at our house one night and I said ‘Debbie, I think I’m going to bar code a roach and release it’ That was the end of the conversation, right? The next day, I had a writer and photographer standing in my office.”

He and Olson, who is the associate curator for the University of Arizona Department of Entomology and no stranger to these capers, had to postpone the actual releasing of the roaches. There were about 25 TV cameras and several anxious “cockroach bounty hunters” hanging around Tennebaum’s home. They wanted to see where the roaches were being released.

Before the hunt went on, however, there were quite a lot of logistics involved in prepping the cockroaches.

“I had everyone telling me to use everything from Super Glue to screwing them into using tape,” he says, adding that he ended up using surgical cement to attach the bar codes. “I talked to entomologists, who were like,’What are you talking about?’”

He and his cohorts stuck the roaches in the freezer for 45 seconds to slow them down long enough to mark them, a trick they learned last year when doing the roach races. The roaches recovered speed once they got back up to room temperature.

Then, for two months, Tennebaum tested the durability of the bar codes on roaches kept in this office aquarium.

This summer, the $50,000 Roach” contest was the subject of more than150 articles and newscasts worldwide, including a piece that aired on Comedy Central June 16. Tennebaum attributes some of the international publicity to the Web site, www.azpest.com. When the six week contest was winding down and no one had been able to catch a bar-coded roach, however, Tennebaum decided to give out clues as to where some had been released. Again, media frenzy ensued.

“I gave clues out every day of the last week. The local radio stations would call in and ask for a clue,” he reports. For example, after getting the owner’s permission, he indicated that the $50,0000 roach may be in he vicinity of a certain gas station. Suddenly, 100 people were at the station with buckets, and the gas station owner was interviewed and given a ton of publicity.

In addition, even thought no bar coded roaches were caught, Tennebaum has the good marketing foresight to keep it going. ” If anybody finds any of out bar coded roaches,” he says, “they get a free year’s worth of pest control.”

A Life Beyond Roaches
While Tennebaum is devoted to Arizona Pest Control, he does have other irons in the fire. Since 1996, he has served as a state pest control commissioner, which meets monthly. He is currently vice chairman.

Tennebaum is also president of the Tucson Parent Aid Child Abuse Prevention Center. The center reaches out to parents who are stressed and are potentially going to abuse a child. They can call the Parent Aid hotline for guidance.

Tennebaum has been involved in the center, part of a national organization called the Exchange Club, since it opened in Tucson in 1989.

“Tucson has been fair to me, and I think you need to be involved in the community any way you can,” he notes. While he had no abusive experiences as a child, he points out that “kids are what the world’s about,” and hence, he hopes to help as many families as he can.

This value naturally spills over to his family life, where he makes sure to be home with his wife and three children every weeknight by 6pm and by noon on Saturdays.

“I work hard, but I believe you need to spend time with your family as they’re growing up. They need to have a good role model,” he stresses. ” You can do it, if you balance your life right.”

Being involved in the community has an added bonus. Tennebaum points out that because people trust him, they tend to give him more business and referrals.

Marketing Matters
The bottom line remains, did this year’s cockroach contest help pick Arizona Pest’s business up any? Yes, it did, Tennebaum enthuses.

“Everybody knows Arizona Pest Control in the community and business is up. That was the main deal for us,” he said, noting that his promotion of the contest cost him around $35,000 which included 25 billboards around town.

“It’s an easy sales call for my employees now, because people go ‘Oh you’re the company that did the roaches! How did that work?’ ” he adds. “I don’t feel any pressure to top myself next year – not yet, anyway. But anywhere I go, I’m the Roach man. ‘Roach man, roach man, whatddayagonna do?’ ”

Tennebaum seems to do business by two credos. One, if you have an idea and really believe in it, go with it. If it fails, it fails, but don’t be scared to try it. The second thought is a a little less mainstream- if something’s working, change it. He points out that if he had don’t three “biggest cockroach” contests in a row, it wouldn’t be half as interesting as what has really taken place.

Still, Tennebaum knows that it’s the 1996 champ, Arnold Roachenegger, that is most recognizable in Tucson.

“It’s on everything,” he admits. “In the Yellow Pages, it’s the ‘Home of Arnold Roachenegger.’ I have it on my business cards. That’s the name that kind of stays with people.”

Roachzilla-mania may soon be taking the honors, however- and who knows what crazy contest is in store for 1999? Tennebaum won’t tip his hand, be he will admit that he’s sticking with roaches because there’s no stinging or biting dangers involved as there are for scorpions or for other insects.

“You’ve got to think of what’s newsworthy,” he counsels, adding that he won’t delve into the project for at least another month. “I’m always thinking, though!”