Does the name Roachzilla mean anything to you?
Well, maybe it's still too new. How about Chadwick?
Or Arnold Roachnegger?
These are practically household names in Tucson,
AZ, where Bruce Tennebaum and his Arizona Pest
Control Co. do business. "Arnold" was
so named because he was the biggest cockroach,
the 1.735-inch winner of Arizona Pest Control's
first crazy contest in 1996. Amanda Simmons received
$1,000 as her bounty.
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!"
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