Creative Intelligence

Beverly Schuch, Jill Brooke

15 January 1999

CNNfn: Business Unusual

BEVERLY SCHUCH, CNNfn ANCHOR, BUSINESS UNUSUAL: When top business leaders and Hollywood stars want to make a splash with their parties they count on a company called Creative Intelligence to help make a powerful first impression. Creative Intelligence makes invitations you won't want to refuse.

Jill Brooke has our report.

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JILL BROOKE, CNNfn CORRESPONDENT (voice over): If you're a Hollywood star or a business leader and someone invites you to a party at their new hotel in the Bahamas you may not go, but if you got an invitation like this, well you might just pack your bags. That's why the hotel company hired Marc Friedland. Known as the Picasso of invitations, he creates designs that many consider works of art.

MARC FRIEDLAND, OWNER, CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE: The development of an invitation is really a very sophisticated process. It really helps market new businesses, market services. If you have 10 invitations on your desk I would almost guarantee you are going to go to the one that's going to look the most exiting, the most festive.

BROOKE: For Atlantis he created the hidden map of the lost civilization.

FRIEDLAND: The invitation is a little journal, atlas of what the guest are going to experience. Everything is gold leaf embossed. Everything is hand assembled here in our studio.

BROOKE: The cost for his services can range from a few dollars to as much as $100 an invitation, but many say it's well worth the investment. The invitation for a party to Alaska hosted by Microsoft (URL: http://www.microsoft.com/) co-founder Paul Alan was so impressive that Jeff Goldbloom (ph) decided to leave the L.A. Sun for Alaska's tundra.

JEFF GOLDBLOOM: The invitations, first of all you know, I mean, you've gotten invitations from fancy friends, you now, one who tries to out do the other. This was - I'd never had anything like this in my life.

FRIEDLAND: A single pocket, a fold over and tied.

BROOKE: These days a wide range of companies are paying attention to invitations more than ever.

(on camera): And it's for a simple reason. Most people receive lots of mail, but a creative invitation can help a company stand out from the pack especially if its competing with other events.

FRIEDLAND: It sets the tone. It wets people's appetites. It becomes a decision maker factor of which to go to. And when everybody's time is so precious the successful invitation captures a greater response rate than anything else.

JERRY INZERILLO, EXEC. V.P. SUN INTERNATIONAL: That people feel that you have that sort of detail in your invitation that's gong to follow through to the whole guest experience, the whole party and they're going to say, wow, they really put the time and effort into this.

BROOKE (voice over): He got into this business as a fluke in 1986. A friend asked him to design a card for their graduation party at UCLA. It became such a hit that more jobs quickly followed.

FREIDLAND: We have a fairly large staff, large from the standpoint of being a small business. There's about 15 to 20 people. We process about 15 to 20 projects during any given month. So that means we're constantly busy. Our sales have doubled in the last couple of years. We're in the seven figures, you know, we're quickly approaching several million dollars in sales and it's very exciting to see that growth happening.

BROOKE: Freidland's attention to detail has won him jobs for companies including Citicorp (URL: http://www.citigroup.com/) and American Express (URL: http://www.americanexpress.com/) as well work for some of Hollywood's heavy hitters.

Here is a baby shower invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hanks and a holiday card from the Spielberg's, not to mention a party invite for Oprah's boyfriend. Because he's such a promoter of invitations as art he also had a traveling gallery show, a new consumer line of stationary and has just published a how to book on, you guessed it, invitations. All, of course, executed with his signature style.

For BUSINESS UNUSUAL, Jill Brooke, CNN financial news, New York.

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