Instead, the marketing and PR guys are visiting stations and giving hands-on demos to whoever happens to be around the fire hall. Yesterday, Mat Trigiani, clearly the youngest member of the Oakville Fire Department, was the guinea pig and he played his part willingly and enthusiastically.

(I thought I had great photos of Mat with the Warrior on his back but my new-to-me digital SLR didn’t do what it was supposed to and now I have to wait for pix from Sperian! Maybe it was the photographer, not the camera . . . )

I digress. Sperian’s creative team talked to firefighters across North America and found out that they wanted a long list of improvements to their SCBAs, primarily a more lightweight pack that afforded better movement and easier access to things like PASS and low-air alarms.

The Oakville firefighters were mightily impressed. All of them stayed in the room after the hour-long presentation/Q and A session and tried out and tested the Warrior. Oakville’s SCBAs are just 18 months old and the department isn’t looking to buy new ones but Sperian’s marketing guru, Jeff Shipley, gets it. He knows these guys will tell others how cool the Warrior is and they’ll tell two people and so on and so on . . .

Innovative marketing strategy.