Impressionism Rides a Rental Car

Michael S. Egan wants you to visit Shinnecock Bay on Long Island's south shore. He wants you to view a historic church at the corner of Middle and Church Streets in Gloucester, Mass. He'd like you to see New York's Central Park boat pond, Union Square, and McSorley's bar. And there are a dozen other sights around the U.S. the chief executive of Alamo Rent A Car Inc. thinks you should tour, especially if you arrive in an Alamo auto.

It's only natural that Egan wants to lure Americans out on the road. What's surprising is the vehicle he's using to do that: Alamo is sponsoring an exhibition of 80 paintings depicting those scenes, among others. "American Impressionism and Realism" opens on May 10 at New York's Metropolitan Museum, then travels over the next year to Fort Worth's Amon Carter Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

At each, museum-goers will find discount car-rental coupons in the exhibition brochures. Shoppers will get a coupon every time they buy something at a museum store. And everyone who attends the show's opening festivities in each city will leave with custom-made travel guides directing them to scenes in the paintings. Everyone who rents a Cadillac in the four cities while the show is on will get a guide, too. "Very clever," says Charles H. McCabe Jr., the Chemical Bank executive vice-president who oversees cultural contributions.

Alamo's blend of culture and commerce is so crafty, in fact, that it may send companies off in new directions, too. Because of economic pressures and the greater need for social philanthropy, U.S. corporations have trimmed their contributions to the arts by about 25% since a 1985 peak. For the gap to be filled, marketing departments will have to step in. They care less about the aura of arts sponsorships and more about product tie-ins. But they don't want to stir up carping about the crass commercialization of culture. Both companies and arts institutions are struggling to devise programs that do more than burnish the one's image without tarnishing the other's.

Fort Lauderdale (Fla.)-based Alamo, long known as a pathbreaking marketer, may have found a way. The brief but classy travel guides contain fold-out maps, postcards of three paintings, and two discount offers. They may even yield media coverage, a rarity for arts sponsorships. Travel & Leisure, USA Today, and travel-trade magazines may reprint parts of the guide, Alamo says.

"HOME RUN"? The coupons offer multiple benefits, too. Those the Metropolitan Museum agreed to place in every bag used by its 12 museum stores are part of an exhibition flyer, which could boost attendance. Each time a coupon is redeemed, the Met gets 5% of the rental fee. And the coupons will provide clues to the return on Alamo's spending, which arts sponsors find difficult to gauge. "Nothing I've seen is as innovative as this," says Sears Merchandise Group Vice-President E. Ronald Culp, who is surveying arts marketing for a forthcoming article in a public-relations journal. "I hope it's a home run. It would do such amazing things for arts sponsorships."

Alamo's effort didn't come cheap. Egan paid the Met $2.5 million for a package including this show, a William Harnett exhibition at the Met in 1992, and a display of 36 of the Met's 19th century paintings at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art in 1992. Throw in money for ads, and even before coupon redemptions and the guide's production costs, Alamo is paying $3 million. For that, it could have bought 53 full-page, four-color ads in The New York Times Sunday Travel section. Or it could have underwritten a blockbuster--a Matisse retrospective, for example.

But Egan says the sponsorship "isn't altruistic. New Yorkers are a big source of our business. It's a way of saying 'thank you,' and when 'thank you' is said sincerely, it's remembered." Egan has never studied whether Alamo's arts spending pays off, partly because he fears what the numbers might show. "Another part is that this is about what you want to be, not what some number says you should be," he adds.

And for all of Egan's success in expanding Alamo into the nation's No.3 car renter, many still think of it only in connection with vacation spots. Now, Alamo's image may catch up with reality. The link with top museums should help counter the spotty image Alamo shares with other rental companies, all charged with misleading ads and dubious practices. Maybe that's why, when asked how the Met courted him, Egan says: "I was, perhaps, wooing them."

Alamo worked to make the most of the association, though. Emily K. Rafferty, the Met's vice-president for development, says museum staff and Alamo differed only on "the wording and look of things." Alamo wanted to use a car image in ads, an idea the Met nixed. But the museum had no qualms about the coupons, which bother many museum directors. "I'd never do it," sniffs one, "but the Met will get away with it because it's the Met."

PRIVATE PASSION. Observers believe Alamo got a good deal--despite the price. Several note that any Impressionism show will draw a big crowd. And David Resnicow of Resnicow Schroeder Associates, a public-relations firm that helps design sponsorships, likes how the program "engages people. Whether the coupons are used is immaterial--they leave an imprint that's deeper and lasts longer."

Egan, who owns more than half of the private $1.2 billion company, can afford to care less about his return than do CEOs of public companies. He admits Alamo wouldn't be sponsoring this show were it not for his interest in art. As a child, prompted by his mother, a painter, he learned sculpture. He then took up drafting and design, and later, oil painting. Nowadays, he can sometimes be found painting landscapes en plein air in Florida or Nantucket, where he summers. Egan also collects--contemporary art for the office and American landscape paintings for his home.

To Egan, American art is a perfect match for Alamo. "The urge to travel is part of what we are as Americans," he says. That explains why Egan plans to fund more shows on the theme "Alamo Across America." And it's why Alamo is one of the few companies to hike arts spending in 1994. Museums are hoping that Alamo is again leading the pack.