Corrections or additions?

Prepared for the September 13, 2000 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper.

All rights reserved.

Roland Pott: In Style

Eat Wheaties and be an Olympian. Buy a truck and get

a girl. But the newest branding strategy — for the Slates and

Dockers clothing brands of Levi/Strauss — glorifies not athletes

or sex objects but entrepreneurs. And that’s how Roland Pott, the

27-year-old founder of the Urban Word Cafe in Trenton, suddenly turned

up in full page ads in such magazines as GQ, Rolling Stone, Men’s

Health, Fast Company, Business 2.0, and Wired.

"I tend to be the person who is active, not the person who is

objectified," says Pott, "but the whole idea of the Slates

campaign is that it represents entrepreneurial style — modern

and intelligent. They chose entrepreneurs with a strong presence in

the community, people walking their own path. What I am doing is

following

a dream."

Pott’s dream started with Trenton Makes, a for-profit real estate

development company (inadvertently listed in the Slates ad as being

a non-profit). His first project is the Urban Word Cafe, a restaurant,

bar, and nightspot across from the Sovereign Bank Arena

(www.urbanword.com).

Opened just last year, it is doing well and features jazz, poetry,

and open mike nights. An alumnus of Reed College in Oregon, Pott lives

in the Mill Hill section of Trenton in a converted garage. He manages

the restaurant and plans to open an upscale nightclub next year.

"Out of nothing, we are creating a permanent fixture in peoples’

lives," he says. "At the beginning there was an empty

building.

Now it is filled with people eating and drinking and expressing

themselves

and talking and laughing. It is a point of reference that lasts, like

a line of clothing is a factor in how people want to present

themselves."

Also featured in the campaign are three college buddies who started

a juice bar company, a team of scientists and programmers who design

for the needs of girls, three sisters with a line of fashion

accessories,

and a community of ethnically diverse websites.

How did Pott get involved? An talent agent noticed Pott in a New

Jersey

Magazine article on "40 people under 40." Pott did not have

photos of himself, so a friend shot two rolls of film on a disposable

camera. Then he got "the call:"

"Be in New York on Thursday to be photographed by Richard Avedon

for an ad campaign for Slates." Avedon is arguably the best known

lens artist in the United States and is known for defining American

fashion photography as well as for his legendary portraits.

That the photo happened so quickly surprised everyone concerned,

except

Avedon. "He asked me to do a pose with the coat over my head and

pretend I was scared of the camera. He had me holding my coat all

the way up as if it was raining, then bring it down slowly. He was

frustrated with the camera crew because they weren’t shooting fast

enough. `All right, we’re done,’ he said, and the people from Slates

said `Are you sure?’"

"`Listen,’ said somebody, `If Avedon says we’re done, we’re done.’

It was 2 p.m. on Friday, and we all went home."

Corrections or additions?

— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.