He’s the Right Metaphor for the Job

He doesn’t play for the NBA, doesn’t appear in $100-million films, hasn’t made a platinum record and isn’t the hot new thing on the pro golf circuit. But Rick Boggs may be the most talked-about corporate spokesperson in advertising.

He’s “that spokesperson guy” in those commercials for AirTouch Cellular, and, yes, he really is blind.

The 6-month-old national campaign, now in heavy rotation on television, radio and in print, has viewers buzzing about Boggs’ part in some seemingly unlikely scenarios: playing basketball and baseball, driving a car, wielding a chain saw. While celebrities with disabilities--Ray Charles, for instance--have hawked products, and disabled actors or models increasingly appear in ads, the signing of an unknown who is blind may be unprecedented.

Boggs is well aware of that. The 33-year-old student-musician, who beat out about 100 others nationwide last spring for the part, didn’t take the role lightly.

“I read the scripts and thought they portrayed a disabled person in a very positive light,” he says in an interview at his San Fernando Valley home, guide dog Ico by his side. (Jake, the sidekick in his ads, is an actor.) He even polled Internet users, asking if anyone knew of a noncelebrity disabled spokesperson. No one did. “I was really honored to have that place in history,” Boggs says.

The honor, he adds, comes from a sense of privilege and responsibility. “I have an opportunity to create more positive images of what a physically disabled person can be in the world. We’re trying to erase old, negative images and create new ones so that future generations don’t have any preconceived notions or limitations.”

AirTouch and the cutting-edge ad agency TBWA Chiat / Day created the campaign to emphasize that what cellular companies do is invisible. “A blind spokesperson, serving as a metaphor, logically came out of that pattern of thinking,” says Nancy Hill, the agency’s account director. She never anticipated any backlash. “We weren’t using him as the butt of a joke,” she explains, “but simply allowing him to serve as an icon for the metaphor.”

But AirTouch braced itself, says spokeswoman Amy Damianakes. “Any time you step out and do something out of the ordinary, maybe the reactions won’t all be positive. But we were really overwhelmed by the positive feedback.”

AirTouch consulted with Boggs as well as advocacy groups for the blind to make sure the ads were accurate and didn’t come off as flip or offensive.

“They’d show us a script and say, ‘Is this OK?’ ” says Carmen Apelgren, community relations coordinator for the Braille Institute in Los Angeles, who also serves as a technical advisor to the entertainment industry. “I’m visually impaired, and most blind people I’ve talked to have really liked [the AirTouch ads]. . . . We wish they’d do more of this, showing us as regular folks. We have families, jobs, we go on vacations, go to church, whatever. We live our lives the same as everybody else does. Slowly but surely, yes, I think these [ads] are breaking down boundaries.”

One of the early radio spots, in which Boggs asks listeners to open and close their eyes, then suggests that a person could get used to not being able to see, did provoke at least one complaint. “A mother with a 15-year-old blind son said, ‘That’s something you never get used to,’ ” Damianakes recalls. “Well, that’s very valid. This is going to be personal at some level. But, by the same token, with a role model like Rick, there’s a universal message about doing more with your life.”

Kenneth Jernigan, president emeritus of the Baltimore-based National Federation for the Blind, believes the campaign is more positive than negative. “I’m not sure that the basketball situation would happen quite the way it’s portrayed. They’re not doing an egregious or terrible thing, but it may give some slight misconception of what blind people do and don’t do.”

*

Boggs, who lost his sight at 5 as the result of a genetic disorder, say the ads accurately reflect things he did as a kid. “So anyone who thinks that it isn’t easy or natural for a blind person to shoot baskets or hit baseballs or do anything else simply hasn’t tried it or hasn’t watched people try it,” he says. “I go to elementary schools all the time and one thing we do is put a blindfold on the kids and have them shoot baskets, and I’ve seen many kids make it. So it really isn’t that hard.”

A determined mother made sure that Boggs, the oldest of four children reared in Southern California, went to regular school and took part in sports. In junior high he was shooting 70% from the free-throw line in basketball, and he pitched the winning inning in a championship Little League game at age 9.

Boggs also excelled in music as a kid, composing songs and playing the piano, drums, electric and acoustic guitar, and various wind instruments. He still composes (“adult contemporary”), teaches music and gives motivational speeches to various groups around the country, including the troops at AirTouch. He started acting in the late ‘80s, and his credits include several small roles in TV shows and feature films. He’s on the verge of earning a bachelor’s degree at UCLA in historical ethnomusicology.

There’s one more project: the building of a backyard recording studio that will allow him to produce radio commercials, artists’ demos, master CDs and more (he’s produced and engineered at other studios). His business partner is his fiancee, 31-year-old Priscila Delgado. They plan to marry in January.

Boggs’ AirTouch contract is up in more than a year, and he hints his relationship with the company may continue. In the meantime, he’s busy dealing with instant fame, which he finds at once curious and fun.

Being recognized and getting asked for autographs “is really weird for me,” he admits. “Who would want Rick Boggs to sign his name? The only way I’ve found to deal with it . . . is to write some positive note, and in that way I feel like I’m doing some good by the visibility.

“I can walk down the worst street in the worst neighborhood at the worst time of night, and the people there living on the streets treat me very well because they feel like I’m worse off than they are because I’m blind. The truth is, I know that I’m actually more fortunate than most people I know, because I’m earning a living at something I really love doing, and I have a lot of really wonderful friends and family who have helped me and supported what I’ve done and haven’t told me, ‘You can’t.’ I’ve met a wonderful woman, I have my own business. I’ve never been so happy.”