An Aerial Firefight of Marketing Skills

Winning a Los Angeles County contract for aerial firefighting has become big business.

First there was the Canadian aircraft manufacturer that hired one of the biggest and most powerful public relations firms in the nation to make the name Super Scooper a household word.

Now a helicopter manufacturer in Oregon has adopted the same marketing strategy. If you don’t already know what an Erickson Air-Crane Helitanker is, you probably will soon.

Although it lacks the alliterative moniker of the Super Scooper, Erickson has been feverishly extolling the firefighting muscle of its Helitanker, one of three helicopters competing for a county contract expected to be awarded in early July.

The helicopter manufacturer has been wooing hillside and canyon homeowners for more than a year, even whisking some of them aboard a private plane to Oregon for a tour and lunch at the company’s plant in Central Point.

In exchange, dozens of homeowner groups have joined a letter-writing campaign, urging county officials to lease the Helitanker. The president of a Tarzana group penned a particularly urgent message: “This equipment’s immediate availability is absolutely essential to avoid catastrophic loss of life and property.”

The Super Scooper, which made its U.S. debut in Los Angeles in 1994, is promoting sales of the fixed-wing water tanker to California and federal officials, pointing to the craft’s efficiency in fighting wildfires in Los Angeles. Proposals to purchase the airplanes, which can swoop down and skim the surface of a body of water to load up without halting, are scheduled this week before a California legislative conference committee and a congressional appropriations committee.

County supervisors in 1996 signed a five-year contract with the Canadian province of Quebec to lease two of its Super Scoopers during the fire season here. The lease was arranged by the aircraft’s manufacturer, Bombardier of Canada. Since the Fleishman-Hillard agency began its public relations campaign promoting use of the fixed-wing aircraft for firefighting in Los Angeles, the name Super Scooper has appeared in more than 100 stories in The Times, and many times in other outlets as well.

Erickson too is looking to cash in on its role in Los Angeles. The company in 1992 purchased the manufacturing rights to the Sikorsky Skycrane, a heavy-lift helicopter that is adaptable to a variety of civilian and military uses.

The modern version of the Skycrane is now dubbed the Erickson Air-Crane Helitanker, certified by the Federal Aviation Administration for so-called standard-category operations in cities. The FAA recently clamped down on the use in congested areas of ex-military aircraft converted for civilian use. Erickson is poised to replace them with its own equipment.

In a demonstration in Pasadena in April, Erickson introduced its newest device, a “water cannon.” It is a giant nozzle attached to the helicopter’s water tank that can shoot a stream of water or fire retardant 175 feet into a high-rise building at a rate of 300 gallons a minute.

The Erickson Helitanker can refill its 2,000-gallon tank in about 30 seconds while hovering over a body of water at least 18 inches deep. Water can be discharged onto a fire at varying rates and injected with foam in flight to increase its volume.

Two other companies that operate helicopters with similar abilities, but without the water cannon, also submitted bids last week for the county firefighting contract--Heavy Lift Helicopters in Apple Valley and Evergreen International in Oregon.

Those companies have not waged the promotional campaign put on by Erickson. “Erickson is doing a lot of marketing,” said Battalion Chief Jim Holdridge, director of air operations for the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

“They’re not only marketing the concept of the Helitanker, which is relatively new, they are trying to market Erickson, which happens to be the largest supplier of that aircraft.”

Fire officials and county supervisors are expected to select an operator within a few weeks. The contract calls for a giant helicopter to be based at Van Nuys Airport from Aug. 15 through Nov. 15. The big choppers and Super Scoopers work in concert, drawing on complementary strengths and weaknesses. The Super Scooper flies faster, but the helicopter can linger over a fire site and hover in canyons.

In their marketing campaigns, manufacturers of both aircraft focused heavily on homeowner groups to put pressure on county supervisors, who award the contracts.

“We know a lot of political power rests with homeowner groups,” said Robb Rice of the Kamber Group, the public relations firm representing Erickson. The firm had first proposed flying supervisors or their aides to view the Oregon plant, but were rebuffed by the county counsel, who said junkets at the expense of a company seeking a contract are illegal.

So company executives and representatives spent the past year visiting dozens of homeowner and civic groups, explaining the helicopters and showing videos. Two one-day trips were conducted in January, in which homeowner group representatives were shuttled in Erickson’s 12-passenger airplane from Van Nuys Airport to the plant.

“We were treated very nicely and served sandwiches and stuff,” said Jerry Daniel of Bel-Air, a past president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns., an umbrella organization of 54 homeowner groups. Daniel said he was so impressed with the helicopter that he worked to promote it to various groups.

“I am very frankly concerned about the upcoming fire season,” said Daniel, who moved to Bel-Air just after a devastating fire in the 1960s virtually destroyed the exclusive hillside community. “We need all the help there is.”

Rice said the greatest challenge the company faces is educating the public to the capabilities of modern helicopter firefighting equipment. Before the public awareness campaign, Rice said, most people envisioned firefighting helicopters as carrying a bucket of water suspended from a cable. “There’s been an evolution of technology and people need to know about it,” he said.

“The political climate of Los Angeles County is such that one needs to have a public affairs program so that people know who you are.”