An Ocean Of Promotion

Swag City

This stretch of beach along the state's panhandle, sometimes derided as the "Redneck Riviera," feels more south Alabama than Florida. Big new condos are gradually swallowing the old motels, but Panama City Beach still feels like a sweet seaside town. There's a Grubby's Airbrush Shak and a Panama Pawn. There's a Dippin' Dots, promising "the ice cream of the future." It might be 1982 here, and it might be better that way.

Traffic moves slowly on the narrow roads. Spring breakers walk barefoot along the blacktop. Their official costume is surf shorts and bikinis -- which is, it turns out, exactly what spring breakers were wearing 40 years ago, except back then, the guys called their shorts "jams" and the girls didn't keep cellphones in their bikini bottoms. Anyway, the swimwear is for show, since hardly anyone goes in the water. It's way too cold.

They come here from Illinois State and East Carolina, from Valencia Community College in Central Florida and Itawamba Community in Mississippi. (One group comes all the way from SUNY Buffalo -- 26 hours -- on a bus.) They sleep five or six to a room, except for that guy who never comes back at night. They wheel coolers of Bud Light and Busch onto the beach. They eat cheap: Wendy's and Waffle House and a free pancake breakfast the evangelicals are serving down the street. One group of kids brings a deep-fryer and cooks frozen cheese sticks and corn dogs to save money.

Even in the era of "Girls Gone Wild," there is still about spring break an appealing purity. Perhaps it taps into something ancient and pagan in us, something reminding us of maypole dancing and rabbits. The tradition is often traced to the 1930s, and the 1960 movie "Where the Boys Are" helped popularize the notion of spring break as a time for love and zany high jinks.

To some extent, the holiday's twin traditions of riotry and product promotion grew up together. In 1964, when spring breakers were dancing the monkey and searching for riots, the Ford Caravan of Music arrived, sponsoring "folk and jazz wingdings." As far back as 1979, the New York Times was bemoaning the presence of corporate America at spring break.

Richie Tarzian, the president of a Manasquan, N.J.-based company called the Passion Group, has been doing spring break promotions and college campus marketing since the late '70s. In those days he spent a lot of time driving from campus to campus, stopping frequently to make pay-phone calls. One of his first spring break gigs, he says, was placing Bic pens in the kids' hotel rooms.

These days, Tarzian, 53, has about 120 employees working for him during peak season, and about 80 of them descend on various spring break locations. He often travels with a laptop and an assistant, and he has two cellphones and three BlackBerrys. One is for Panama City Beach, one is for South Padre, Tex., and one is for locations in Mexico like Cancun.

Here in Panama City Beach, Tarzian pays several hotels for the right to market his clients in their properties and along their beachfront. At one property, shower curtains for Axe, the body spray, hang in the bathrooms. At another, the Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort, Trojan condoms and Banana Boat sunblock samples are placed on the pillows, as if by some perverse tooth fairy.

The SunSpree is saturated with marketing. This year, Tarzian's company has placed ads for two clients -- the Army and Gillette's Venus Breeze razor -- on the columns in front of the hotel, on the lobby floors and windows, and wrapping the elevator doors from floor to ceiling. When the kids check in, they get keycards branded by the Army and bags of toiletry samples (including Gillette razors) according to their gender.

Out back by the pool, there are more ads, and spring breakers play in the water with beach balls branded by another of Tarzian's clients, Geico. Tarzian has taken to renting the property next to the SunSpree in part to prevent his competitors from getting his marketing "runoff." Spring break is Tarzian's season -- he sleeps little and works much. His tightly scheduled days involve pasting down floor ads and hoisting up logo banners, creating a fully branded landscape that hundreds of thousands of young consumers will see.

When Tarzian's daughter was in fifth grade in Catholic school, a nun asked her what her father did for a living. "Bikini contests," the little girl said.

They've Got You Covered

The owner of the SunSpree, 74-year-old Lela Hilton, strolls down from the hotel's pool deck to the sand one afternoon and surveys the beach -- the tan bodies, the corporate branding. She lives around here, she says, and sometimes during spring break she stays at the hotel, amid all the revelry. The music on the pool deck plays till 2 or 3 in the morning, she says. Does it bother her?