Insider View of West Virginia Highlands Conservancy Marketing Machine

Each month in The Highlands Voice, and on our website, we offer for sale a variety of t-shirts, hats, etc.  For the offerings in the Voice, we are fortunate to have a variety of models for our offerings of infant and children wear.  If nothing else, it gives readers a monthly shot of adorableness.  Even if readers are worn out by serious stories and an occasional environmental setback, there is always the hope that comes from a picture of a child.

The models are friends and relatives of members.  Those friends and relatives send in the picture of the child in the t-shirt or onesie and it goes in an upcoming issue.  Most of the pictures have come to our President, Cindy Ellis, who apparently has extensive contacts in the ACC (adorable child community).

We now have about fifteen models.  The editor keeps a list of who was in the Voice when; the same model appears about every fifteen months.  A new photo usually goes in the next issue and everybody else moves back a month.

The Voice has been featuring models for almost five years now.  Many of the infants in the pictures are now tots, the tots are now tykes, etc.  It has not been long enough for any of the tots or tykes to have become teenagers.  We can confirm this from the fact that any teenager worthy of the name would die of embarrassment at the thought of his or her baby picture being published and there have been no reports of teenagers suddenly and unexplainably keeling over.

We have not been so lucky with the polo shirts.  Once upon a time we had a picture of Cindy Ellis and Jim Solley posing in the shirts, looking quite pleased with their purchases and life in general.  Then Cindy decided to pursue a career path other than supermodel so she asked that her picture not be used any more.  Since she and Jim were in the same picture, that ended our supply of polo shirt models.

Should you or your infant, tot, tyke, etc. wish to be a model for either the children’s clothing or the polo shirt, send a photo of yourself or of the infant, etc. wearing the item to johnmcferrin@aol.com and then look for yourself in an upcoming issue.