Behind the scenes: Omaha’s ‘American Idol’ welcome
This Welcome to Omaha message was carved in five acres of corn field by Swanson Russell Associates.
If you saw tonight’s episode of American Idol, you no doubt noticed the show was welcomed to Omaha with a special message — “Welcome to Omaha” carved into a five-acre corn field.
The crop circle, which also features the American Idol logo, was the brainchild of Swanson Russell Associates, a marketing firm with offices in Omaha and Lincoln. And, even though it only appeared for a handful of seconds a few times throughout the episode and previews, the work that went into the project was much more intense.
“It says a lot about who we are and the clients we serve,” the firm said in a release. Swanson Russell serves as the marketing firm for many agricultural clients, including Claas Lexion combines.
The initial idea was to get photos of Idol host Ryan Seacrest on a Claas Lexion combine, and that idea sparked another. Thus, the American Idol crop circle was born.
Many employees of the firm were left out of the circle, so to speak, while a few key members worked secretly to try and pull off the surprise. They wanted to keep things a secret, so they quietly went to work, and they only had a couple of weeks to get everything together. But they worked hard with the “We can make it happen” mantra always in mind.
The crop circle was created by the Utah-based The MAiZE company, which claims to be the world’s largest maze company. It was designed first on a computer, and coordinates were mapped out through GPS. When they arrived at the field, they used spray paint to mark coordinates, and then used a bobcat to carve out the logo portion of the design. “Welcome to Omaha,” which curved around the top of the logo, was cut out by hand with a machete.
Soon after the five-acre project was created and filmed for the show, it was destroyed. Because it was in a flight pattern, and many neighbors already were suspicious of what was happening in the nearby field, the surprise was at risk of being uncovered before it was to be revealed a couple of weeks ago during early show previews.
And, now, you can see how it all unfolded in a special video from Swanson Russell Associates:
To see more photos and videos from the crop circle project, visit the special American Idol page of the Swanson Russell Web site.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
[...] Cernig wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe crop circle, which also features the American Idol logo, was the brainchild of Swanson Russell Associates, a marketing firm with offices in Omaha and Lincoln. And, even though it only appeared for a handful of seconds a few times … [...]
January 29th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
[...] Wendy wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe crop circle, which also features the American Idol logo, was the brainchild of Swanson Russell Associates, a marketing firm with offices in Omaha and Lincoln. And, even though it only appeared for a handful of seconds a few times … [...]
January 29th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
I am duly impressed.