Susan's Garden: A Video Tribute Love Letter

Tom Patty is not the sort of man to do things by halves. His career as an adman gave him clients like Nike, Nissan and Pizza Hut. When he retired from Chiat/Day Advertising in 1998 he was President and Worldwide Account Director.

Sailing every Thursday and riding his bike a hundred miles a week, Tom now advises hundreds of small Orange County businesses every year as part of his job as a SCORE counselor. And he has lost none of the drive - or the talent for spotting trends - that put him on top in the advertising world.

So when Tom's wife Susan was turning 60, Tom knew he wanted something special. And he didn't just want to buy more 'stuff.'

"So much of our time - and our money - is spent on stuff. Just stuff.

"I should know, I have sold a lot of stuff over the years!" says Tom with a wry smile.

Don't get him wrong. Tom has nothing against flat screen TVs and other grown ups' technology toys. He just thinks that we - all of us - are looking for something more important.

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More Meaning in our lives

"We want more meaning in our lives." says Tom - who through his SCORE work and industry associations still spends a lot of his time thinking about the Next Big Thing. "In the decade ahead, the intrinsic worth of things - their subjective meaning - will come to have greater and greater significance in all of our purchasing decisions. We want things that really matter."

"My wife wants a large garden in the North West. I reflected on that for a long time," says Tom. "In truth, the whole world is Susan's garden. She cares for a large circle of friends and family just as she would care for her garden. I wanted someone to help me turn that concept into a gift."

The result of Tom's vision - and Your Story Here's production expertise - is a 35 minute video tribute show called "Susan's Garden". All of Susan's "garden" appears - from her smallest flowers (her grandchildren) to her oldest. "That would probably be me!" says Tom.

Your Story Here owner Jane Shafron agreed.
"We are seeing an increasing interest in personal value products like our tribute videos", she says. "Baby boomers worked hard all their lives for material comforts and are now discovering that true wealth only comes from personal connections and meaning." As one of Jane's recent blogs has it: "It's not about the toys."
Shape of things to come...

"I think it is the shape of things to come," says Tom, who carries "Susan's Garden" on his iPhone and readily plays it for anyone too slow or too polite to escape. "The technology is great - but Susan is what really matters."

And Susan's reaction? As a long-time producer herself, she was always going to be a tough audience. "It's one of the sweetest things he has ever done",
she says.