Visionaries! 2008 Award Presented at MAD’s Annual Gala
Tonight, Wednesday, November 12, 2008

NEW YORK, NY—November 12, 2008—Tonight, Alan Siegel, Founder and Chairman of pioneering strategic brand consultancy Siegel+Gale, will receive the Museum of Arts and Design Visionaries! 2008 Award honoring outstanding individuals in the arts and industry. The Award will be presented this evening at the Museum’s annual benefit gala in New York.

“Over the past three decades, Alan Siegel has become one of the best-known figures in the branding business. He has achieved the stature of both pillar of the establishment and provocative iconoclast while building Siegel+Gale, a leading brand consultancy devoted to positioning global companies for competitive success,” says the Museum as reason for the Award.

“The Museum has played an important role in my life,” says Mr. Siegel. “It has been a privilege to have helped champion the new building campaign and expansion efforts. This is a milestone year for the Museum and a crowning moment in which to be honored.”

Mr. Siegel has a decade-long history of involvement with the Museum as a trustee, patron, and Chair of the Marketing Committee. In the past five years, he has worked to support the Museum’s capital campaign for its new facility as well as leading the efforts to reposition its international presence through innovative communication and marketing materials.

MAD Visionaries! Awards are presented each year to individuals whose achievements reflect the Museum’s mission to foster an enthusiastic appreciation of contemporary craft, decorative arts, and design, and their relations to fashion, architecture, interior design, and technology.

The Museum of Arts and Design opened its new facility, the Jerome and Simona Chazen Building, at 2 Columbus Circle in New York in September, 2008. The Museum is the country’s leading cultural institution dedicated to the collection and exhibition of contemporary objects created in a wide range of media, including clay, glass, wood, metal, and fiber.

The Museum expects to exceed 400,000 visitors in its first year. “Online access to its permanent collection, teacher training institute, and a virtual library of techniques will increase that number exponentially,” says Mr. Siegel.

About Alan Siegel

A pioneer of the branding industry and founder of brand strategy firm Siegel+Gale, Alan Siegel is also a well-known photographer (One Man’s Eye: Photographs from the Alan Siegel Collection, Harry N. Abrams), and author (The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Markets, Lightbulb Press). As consultant, teacher, and commentator, Mr. Siegel’s influence extends to creating strategic branding programs for organizations such as 3M, American Express, AARP, the National Basketball Association (NBA), Caterpillar, The Girl Scouts, The New School, and CBS. He also serves on the boards of numerous business and cultural organizations, including the Museum of Arts and Design, American Institute of Graphic Arts, Design Management Institute, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Girls Inc., the Authors Guild Foundation, and the American Theater Wing, where he is a TONY Awards voter.

About Siegel+Gale

Siegel+Gale is one of the world’s premier strategic branding companies. Since it was founded by Alan Siegel in 1969, the firm has applied the art and science of simplicity to create branding programs that have helped many of the world’s best-known organizations excel. Driven by its philosophy of “Simple is Smart,” Siegel+Gale has led the way in bringing innovation to the corporate branding field, including transforming complex, incomprehensible customer communications into plain English; helping clients create distinctive brand voices across all their communications; transporting brands onto the Internet; and aligning the brand experience for customers with the brand promise.

The firm has worked with an array of leading organizations, including American Express, AARP, College Board, Cornell University, Dell, Duke University, Lexus, MBA.com, Merrill Lynch, Motorola, the National Basketball Association, 3M, Dow, The Four Seasons Hotel Group, Sony PlayStation, and Yahoo! Siegel+Gale has full-service offices in New York, Los Angeles, London, and Dubai and strategic partnerships around the world.

Siegel+Gale is part of the Omnicom Group Inc, a leading global marketing and corporate communications company. Omnicom’s branded networks and numerous specialty firms provide advertising, strategic media planning and buying, direct and promotional marketing, public relations, and other specialty communications services to over 5,000 clients in more than 100 countries.

To speak with Alan Siegel, or for more information about the Museum of Arts and Design Visionaries! 2008 Award, please contact Davia Temin, Christine Summerson, or Trang Mar of Temin and Company at 212-588-8788 or news@teminandco.com

"Voters in New Jersey will be voting on two public questions that are so confusing the ballot includes interpretive statements longer than the questions themselves," says Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO of Siegel+Gale, a strategic branding firm.

"Try reading ‘Public Question #1′ and its ‘Interpretive Statement’ if you want to be bewildered," says Mr. Siegel.

Public Question #1:

Voters to Approve State Authority Bonds Payable from State Appropriations

Do you approve the proposed amendment to the State Constitution which provides that, after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution, a law enacted thereafter that authorizes State debt created through the sale of bonds by any autonomous public corporate entity, established either as an instrumentality of the State or otherwise exercising public and essential government functions, such as an independent State authority, which debt or liability has a pledge of an annual appropriation as the ways and means to pay the interest of such debt or liability as it falls due and pay and discharge the principal of such debt, will be subject to voter approval, unless the payment of the debt is made subject to appropriations of an independent non-State source of revenue paid by third persons for the use of the object or work bonded for, or are from a source of State revenue otherwise required to be appropriated pursuant to another provision of the Constitution?

Interpretive Statement:

This amendment to the State Constitution will require voter approval of new laws that allow the State to borrow money by issuing bonds through any State agency or independent authority backed by a pledge of an annual appropriation to pay the principal and interest on the bonds. New laws to allow the issuance of these State authority bonds for State government purposes will be subject to voter approval. State courts have ruled that the State constitutional requirement that the Legislature and Governor must seek voter approval for bonded debt does not apply to such borrowing. That requirement is followed only for proposed State bonds that contain a binding, non-repealable pledge to pay off the bonds directly with State taxes. Most State authority bonds can be issued without voter approval because the payment of the bonds is backed only by a promise of the Legislature and the Governor that they will enact appropriations in the future to meet the bond payments. The courts have said this is a legal means of avoiding submitting the issuance of debt for voter approval. Laws to permit such debt that are enacted after this amendment becomes part of the Constitution will have to authorize voter referenda for approval of such debts. Exceptions to voter approval for authority bonds will be permitted if the bonds are to be paid off from 1) a source of revenue dedicated by the State Constitution, which only the voters can establish, or 2) an independent non-State government source of payments for use of projects build or obtained with the borrowed money, such as highway tolls or user fees.

"An informal research study I conducted with voters from Union County, New Jersey confirmed that most people aren’t going to vote on these public questions because they can’t understand them," says Mr. Siegel.

"This kind of gobbledygook doesn’t belong on a ballot. It’s about time public voting officials who prepare these ballots use professional communications people to create user-friendly, accessible ballots where complex public questions and referenda are translated into plain English.

"Public officials, including Governor Corzine, should provide voters with a ballot that enables them to make an informed decision," concludes Mr. Siegel.