About Rich Moret

Rich has spent close to 50 years in the advertising agency business. But along the way, he has also taught English in high school, marketing in college and been a VISTA Volunteer in New York City.

After graduating with a BA in English from Amherst College (where he won the annual poetry award), Rich moved to Chicago and used his poetry talent to land his first job as an advertising copywriter. Soon after, he was offered a dream copywriting job at an advertising agency in Hawaii – where he was also schooled in account service, media placement and billing by Dave Park (later to become president of DDB – LA). During his five years in the Aloha State, Rich worked with many major hotels and tourist attractions as well as car dealers, developers (Maui’s first condominium) and consumer electronics giant Toshiba (for which he created the slogan they used worldwide for over 25 years: “In touch with tomorrow”).

In 1975, Rich moved back to Tucson and was soon hired to run the Tucson office of Arizona’s first statewide advertising agency, Owens & Associates. That office was later to become Owens/Moret and, finally, Moret & Associates Advertising.

In the over 40 years that Rich has been in the advertising business in Tucson, he has had the privilege of handling a wide variety of clients – including some “firsts”:

• PimaCare – one of the country’s first HMO’s (and the first to switch from just B2B advertising to consumer advertising – using television).
• Papago Bingo - one of the country’s first Indian casinos (and the first casino – using a strategy that I created - to “break” the federal statutes against promoting gaming on radio, TV or through the mail).
• Canyon Ranch (national) – one of the world’s first spas, part of the early challenge was to communicate to travel agents what a spa was – and why their wealthy clients needed one. This was initially done through the creative use of direct mail – with an invitation to “Send your clients where they’ll lose their asses”.
• KVOA Eyewitness News – before local stations had in-house promotion directors – and before they thought of hyping news features – the late Jon Ruby (GM of KVOA) and Rich Moret teamed up (to be the first in Tucson to put news anchors on billboards, to run ads in TV Guide and shoot on-location videos promoting “provocative” news segments).
• Wood Bros. Homes (Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico) – the first to put a “life-size” reproduction of a home on billboards (besides winning numerous awards for this, it helped sell a lot of homes).
• Estes Homes – the first and only homebuilder in Tucson to “own” the market with total sales of over 32,000 homes before they sold to a national firm.
• Jim Click and Tuttle/Click Automotive (Tucson and Orange County) – initiated the “Maintenance for Life” concept for every used car.
• Cottonwood de Tucson (national and international) – one of the first treatment centers to advertise in The Wall Street Journal and high-end inflight magazines.

Other major clients handled over the years include: Cienega Homes (winning the country’s top advertising award from the National Association of Homebuilders), Pulte Homes (Arizona), Loews Ventana Canyon Resort (national), Barona Casino (San Diego), Casino del Sol, Old Tucson, Tucson Medical Center, Biosphere 2 (national), the AIC campus of the University of Arizona (Arizona), St. Gregory Preparatory School, San Miguel High School, National Bank of Arizona (Arizona), Adobe Air/MasterCool Evaporative Coolers (national),Weiser Lock (national) and both the Copper Bowl and current Arizona Bowl. In addition, Rich has handled many major political campaigns and prominent local politicians (including the late Mayor Lew Murphy and late Congressman Jim McNulty) as well as all 4 terms of the last County Attorney (Steve Neely) and current County Attorney (Barbara LaWall) and more recently Supervisors Steve Christy and Sharon Bronson. In 1984, a TV spot Rich created for McNulty was chosen by The Today Show as the best political commercial in the country.

Some of the countless boards Rich has served on include: United Way, Ad Fed, 88-CRIME (former president), Tucson Classics (co-founder of the Michael Landon Celebrity Tennis Classic), Boys Chorus, St. Gregory, Amity (former president), America Israel Friendship League and Pima Community College Foundation.

Besides winning countless creative awards, Rich has been recognized as United Way’s “Volunteer of the Year”, the Ad Fed’s “Advertising Person of the Year” and, in 2010, was awarded the highest honor of the American Advertising Federation: its “Silver Medal” (or lifetime achievement award).