When Celebs Have Issues

In the 1990s, Sarah Haynes' On Board Entertainment emerged as a leading events marketing company for Nike, Sega, MTV and others, but as the calendars headed for Y2K, she found her focus turning toward activism.

She started with the Spitfire Tour, a national speaker series with Ralph Nader, Perry Farrell, Jello Biafra, Kenneth Cole, Dr. Drew and other notables discussing top global issues. The tour led to the creation of the Spitfire Agency, a full service production, promotion and marketing company dedicated to nonprofits and cause-related ventures. Spitfire has worked with artists including Linkin Park, Madonna, R.E.M and the Foo Fighters and has helped "green" some of the country's biggest music festivals.

When a celebrity has a cause that he or she cares about, Spitfire is often the organization that creates and executes the plan and puts their good intentions into action. If you have a major event that you want to make eco-friendly, Spitfire can make it happen. Spitfire is simply the company that gets it done, whatever "it" is. Haynes recently spoke with Tonic about her agency's impressive rise and its impact on the entertainment industry.

Tonic: Tell me about the first Spitfire Tour.
Sarah Haynes: [Rage Against the Machine's] Zack de la Rocha was having Thanksgiving dinner at my friend's house, and he said he felt people were listening to the music without entirely understanding the message. They have songs like "Killing in the Name" about the Zapatista Revolution that some people treated like a party anthem. Zack hoped to get the message out on important causes that he believes in, but he didn't want to preach at his concerts. He wanted to create something that was about activism and exposing issues. My friends told him I know how to package tours and that I love activism, so they called me to create it. It's funny because Zack got busy and never went to one of the tours. He was too overextended, but he wanted me to run with it. He gave me home phones for a bunch of his friends, like the Indigo Girls, and I went from there.

T: What about the issues tackled on that first tour?
SH: I am a major animal activist, and when originally talking with Zack, I thought of Woody Harrelson who had just done a video for PETA exposing Gillette's animal cruelty. I tried to get him involved in the animal issue, but he wanted to talk about hemp and the environment. Then I reached out to someone else, and they had a different set of issues. I never got the animal thing done on the first tour, but I heard all these issues that I hadn't thought about as much before. [Nirvana's] Krist Novoselic is just a library of information. He talked about different things every time. There were so many different perspectives, some I agreed with and some I didn't. We had Kennedy from MTV – we're dating ourselves here – and she spoke about the Cato Institute and also why we should privatize social security. We had lots of points of view, so there's always someone on the panel that other people didn't agree with.

T: Kennedy wants to privatize social security? I certainly wouldn't agree with that.

SH: Nobody agreed with her in terms of our panelists, but Kennedy is more of a Libertarian. She just believed people should have more control over their own dollars, but I'm with you, especially when you look at the market now and how that could have hurt a lot of people. It would be interesting to see what she'd say about it today.

T: How did you go from selling On Board Entertainment to starting the Spitfire Agency?

SH: I created On Board with a guy named Dan in spring of '95. We did it just for fun and to do interesting events. We merged sports and music even before there was the Warped Tour and the X-Games. We did snowboard festivals on the mountain with people doing big air jumps 50 feet away from Candlebox and Rancid performing. Over the years, it evolved into a youth marketing agency that produced events and helped corporations reach out to their demographics through fun programs. We became the agency of record for Nike and produced many of their U.S. events. [The transition point came after] I partnered with a radio station in Portland for a big snowboard festival and allowed them to sell a few sponsorships. Next thing I know, Slim Jim and the Army are there. It didn't feel right to me, and I certainly didn't feel good about killing animals and turning them into small Slim Jims. I don't want to promote that. Even with Nike, they were doing some great stuff environmentally but not as much in terms of human rights. I talked to my partner about taking the company in a different direction, and he was like, "You're the one changing. I don't agree, and I like Slim Jims." He was right. I was the one who changed. It's like in a marriage, if you have a major change in your life, you don't sue for everything you can get. You walk gracefully. So I sold my half to him and that's what I did.

T: In a nutshell, what is Spitfire's mission?

SH: Someone asked me my personal mission on an airplane once. I was working at On Board at the time, so I said, "We're a full-service production, promotion and marketing agency to the youth demographic." He said, "No, your mission? Why are you on this earth?" I was like, "Can I get back to you by the end of the flight?" I thought about it, and at the end of the flight I said, "My mission is to have a minimum impact on the planet and maximum impact on its people."

T: You got the Red Hot Chili Peppers to print their albums on hemp and flax. How did this happen?

SH: Woody Harrelson called and said, "I'm in town, come pick me up, I want to go to this Earth Day concert." I went to get him, and he said, "I'm going in this other car, you take my friends." His friends get in, and it's [the Chili Peppers'] Anthony Kiedis and Flea. I'm like, "Oh, hi! I know who you guys are." On the way to the concert, they asked about some posters they saw in the back, and I said, "They are printed on hemp and flax, and they are completely tree-free." They thought the posters looked really glossy and nice. They had seen recycled paper before that didn't look as good, but that's because the more you recycle the paper, the more the fibers break and don't absorb or hold as well. You need long fibers like hemp and flax. I explained it and challenged them to become the first band to make their entire record tree-free. I said, "It's not that hard to do, and it doesn't look any different. It might cost a few cents more per record, but you guys can afford it." They were like, "We'll think about it." I dropped them off behind the stage at the concert, and by the time I parked and got inside, they had jumped on stage and Anthony Kiedis was saying, "Flea and I decided our next record will be tree-free, and we're committing to it right here so we can't get out of it." When they got off stage, I said "You're going to do it!" and they said "No, you are! And it comes out in four weeks." I helped them do it, and with over 3 million CD booklets run right off the bat, the band saved 120,000 pounds of tree paper, or approximately 180 tons of trees from being cut.

T: What are things you do for festivals like Rothbury to make them greener?

SH: A lot of times a festival brings me in to change the merch to sweatshop-free and change plastic beer cups to corn and to color-code the trashcans. I do that for all kinds of festivals, but Rothbury called me when they were just starting. They wanted to create a concert that was a vehicle for a durable social movement. We wanted it to be more than just a concert with separate trashcans. We looked at everything and did it differently. For example, off-setting usually involves sending money to a wind farm that's nowhere near the local community, and while it's helpful, there's a little bit of a disconnect. So we did a green ticket and raised $70,000 to put solar panels on a local school. We also had a contract with the school board saying they couldn't take away the money that's saved on electricity. It had to go back into the school's programs, like music and arts.

T: On a smaller scale, what can individuals do to green their Fourth of July parties and summer BBQs?

SH: I would never support a product that hurts others so I would barbeque veggie burgers, but one of the most important things you can do is support organics – especially if it's meat. Try to buy foods that are local and organic. You can also set up basic compost trash and recycling with three different bags or cans. Encourage carpooling. Don't have a million water bottles. Instead, try to have one big water jug. Go for reusable plates, but for a disposable model, go with a compost cup and a sugarcane plate. Even if you don't compost them, you are voting with your dollars for a different sort of solution. There are issues with every product, like some are made with GMO crops or in China, but they are a step in the right direction. If nothing else, it's a step away from the wrong direction.

T: What sites do you recommend for buying green products for parties?

SH: I love working with EcoProducts.com. I buy in bulk, and they are the most professional. There's also Greenhome.com if you want to green your 300-person picnic.

T: What's next for Spitfire?

SH: I have projects I am not allowed to talk about yet, but I always try to push the envelope. We want to go further, not a lot of the same, so we're taking the next step.

For more information about Sarah Haynes and her company, visit www.SpitfireAgency.com.