The day before Independence Day, the ethanol industry lost an innovative promoter, tireless supporter, and to many of us, a good friend, when Greg Veerman died far too young at the age of 54 after a bout with a rare form of cancer. His name may not be well known to some people in the ethanol industry, but his work as creative director and owner of Astronaut Brand Studio shaped much of the way the outside world has perceived the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) for the last dozen years.
Greg first came to meet with ACE as we considered a website update and “rebrand” in 2013, and although I wasn’t sure what he was proposing (even after our meeting) I was fascinated by the way he proposed it. He clearly had plenty of knowledge about ACE, ethanol’s environmental and rural economic benefits, and our industry’s battles against detractors. More than all those things, however, it was clear Greg truly cared about all of the above. He was a textbook example of the adage, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” So, although we initially didn’t quite know what he wanted to do for us, we knew we wanted to keep talking to him about it.
At all our meetings, Greg emphasized the fact that when most people are asked who they trust for information about important things, their top answer is often “somebody like me.” Astronaut’s proposal to launch the new ACE brand featuring “personal, authentic stories from members and other people” matched Brian Jenning’s strategy of bringing members to DC for our annual fly-in, and ACE’s hiring of me away from a fuel marketing career to develop new ethanol markets by sharing my experiences with other petroleum marketers. ACE was doing the right things, and Greg helped us show website visitors and potential members what those things were.
After many, many meetings, Greg helped us focus our message, developing the “Power by People” campaign and the “Homeplace” video featuring ACE members and others explaining what ethanol means to them. He later helped us expand our market development efforts with the flexfuelforward.com website, highlighting the success stories of fuel marketers who made money selling higher ethanol blends before it was cool, and Greg was the creative force behind our advertising, most of our annual meeting themes and our most recent website upgrade.
I most admired Greg’s ability to take my droning about what I wanted to tell prospective marketers and condense those thoughts into a few words conveying the message as clearly as all my yammering. I want to believe that’s what Greg Veerman did by packing a lifetime of creativity, passion, and dedication to a cleaner, greener world, into a short 54 years.
My sympathies go out to his wife Jane and kids Gus, Jude, Oliver and Phoebe. He was proud of you and spoke about you often, and your husband, dad and our friend will be greatly missed.