A Shot In The Dark

EMC Insurance Cos. insists it absolutely did not intend its new $52 million office building in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, to look like a giant vodka bottle. But when the building is lit up at night, it looks like an Absolut ad. “We wanted to make an impact, but this was not what we had in mind,” said Don Klemme, EMC vice president. Absolut in recent years has run a series of ads featuring images of its bottle cast as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, but the Des Moines promotion didn’t cost Absolut a thing. “I’m sure that EMC, being a casualty insurer, probably would just as soon not have the publicity,” said Rod Nelson, who was in charge of the building project for Brooks Borg Skiles Architecture Engineering.