In 10 years as Feld VP of corporate communications, Steve Payne quickly identifies the biggest story of his career there.
“Clearly, the transition of elephants from the circus to Ringling Bros. Center for Elephant Conservation — we broke the internet with that announcement. It was a huge change,” Payne said.
Feld Entertainment announced last year that they would take the elephants off the road by 2018, a decision that was moved up and took place in May 2016.
The story that has spanned a long period of time, it’s the elephants, from defending them to retiring them, he said.
“It was a bittersweet decision,” he said of the Feld family’s deliberation. “I was at the last engagement with elephants in Providence, R.I., in May, and when we saw that last gray tail go through the curtains for one last time, that’s when it became real. I get goosebumps just talking about it. This is not just a change in the show, you are a witness to history. A moment in time and a special event that will never happen again.”
Admittedly, he underestimated the interest level. “It was one of the top trending English language stories on the planet,” Payne said.
In January 2017, they may have topped it with the announcement the circus, both the red and blue units, would close for good this May.
Payne was still juggling that media event when Venues Today went to press. But one thing was certain. Elephants will always be part of the Feld world and will always be news, from protecting them from extinction to researching a cure for cancer through a million years of elephant genetics at the Center for Elephant Conservation, the Felds will always keep elephants in the mix — and so will Payne.
First and foremost, it is for the elephants, he said. Kenneth Feld once joked, but with a lot of clarity to the remark, that the Center for Elephant Conservation is Jurassic Park with a happy ending, referring to the book and movie about the loss of an island dedicated to preserving dinosaurs.
The cancer project is stunning, Payne said. The research articles are one of the top read Journal of American Medical Association articles of all time. “We broke the internet with that one, too.”
