By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, originally filed Wednesday, February 25, 2015
When veteran Fox 5 meteorologist Ken Cook was about to retire last year, he told me he planned to find some endorsement work now that he's out of the news business. He has found his first.
This week, Cook's ads representing accident attorney Scott Monge began airing on multiple networks - including his old home WAGA-TV, where he worked for 35 years. The commercials are certainly attention getting because they look at first like he's about to give a regular weather forecast.
But instead, he uses weather terms to tie in with how dangerous the world can be and how an attorney at Monge & Associates could help you out. These types of personal injury attorneys are common on daytime TV (think Ken Nugent: "One call, that's all!") and are mocked on the AMC show "Better Call Saul."
In one of the 15-second ads below, in front of a green-screen fake five-day forecasting screen, he says, "Weather forecasting is rarely 100 percent accurate but if you're caught in an accident, there's one law firm that offers you 100 percent satisfaction guaranteed."
Cook, in an interview, said he heard about the firm through a friend of a friend. "Hopefully, I generate some business for him and he'll have me back," he said.
Monge, in a follow-up interview Thursday, said he was willing to work with Cook because he "has a large following. He has people who grew up as children who watched him their whole life delivering the weather. The reaction has been positive. He's a straight shooter, a very honest guy, a really great guy. He has the valued that I have in my law practice. It seemed like a really nice fit."
Monge, who is based in Atlanta and has a 50-person law firm, has run ads on TV for more than a decade. He said his firm does personal injury as well as disability cases. "Our mission is to deliver a first-class VIP level of customer service for our clients by winning their cases. We firmly believe in treating our customers the same way we treat our friends and family."
Given Cook's love for landscaping and plants, he hopes to land a spokesman account with a place like Pike's.
Today, he's a volunteer weather advisor for Forsyth County, which will likely have three to six inches of snow tonight.
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