What do you get when you cross an investment broker with a dentist, a toy maker and a University of Memphis associate professor of marketing?
You get a colorful card game called SMEAR, popping up in residence halls and community centers all over the area.
Dennis Dugan -- the investment broker who is also a U of M graduate -- was approached by Miguel Pulido, the dentist, with the idea of a patient, James Nelson, for a new card game.
Nelson said he was looking through a deck of playing cards one day when he noticed regular patterns forming. He added some colors to the cards, and SMEAR was the outcome. He said it took about 15 minutes to write the basic rules for the game, and about two weeks later he had come up with the version now being sold at local Walgreen's stores.
"It's simple fun," Nelson said. "But serious competitors could play on a real cutthroat level."
Pulido took Nelson's idea a step further. He approached Dugan with a rough production of the game. Although at first he was skeptical about the idea, Dugan said he became a believer.
Dugan said he decided the best way for him to help was to come up with a way to market the game. He remembered doing a marketing project in one of his classes, in which he designed a marketing approach for an imaginary product. He thought it would be helpful for both his new project and for the marketing students to design a marketing plan for a real product.
Gregory Boller, a U of M marketing professor, obliged.
Boller gave his students the job of creating a marketing plan, and the rest is history.
"It's not as good as UNO, but more fun than dominos," said Rachel Claiborne, a senior accounting major playing SMEAR in the Tiger Den on Tuesday.
The idea is to strategically play all cards according to their color while making it difficult for opponents to play their cards. The first player to play all his or her cards wins the hand. All of the other players add up point totals. After playing a minimum of three hands, the player with the lowest point total wins.
According to Nelson and Dugan, SMEAR has received mostly positive reviews, including a glowing endorsement from members of the Jewish Community Center in East Memphis.
Julie Roberts, a freshman physical education major, agreed with the game's proponents.
"I love this game," Roberts said. "It's just kind of natural."
To find out more about SMEAR, go to: www.smeargame.com/news.html.
