June 2, 2005 – The Gray Flannel Suit Didn’t Fit

June 2, 2005 – The Gray Flannel Suit Didn’t Fit

I’ve mentioned in the past that I did a little over a year in the PR department of an advertising and public relations firm. The company was located at 348 Waverley Street in Palo Alto, California. The agency was housed in a flat roof—Frank Lloyd Wright imitation—office building at the northwest corner of Waverley and Lytton Avenue. It’s been demolished and a much larger office complex built in its place. The original building was a single story structure with an entrance on Waverley. From the sidewalk you entered a square courtyard, which the building surrounded. To the right as you entered was the advertising agency with the artists and designers occupying the entire wing of the building. Ad agency account executives and accounting occupied the section of the building directly across from the entrance. The office of the President and CEO with the company’s large conference room took up the left corner of the structure farthest from the entrance. The remainder of the left side of the office complex was where the PR department was located. Finally, the part of the building immediately to the left of the entrance had a separate entrance on Waverley. It housed a small agency subsidiary that did collateral materials—brochures, signs, logos, and other graphics a client might need that wasn’t produced as part of a print ad.

I was brought into the agency by an older PR guy, named BB, who had just been hired from a Dallas-based semiconductor company. His charter was to bring new account executives on board as the agency was in the midst of a growth spurt. There were three of us who joined about the same time. One was an Indian fellow named NK, who had worked for a large PR agency back east—I want to say Cleveland. The second fellow was an immaculately dressed, good-looking young man, RW who had come from an agency in Orange County. He drove a nice car—an older Mercedes Diesel I seem to recall. I was the nerd from a trade magazine with only nine months of experience being an editor, who drove a 1974 stripped down Toyota Corolla. What I had going for me was I understood all the technology. I could perform the account executive function: meet with the client, produce a PR plan for a product rollout, execute the plan, and even write the release and background material. On really major product announcements the president had an ex-editor, GS, with years of writing experience. His only job was to hack copy. He sat at a manual typewriter—an old Underwood, I seem to remember—for hours on end and cranked out copy. It was great copy, too, that told a compelling story. Magazines could easily have printed his work unedited but most of them edited it to put their scent on the piece. There was an office manager GL, a wonderful black-haired older Italian beauty who managed all the overlooked details.

The agency was a work in progress when I started, which is what attracted me to the place in the first place. There were very few formal procedures for handling PR. I learned as I went, largely by reacting to requests from the clients in the beginning. I had been given the agency’s large semiconductor company as well as the now famous home computer start-up to handle. A 6 by 9 1/2 –in 150-sheet college notebook from my time at the agency contains all of my meeting notes beginning February 14, 1978. The pages are written in ink and contain the names of the product manager and others attending the meeting, technical details discussed along with diagrams in some cases, as well as the strategy for announcing the product. Most of my notes from meetings with my largest client contained all the information I would need to construct a press release as well as create a rollout plan for the product. Some entries were remarks jotted in haste.

For example, on February 15, 1978, I have notes from a meeting with AM, the CEO of the home computer start-up. The scribbling shows the names of venture capitalists, who had just invested collectively a million dollars in the company. I was to produce a press release on the investment, mentioning the names of the investors—regular Fortune magazine readers would readily recognize each of them. I’m instructed not to disclose the amount of the investment, nor any estimate of the start-up’s valuation. I am to imply that it’s a large investment. I’m to write the release in such a way that the start-up appears on its way. “Paint a picture of a small company getting big backing because the investors see the potential for a huge home computer market.” In retrospect, these words are prophetic.

PR has never been well defined though it’s becoming more so now. The idea of product placement in movies, for example, was something that was largely ad hoc. Now, it’s a separate communications discipline. My first experience happened on February 21, 1978. The entry in my notebook lists an independent Hollywood television producer, WS. He created the kind of features independent television stations air on a Saturday afternoon—a journey to an exotic island in the Pacific with voice over by a well-known actor. WS would get his travel to and from the location paid for by an airline carrier in return for featuring them in the program, likewise the hotel, limousine service and/or travel guide. WS would make his money selling the feature to syndicates who would sell it to television stations in the U.S. and overseas markets. He had contacted my home computer client requesting the loan of a machine to be featured in one of his upcoming productions. The request had gone directly to AM. He had been told that the system would be featured along with a much more expensive minicomputer from a major northern California computer company. AM had his assistant call the computer company who verified the claim. I was to take the system to Hollywood and deliver it to WS.

I found WS at his home in the Hollywood hills—the house had a stunning view of LA spread out below. A handsome, well-dressed man, WS answered the door and bade me enter. Inside the walls were covered with pictures of actors and actresses shaking his hand or embracing him. The living room and den where I set the computer up both had lots of furniture and souvenirs from Southeast Asia, a grand piano, expensive ceramic art works… WS had quite a collection of expensive items acquired over his lifetime. I liked WS immediately. He had a warm charming manner. After I completed my set-up and showed him how the computer operated—I doubted he would ever operate it himself since there were people who did that sort of thing—he talked about his project. A well-known Star Trek actor would host a production he had entitled “Space Age.” The actor would appear in different sets each featuring different pieces of high tech equipment. He would explain what these devices would do for all of us in the new “space age.” The production was nearly complete and would air sometime in 1979.

A year later, WS still had the machine and nothing had come of “Space Age.” WS wasn’t scamming anyone. He was simply working in Hollywood time. The only problem with “Space Age” being delayed was the technology, like today’s hot fashions, would quickly age as new models came out to replace the old. I doubt the production was ever completed. I’m sure my client wrote the system off. When I left the agency the home computer client was on its way to being a major force in this emerging market. And by the time of my departure, the agency had finally begun to instill a process on the PR function. A professional manager had been brought in, an ex-Marine, who understood how to create a discipline organization that could improve productivity and thus enhance billings. As for me, I was tired, exhausted chasing a treadmill that increased its speed the faster I ran. Then there was this thing about power. I wanted to return to a job that gave me the power of writing about something the way I chose rather than having to craft messages my clients wanted.

My departure from the agency was a stroke of good PR in itself, not something I did. The agency had a reputation for high turnover and the president was a sensitive guy, who saw these departures as a slight. The editor who hired me was a very charming fellow and a good friend of the agency’s president. He convinced my old boss that it was best for his business having me as an editor. The argument must have worked since my old boss and I still exchange e-mail. The editor who hired me—he passed away a while back—will be the topic of another blog.