June 26, 2005 – Spinning Apple to the Press 1978

June 26, 2005 – Spinning Apple to the Press 1978

It’s a little before 9:00 AM on Sunday, April 16, 1978. I’m aboard Trans World Airlines Flight 842 departing SFO en route to JFK for a weeklong press tour. These tours have become part of my life at Regis McKenna Advertising and Public Relations, where I’m an account executive. I’m traveling with FR, a new marketing director at the agency’s one home computer client, Apple, one of three competitors—PET and Radio Shack TRS80 the others—vying to sell computers into the “home market,” which included anyone buying a computer for personal use. We’re visiting trade magazines in Manhattan, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Boston. I’m looking back through my “Week at a Glance” appointment book for 1978 and the 9½ by 6 inch notebook I carried with at all times. The notebook was and remains the diary of my everyday life.

The week before the trip, a notebook entry on April 12th shows that I changed the Sunday April 16th reservation at the Hotel St. Regis in Manhattan—the agency’s hotel of choice in the city—from a suite to two single rooms and that I booked my traveling companion and me at the Philadelphia Sheraton Hotel for the evening of Monday April 17th. My notes also indicate that we would depart SFO for JFK on Sunday morning, spend Monday in Manhattan, fly to Philadelphia on Monday evening—no flight details for the trip to Philly, where we would spend all of Tuesday and fly to Boston on Allegheny Airlines Flight 26 that evening. We were scheduled to return from Boston's Logan Airport to LaGuardia on Wednesday evening—most likely on the Eastern Airline Shuttle, returning to the St. Regis and two more days of visits in and around Manhattan.

We arrived just after 5:00 Sunday evening, rented a car, drove into Manhattan and checked into the St Regis. Once we got settled we decided to go out for dinner. As we boarded the elevator we came face to face with three people already inside. The one man in the middle of the three-some was humming a Beatles tune. He gazed at us as we entered and asked if we knew the name of the song. I was stunned not by the request but by the man making the request. It was Salvador Dali, himself with a woman companion—his wife Gala, no doubt—and another man. All three were stylishly dressed but the only one I remember was Dali. The St. Regis is the original Beaux Arts classic landmark Colonel John Jacob Astor IV built in 1904, and was home to a number of international celebrities including Dali and his wife Gala. I said I didn’t know the song title and then asked aren’t you Salvador Dali? He nodded and I offered to shake his hand and he reciprocated. I said my name and how pleased I was to share the elevator with him. By the time the exchange was completed, the elevator had reached the ground floor and we all departed with a cordial “enjoy your evening.” FR and I left for dinner at the Brasserie Restaurant at 100 E 53rd Street; something the doorman suggested when we checked in. (It has since become my favorite restaurant in Manhattan.)

Public relations is about managing events: setting up appointments, getting their on time, exploiting the commitments that result from the meetings, and following up to ensure the commitments that both sides make are fulfilled. (For making all this happen with a minimum of conflict and aggravation to the client, a good account executive could charge $50/hour to $100/hour depending on seniority.) We had three meetings on Monday. The first was 9:30 with Bill Hawkings, Electronics Editor with Popular Science Magazine at 380 Madison Avenue. The second was with Don Mennie, Associate Editor, of IEEE Spectrum Magazine at 345 East 47th Street. The third—and the reason we needed the rental car—was with Larry Altman, Editor of Electronic Design at 50 Essex Street in Rochelle Park, New Jersey.

At each of these stops, FR would roll out his color-slide, flip chart presentation in a 3-ring notebook. We had slides to be displayed on an overhead projector for a large audience. He went through his prepared remarks announcing the new BASIC Language Programming Manual being made available to all Apple owners—copies were made available to each editor requesting a copy as well. From there the presentation recapped existing peripheral product for our home computer, a new floppy disk drive that turned the computer into a device anyone could use rather than the hobbyist that had been the primary buyer until now. The combination of the BASIC Language Programming Manual and the floppy disk meant a whole new breed of user had now been enfranchised: game and program developers who had a medium—the floppy disk—they could use to sell their work. And the number who did just that exploded in the wake of the announcement. Computer retail outlets and computer faires all over the country began seeing 5¼-in. floppy disks containing every conceivable game and end application program—checkbook, recipe, etc. available for purchase.

We completed our presentations in the Manhattan area, drove back to the JFK, returned the rental car and made a 6:45 PM flight to Philadelphia to attend the Mini Micro Show going on at the Philadelphia Civic Center Conference Facility along University Avenue in Philadelphia. It’s gone now, demolished in 2001. After paying our $30 fee each to get into the conference, we met with Andy Santoni of Electronic Design Magazine and editors from EDN Magazine and Electronic Engineering Times magazines. We also managed to get in front of Gene Castellano of the Philadelphia News Daily, and Dick Pothier of the Philadelphia Enquirer. Trade show meetings are the toughest to plan because people invariably get tied up and run late or have last minute changes in their plans and fail to show. We were lucky. All our meetings happened though some not with the editors we had expected.

The great marketing problem for my home computer client was understanding who the typical buyer of the machine was. In hindsight, it’s easy to see that most of the buyers were engineers and programmers who were using the low-cost computers to control some electromechanical equipment—soft drink dispensers, gasoline pumps, the list goes on. Smart people simply used the computers to solve problems that larger more expensive machines previously made prohibitive. Some solutions lent themselves to mass production—gasoline pumps, others—controlling cameras in action movies—didn’t. The other buyers were programmers who were creating software. The most successful early application program was VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, created by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, two college students in Boston. It turned the home computer into a personal computer—a productivity tool for a whole generation of MBA middle managers in every major corporation in the U.S. and Europe. The machines were cheap enough that individuals could buy them like they would an expensive Hewlett-Packard or Texas Instruments calculator—what they had been using until VisiCalc came along.

To reach this broad undefined market, the PR campaign had to be as extensive as possible. Thus, we were meeting with tech magazines like those on Monday and Tuesday. Now, Tuesday evening as we flew into Boston Logan Airport we were planning to meet on Wednesday with software magazines read by programmers working with far more expensive minicomputers and mainframes: Computerworld and Datamation. Of the two we were able to meet with Frank Vaughn, Assistant Editor of Computerworld at 797 Washington Street in Newton, Mass. We then drove to Boston for an extended meeting with EDN and Electronic Business at their headquarters on 221 Columbus Avenue. This meeting would end up with FR getting them a computer to evaluate for a couple of months, something the magazine was known for back then. An article or series of articles would result, some not always saying what the company wanted to hear. We finished the day visiting with Computer Design 11 Goldsmith Street in Littleton, Mass. my alma mater, meeting with John Camuso, my old boss.

That evening we flew back to New York and returned to the St Regis, where Regis himself was in residence. He was in the city to meet with the major business publications. He and I spoke briefly by phone but otherwise, he went his way and FR and I went ours. Thursday morning we had another schedule that had us running in and out of the city. The first was with CMP Publications, then based at 333 East Shore Road in Manhasset on Long Island. We met with two different magazines: John Tsantes, Editor, and Margie Stengler, Assistant Editor at Electronic Engineering Times and Richard Hoffmann, Managing Editor and Steve Gray, Assistant Editor at Computer Systems News—a great newspaper that thrived in the early days of the home computer/personal computer market. These meetings resulted in another request for a computer to evaluate, something I would be pulled into expediting in the following weeks. The day concluded back in Manhattan with a meeting at Consumer Electronics Monthly, on 327 East 75th Street, with Associate Editor, Jane LeFevre.

Friday we had two meetings that ended the week. We met with Neil Shapiro, Technical Editor at Elementary Electronics at 229 Park Avenue South in the city at 9:30. Next we moved on to Popular Mechanics Magazine at 224 W. 57th Street where we met with Steve Walton Contributing Editor. With these magazines, we hoped to reach the broad general public to build awareness of computers among the masses. These were the traditional magazines that covered the latest consumer audio and video components. The home computer was yet another consumer electronics device every home had to have—that was our pitch. It was a long week that ended on a long flight back and late arrival into San Francisco. Fridays were and remain the worst days to fly because everyone else is doing the same thing.

Every trip is a journey of discovery. For me, each one taught me that my limits were always just beyond my latest striving. This one was no different. I had managed to keep the schedule, managed to get everyone excited about working on some project together. The client was happy and I had just created 20 or so new tasks I had to complete before the individuals who had committed to the tasks lost interest in them. Journalists notoriously have a short attention span. I would have to begin work over the weekend getting some letters written to follow up our visits and confirm in writing what everyone had agreed to verbally. If commitments are not on paper they don’t exist. In the larger picture, the client was getting what he wanted and needed, awareness among the media, which would ultimately translate into awareness among the masses.