July 21, 2005 – A Lifetime in Public Relations

July 21, 2005 – A Lifetime in Public Relations

Fresh out of Cal State Fullerton with a degree in communications, one Ms. H. Golightly—not her real last name—came into our editorial office on Mary Avenue in Sunnyvale on Monday September 28, 1981. She had a marketing director from Century Data in tow. This was one of her first press tours after taking a job with Jansen Associates, a Newport Beach, California public relations firm. Golightly is your younger sister or at least what she reminded me of: cute as a button and extremely earnest about doing a good job. Besides fellow editors, PR people were the one group that you built close working relations with. They gave you access to people with full calendars and no time to deal with you if you didn’t have an appointment. They were the ones you had great meals with in really nice restaurants, most often with their clients telling you why their latest 8-in. hard drive was better than their competitors and you’re trying to look interested while minding your table manners when you really want to devour the Coq au Vin or some other such delicacy that the waiter has just deposited in front of you. Golightly’s favorite restaurant in Orange County is Antonello’s in the South Coast Plaza Shopping Center. Back then it had no competition. Further north in Anaheim there was The White House, which was Antonello’s equal if not better.

Golightly had a boyfriend, RK, back then whom I really liked. He was a DEC geek before the word “geek” had been invented. He owned a company that specialized in Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) add ons and software. DEC doesn’t exist anymore—having been absorbed by Compaq Computer Corp., which was subsequently eaten by Hewlett Packard. In the history of computing DEC was the company that miniaturized the mainframe computer producing the “minicomputer.” DEC began life in 1957, the brainchild of Ken Olson and Harlan Anderson, both ex-MIT grads working at Lincoln Labs. It produced the DEC PDP-8 (programmable data processor) in 1964—the first minicomputer with a price tag of $16,000, which became an instant hit with anyone in science and engineering. (It was a 12-bit computer.) DEC produced a book entitled “Processor Handbook” that included the instruction set, some basic information on computers and the PDP series specifically. The book, which was free to customers or would be customers, became a much sought after publication on college campuses and among aspiring computer nerds—I still have my copy. RK and a generation of his peers all started companies to feed off the industry emerging around the DEC architecture that began developing in the late 1960s early 1970s.

I had dinner with the two of them at a Moroccan restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway (California Highway 1) one evening. RK was an easygoing fellow who seemed to be conflicted about his life. He was a reluctant entrepreneur, a computer nerd being forced into being a businessman. He confessed that he had so lost sight of the technology that he had become a “user.” In techno-speak, it was a slight as obviously you were no longer conversant with the machine. In addition, the responsibility for the welfare of his employees was weighing on him. He kept talking about running off to Baja to make a living off the sea or some such scheme. There were many CEO like RK in the DEC add-on business. Another CEO I met in Chatsworth, AD was a Naval officer who left the service to start his enterprise. He had a full bar in the basement of the company’s office building. After business hours employees had access to the full bar, complements of the company. I can’t recall who tended bar. AD confided in me that he had more than one employee who spent too much time at the bar and he felt a bit responsible for encouraging their habit. Both RK and AD were anti-CEOs, who built their company while maintaining a certain unorthodoxy that separated them from Big Blue with its legions of dark-suited, white-shirted, wing-tip-shod professionals. I liked these guys because they didn’t take themselves too seriously. Unfortunately they and most all their peers went the way of DEC.

During another visit in Orange County less than a year later, RK had gone and Golightly was heartbroken, though you would never know it during the meeting she had arranged for me. I learned of RK’s flight afterwards as we chatted before I had to run off to another meeting. Golightly bounced back and six months or so later she again walked into our editorial offices on Mary Avenue with a CEO in tow. His name was CM and he had taken over the helm of a major reel-to-reel tape drive manufacturer. CM was a Brit and after we chatted briefly in our offices, Golightly suggested we finish our conversation over lunch—the Lion & Compass. As we leave the building I offer to drive only to have Golightly point us all to a waiting stretch limo she had hired to haul CM and her to the appointments throughout the day. I rolled my eyes at her and she explained that this eliminated the need for rental car and the possibility of getting lost—the driver had been given the itinerary in advance. Not only was it practical, it was precisely the perk that made CM take note of Golightly’s efficiency.

Somewhere toward the latter part of the 1980s, Golightly’s clients no longer had a need for the magazine I worked for. I didn’t realize it but my publication was increasingly being marginalized by the new crop of publications formed to serve the rapidly developing personal computer market. Savvy PR people like Golightly were adapting and building relationships with the next generation of editors. When my oldest daughter ME graduated high school and began attending UC Irvine, Golightly had gone to work for another advertising and PR agency. When I had occasion to speak with her she mentioned that the agency needed part time help and I suggested my daughter, who interviewed and got the job. The two have kept in touch ever since. During that time, Golightly found a great guy, got married, and had a son, who is now grown. Golightly has since become an independent consultant with her own agency: a lifetime in just over a 1,000-words.