What difference does it make?

I am getting a little weary of the plethora of networking opportunities in this town. I realize that it beats the heck out of stewing over things in isolation. Still, I’m banging away at blogs (three of my own and as a guest contributor for three others); I’m a member of a professional networking group that meets twice a month, I belong to another that has giant gatherings (of 100 or more people) monthly; I meet routinely with at least three companies that are partner-prospects; I am a board member for an industry association (local chapter); I am a volunteer and a member of two civic organizations. In spite of it all, I don’t see progress. But wait a minute:

A reader of one of my blogs asked for some help with a blog of her own.

An occupational therapist I met at a networking meeting happened to be a great fit with another friend that works with families with special needs.

The giant networking event lead me to a recruiter who was able to help a young man land his first job. He did it, but he needed that introduction to be considered. I was happy to facilitate it.

I have participated in too many projects as part of new business pitches but it only takes one to make that all worthwhile. Such was the case for a manufacturer who asked me to help them with a new product launch.

A student I met at an industry association function was thrilled to participate in one of my committees as a guest. (Who knows, it could be just the break/exposure he needed to eventually get his first job in advertising?)

One of the civic organizations asked me to speak and that resulted in an opportunity to share my topic with MBA students at a local college. (No idea where that might lead.)

And every once in a while my worlds collide and I can match a problem with a solution. I know a guy, a company, a place, a thing, a formula or an approach that will be just the thing that helped solve a puzzle.
 

Okay, now that I think of it…it is a kind of progress.     

Engineered to Last

Frontenac Engineering Honors Pittzman’s 150 Years

Engineering the future with a nod to the past.

William (Bill) Berthold returns to his offices located at 2725 Sutton Boulevard, on an unseasonably cool summer day in late August, in the business district of Maplewood (MO).He’s just back from a meeting across the river that ran a bit long. He’s gracious and apologetic at the same time. The scheduled lunch meeting was set to discuss the remarkable history his company. Frontenac Engineering was acquired from his Uncle in 1991. He is quick to get to the business of our meeting. He wants to make sure up front that he is particularly proud of the capable staff in place at Frontenac Engineering. Frontenac Engineering and Pitzman’s Company combined have twenty (20) dedicated employees. But the part of his business he wants to talk about most is the history that came with the acquisition that made him the owner of one of St. Louis area most enduring brand names in the land surveying: Pitzsman’s Company.

“I just didn’t want this reputable brand to vanish,” says Bill Berthold. “The history of Pitzman’s Company is contained in countless volumes of carefully preserved city documents in the vault at Frontenac Engineering. They are cataloged and cross referenced in what we like to call Pitzman’s Coffin. The Coffin is a simple wooden box with land maps and a numbering system arranged neatly in the bin for cross reference to numbered volumes stacked nearby. Bill is like a kid in a candy store when he gestures toward the bound volumes in the vault. “I love this stuff.” says Bill, on this, another nickel tour of the space they’ve occupied since1996. “We are looking at the oldest and best records in the city,” adds Bill Berthold. “We want the brand name to live on alongside Frontenac Engineering because we are committed to the same values that are so apparent in the story of the success and quality of the Pitzman’s Company. Who knows, maybe people will look at both company brand names in another 150 years and point to a similarly impressive body of evidence. I hope so”     

Pittsman’s Company of Surveyors and Engineers was established in 1859 by Julius Pitzman who’s own history offers insight into the country and the St. Louis region. Pitzman’s Company data, analysis, land surveying and engineering are now in the hands of the Frontenac Engineering twenty person-staff. They are dedicated to all aspects of real estate and land development.

The founder, Julius Pittzman, was the son of Frederick G and Amalia (Ebert) Pitzman and born in Halberstadt, Prussia in 1837. He moved to America in the 1850’s with his mother and lived in Milwaukee before moving to St. Louis. He served as deputy county surveyor of St. Louis before engaging in the general practice of surveying. He was commissioned at the outbreak of the Civil War and eventually was appointed by William T. Sherman as chief topographical engineer.

Julius was one of the prime movers in advocating Forest Park and was considered something of a real estate expert being a pioneer in developing land with deed restrictions. The notion of land development with deed restrictions in Pitzman’s day, was thought impossible by prominent Attorneys under American laws at the time. Much of what Pitzman developed has become the model by which many of the great cities in the United States owe a debt today.

Berthold recognizes the awesome responsibility of keeping the memory and history alive. As President of Frontenac Engineering, he himself is a registered professional engineer and land surveyor (in Missouri and Illinois). He has over 20 years of experience but is humbled by the massive amounts of records he now controls from the legacy of Julius Pitzman. Recounting the story of the acquisition of the Pitzman’s Company, Bill reports that he simply contacted the company at the right time. He reached Roy Leimberg, President of the of Pitzman’s Company, to inquire about interest in selling. To his surprise Roy responded “So you saw our ad in Surveyors Magazine offering the Business for Sale.” Stunned that the company was available, Berthold arranged financing and finished the deal in 2005. “Roy had become the owner of Pitzman’s and had been an employee for 52 years at the time of that negotiation. Call it a confluence of events and a bit of serendipity. I feel very fortunate in this whole thing. Pitzman’s Company is a great fit with the company. We want to be as we continue to grow. In particular, I was happy to be dealing with the graceful influence of Roy Leimberg. You just can’t give a guy like that enough credit for the company traditions of excellence and carrying the legacy forward.”

“Frontenac Engineering with Pitzman’s Company is a perfect complement to our business. We concentrate on Land Surveying, Contract Administration and Civil and Structural Engineering. I’m delighted to be the guardian of this historic company legacy,” says Berthold, adding “Better me than one of our competitors. We’re going to do everything we can to live up to this history that dates back more than 150 years. “I think we’ll have a painting of our founder commissioned in his Civil War era uniform. I’m pretty sure my uncle would understand.” 

Fast Times in Fast Food

Chapter Six

Herb, Hank, and Frank

My successful tour on the Pepsi account with Tracy-Locke, eventually (not smoothly or naturally), led to a big job offer at BBDO/New York the sister agency of Tracy-Locke. Regional marketing at Tracy-Locke had given me the opportunity to roll my sleeves up in the cola wars in New York, New Jersey and even for a stint in Los Angeles where I was challenged to deliver “cross fertilization” of ideas. I had been successful in the (arguably) more competitive eastern markets like New Jersey and Philadelphia where stores tend to be smaller and shelf space was at a greater premium.

Now, BBDO wanted someone who had success dealing with the demanding Pepsico culture to lead Kids’ Marketing and New Product Development for its Pizza Hut Restaurant Chain. (Pepsico has since spun off their restaurant businesses.) I jumped at the opportunity but this was an ill-fated move for me from the beginning. For starters, New Yorkers know nothing about Pizza Hut pizza. They wouldn’t be caught dead in a Pizza Hut for fear their friends would think they’d lost their mind. New York is full of Pizza snobs. They buy pizza by the slice at Mom & Pop shops. Franchise pizza, never. These were the same people who were expected to create advertising for the chain. It’s not important to have a passion for the product you handle. However, complete disdain is not good either.

I was at BBDO long enough to be involved in a deal with Nickelodeon that would combine a long term media buy with a series of commercials featuring “Hank and Frank” in a series of funny TV spots. Hank and Frank were brothers who were trying to convince mom and dad to take them to Pizza Hut on Tuesday Night (Kids’ Night at Pizza Hut). The reasoning was sound enough. Get kids to drive purchases (family dining occasions) on a specific off-peak weeknight. BBDO is an exciting place to work especially for art directors and writers. It is the largest agency in America where “Creative is King.” Meaning: It’s a place where ideas are nurtured and supported above all else. The consequence of this philosophy is that clients must want blockbuster hits every time. And they must also be willing to pay for it. Phil Duesenberry lead the agency’s creative ranks and had become a star with Pepsico. I’m writing this account more than 10 years after my experience at BBDO. I’m not sure to this day why I was cut from that team. It could be that an important client had “asked me off the business” (a brutal but very real and all too common career crisis in advertising). Or after a few short months the creative culture at BBDO didn’t see me as passionate enough. It could be that I was too anxious to catch the train home to my family in New Jersey at that stage in my life. 

While at J. Walter Thompson, years earlier, I had a stint on another quick service restaurant concept, Burger King. The agency was working its way through a flop TV campaign featuring a Nerdy character called Herb who had never tasted a Burger King Whopper. The campaign got clobbered. McDonald’s was running hard-hitting product oriented advertising that generated product trial. I was scheduled to relocate to JWT in San Francisco and work out of the office there. The move was delayed several times pending management approvals. Because of my scheduled move I became aware of client problems in the Western part of the country which appeared to be systemic of an agency-client relationship growing stale. That’s when I managed to make a graceful exit to the Matchbox Toy account across town. That move was timely indeed. I was slated to be among the 55+ employees to get the ax upon the announcement that Burger King was taking its $200MM+ account elsewhere after nearly 8 years at J. Walter Thompson. (Beautiful timing, huh?)

So, in essence I have worked on two of the nation’s largest Quick Service Restaurant Chain accounts for a sum total of less than one year. What a business. I left J. Walter Thompson in 1986 in the midst of the biggest account shift in advertising history to that point. I left BBDO in 1990 under a cloud I have difficulty explaining to this day. I’ve come to view the advertising business as a cruel game of musical chairs. You either lose your chair because you’re not quick enough or someone pulls it out from under you. Or you simply become uncomfortable in your seat (for any number of reasons). BBDO pulled my chair out from under me. I was dismissed from the biggest job I’d had to that point in my career.

Losing your job in advertising is all too common. There are a million and one reasons you can lose your job. The easiest one to understand is due to account loss. (e.g. “We’ve just lost over $200,000,000 in billings because Burger King wants to take its business elsewhere. We’re gonna have to make some cuts”.) The stated reason I lost my job at BBDO was: “Casting is critical.” Imagine that. BBDO apparently believes that account guys can be called up from central-casting and plugged in to manage a $40 Million Dollar account. No kidding. That’s what they told me. “Nothing personal Wes, but in this business casting is critical.” They hired me to manage clients in a culture they assumed would be most similar to what I was used to from Pepsico. They did little or nothing to make me feel comfortable at BBDO. I was a bad fit. Next!

That really stung. I was living in New Jersey, home of the nation’s highest automobile insurance rates, in a house in South Orange I couldn’t afford, with responsibility for two kids and a wife. It was time to evaluate options and do some serious soul-searching. This was the first time I ever had to collect unemployment compensation. A humiliating yet necessary indignity. I knew I had to consider a revised career plan. I read What Color is Your Parachute? and How to get a Better Job, Quicker. I perused through dozens of other books on related topics. I paid a career counselor to help me sort out my skill-set and consider options outside of the advertising business. I was a prize fighter on the mat trying to get up for another round. I had to. And I refused to be defeated as a mis-cast advertising man.

Sweeney's Revenge

Chapter Seven

Advertising to a Professional Audience -

Sweeney’s Revenge

The books, the career counselor and the soul-searching helped me come to this conclusion: I love advertising. I wanted to stay in the ring. But I can change the venue. I was persuaded to join a smaller agency in New Jersey with a niche expertise in health care products. Sweeney & Partners was set in the rolling hills of Montvale, New Jersey in a modest office park kind of neighborhood. It seemed a million miles from the rat-race of Midtown Manhattan. Tom Sweeney is President and principal owner of the company. He is a real life entrepreneur. His background includes an undergraduate degree from Notre Dame, dropping out of medical school and a first job as a detail man for a large drug manufacturer. This background and his entrepreneurial spirit added up to a formula for success as niche marketing specialist catering to over-the counter (OTC) and ethical pharmaceutical companies – of  which there is no shortage in New Jersey. Tom Sweeney caught me at the right time with an offer that hinted at autonomy, growth and maybe an equity stake down the road. Tom preached the advantages of specialized, integrated marketing. He hated big agencies. I was hooked. I was already convinced that a change of venue was a good idea and I was excited about being a bigger fish in a smaller pond. I accepted a position as an Account Group Supervisor managing the Richardson-Vicks and Pfizer accounts at Sweeney & Partners. I bit the bullet on salary in exchange for the prospect of a less complicated agency environment and the implied equity carrot. Sweeney & Partners is an entrepreneurial organization built around the strengths of its founder. Tom Sweeney had a formula that could be customized for all of his accounts. He was able to offer a value that bigger agencies didn’t have the energy or desire to provide. He, by virtue of his background, understands what it takes to help relatively junior marketing managers in giant drug companies. He knows how to guide these “low branches” with his bag of tricks. In a nutshell, he could offer his clients significant value and beat the big advertising agencies. And make a tidy profit too. Here’s what Tom’s agency typically offered. Not brain surgery but pretty practical service and solid thinking.

Tom Sweeney’s Bag of Tricks

1. Database Marketing Tom recommends one-to-one marketing. He says that professional healthcare providers and Pharmacists would have a huge influence on the success of a drug product. That seems true enough. This was especially true of ethical (prescription) drug products. Tom’s twist is to build the list and own it. Sweeney & Partners owns a custom list of high volume denture making dentists (HVDM) for example. As long as Tom keeps this information, Richardson-Vicks (a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble) relies on Sweeney & Partners to manage an ongoing sampling program and direct response dialogue with this important audience. Many big agencies would prefer not to manage such a list, opting instead to purchase it from a listbroker.

2. Medical Conventions and Scientific Sessions Tom encourages his clients to participate in important medical conventions and scientific sessions. Sweeney & Partners designs and builds the show exhibits and will even provide staffing. While at the event, the staff of Sweeney & Partners will enter the names and addresses of participants on a laptop computer. You guessed it; those names become the database for Database Marketing (above). Again, this is a labor intensive process that most larger agencies don’t want to manage.

3. Journal Advertising There are hundreds of specialized medical and healthcare

journals and publications. The cost to advertise in such publications is justified by the value of reaching a select audience. Sweeney & Partners spends a great deal of time understanding these publications and their relative importance in reaching professionals. It’s a hassle for most traditional agencies. Tom’s agency is happy to collect a commission on placing ads in any of these publications.

4. Focus Groups Tom is an affable guy. He learned how to chat with doctors after dropping out of medical school and becoming paid detail man. Tom is the moderator in countless focus groups on topics ranging from brand perception to patient-doctor interaction. The client begins to understand its professional “influencer” audience. Sweeney & Partners earns an additional research fee. Most agencies hire a professional moderator and pay for their services. Few agencies have a person on staff who is more than willing to lead such sessions. (It works out especially well when Tom is required to travel to locations where a golf-course is accessible for an afternoon round.)

  

5. Select Consumer Tests Tom is a marketing man. He’s and entrepreneur, too.

Whenever he’s in a position to recommend taking a product story direct to consumers he will recommend a “test” of one sort or another. This is generally a low-level test of which a traditional agency wouldn’t want to bother. Tom might suggest something like, “Let’s run ads in Modern Maturity Magazine. Small Space. Maybe Black & White. We can see if people will sample your product. This will result in trial and that could lead to product sales.” This is where Tom steps over the line between his professional audience expertise and into the arena of consumer-oriented efforts. Nevertheless, Tom is successful on occasion in convincing a marketing manager to invest in this type of “test” for a portion of their budget. 

Tom Sweeney’s agency is built completely around his abilities and personality. Clients demand his personal attention. He spreads himself pretty thin. He insists on managing the agency’s money (receivable and payable). Inevitably he runs into periodic cash-flow problems.  When Tom ran into some cash-slow problems, I was in no position to ride-out the storm. It was time to change the venue, again.

Poet inspires Artist

Born in Michigan in 1945 and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Robert Lobe completed his undergraduate education at Oberlin College in Ohio and headed east to Manhattan to study at Hunter College, a division of the City University of New York. He stayed. Lobe's aluminum trees, boulders and other natural forms are hard to classify. Intuitive, rather than analytic, his departure from Minimalist sculpture from the 1960s and 1970s, seems akin to other explorations in material phenomenology. We might call Lobe's work Post-Minimalist sculpture.

The Palm at the End of the Parking Lot was installed by Lobe at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis (1995). This sculpture was inspired by a poem by Wallace Stevens (1954):

Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School. He spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. More than any other modern poet, Stevens was concerned with the transformative power of the imagination. Composing poems on his way to and from the office and in the evenings, Stevens continued to spend his days behind a desk at the office, and led a quiet, uneventful life. He did not receive widespread recognition until a year before his death in 1955.

Reports of Death of Marketing

Jerry Della Femina, Fairfax Cone, Rosser Reeves, William Marsteller, David Ogilvy, George Lois and Bill Bermbach are just a few names that came to mind at the coffee shop today. A professor friend of mine sent me an article someone wrote about marketing being dead. The e-mail from Dr. John Lewington got me thinking.  A part of that article (in Harvard Business Review) suggests the premise is supported by the fact that people don’t seem to be paying attention to advertising messages any more. Well shoot, ad guys have been making that point since the late 19^th Century. People read what interests them. You have to break through the clutter. We are bombarded by thousands of commercial messages every day. You need a unique selling proposition. Use humor and you will increase the likelihood of breaking through. All of these lessons are part of the era leading up to the successful retro Mad Men TV drama. I will grant that the playing field has changed and the challenges facing marketers is certainly greater. Of course lot of the focus has shifted to technology, digital and social media. But, try to give credit where credit is due. Those icons of advertising, blazed a trail that leads us to this point in time. Go back and read some of the things they wrote and you will find plenty of relevance. We still lionize leaders in communications, design and marketing. Maybe now it is less likely to be coming from Madison Avenue but we still look for leadership that is essentially within the marketing realm. Innovation, customer capital and brand building via engagement with existing customers (retention) and new customers (acquisition) is still at the core of business success. 

To those who want to kill Marketing as a profession I would like to suggest a response borrowed from Mark Twain after hearing that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal: Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

Tatoos, Turpentine, Tampa and the Central West End

Lynn visits St. Louis August 5-8, 2012

Terminal A is a narrow gauntlet at Lambert St. Louis Airport. United Flight 3141 is on time from Cleveland (Sunday August 5th) and Mary Lynn Morgan appears with her luggage in tow coming through the gate. She’s not sure if her brother will be there waiting. She was indecisive in e-mail and voice mail messages over the past few days. “The deal is this: If you want me to pick you up, you’ll have to put up with a tour of the Laumeier Sculpture Park. I know you are not a huge fan of art but you are in for a docent tour if you want me to pick you up at the airport.”   

Lynn is my sister. We have history, the kind of history that comes from growing up in a Catholic family with six children in the post-war prosperity. We are all baby boomers born between 1944 and 1959.  Lynn uses her given name Mary Lynn Morgan these days out of respect for our mother who passed away last May. I like to call her Zsa Zsa because she has been married three times and yet still remains hopeful for true romance. Lynn is all smiles because she has fond memories of STL and friends with whom she connected on the way to becoming a flight attendant for TWA ten years ago. Her birthday is tomorrow – she will be 60.

It’s an Olympic year and NBC has been broadcasting from London all week. Sir Paul McCartney, at age 70, performed at the opening ceremonies, reminding us all of the passage of time. Lynn marks her approaching sixth decade. She doesn’t hide it. She is quick to announce it everywhere we go. At the sculpture park; at the hotel while checking in; at the restaurant as she orders a Bloody Mary (as a follow-up to a Vodka Martini with two olives she’s about to finish) and at the movie theater while we wait for Steve Sonderbergh’s latest film Magic Mike to roll.

The tour hopefuls gather outside the Museum Shop at the sculpture park. It is a robust group that includes enthusiastic visitors, a dozen people: an engineer wearing a yellow polo shirt with his daughter and her boyfriend wearing a straw cowboy hat; a mother and her tween-age daughter; an Asian woman wearing a makeshift sash announcing her 21^st birthday with her school mate; a middle-aged woman from St. Louis with male and female aged twenty-somethings who are relatives visiting from Ft. Worth, Texas; my sister and me.  It is a good cross-section of people.  Everyone is engaged in the tour which covers a good bit of the trails, the south lawn and the signature monumental pieces by Alexander Lieberman (The Way), Mark DiSuvero (Bornibus and Destino) and comes to a reasonable conclusion at the Tree Tent by Dre Wapenaar, which is part of the Summer featured exhibit entitled Finding a Home in an Unstable World. Lynn admits the tour was fun and was glad to have been a part of it.

   

The Central West End in St. Louis is a comfortable urban mecca for Lynn. The attraction to this place is hard for her to explain. It’s at Dressel’s Public House where we find an outdoor table to enjoy a late lunch. Her two drinks, lamb-burger, my Black & Tan and seafood chowder make for a leisurely meal. There is just enough pedestrian traffic for people-watching and a warm comfortable breeze mitigates the slow service. (We are in no hurry.) The waitress manages her quirky Morgan clientele with humor, if not tremendous efficiency. She and Lynn compare tattoos. Lynn has confined her canvas to her right forearm where a colorful crest and initials celebrate her two boys, Jimmy and Philip. (Who gets a tattoo when they are 59 years old?) The waitress feels compelled to show us the artistry, a work-in-progress tattoo that covers the small of her back and her left shoulder-blade. She nearly removes her shirt to show it. (I hope Lynn doesn’t get that ambitious with her body art but she admits that she is intrigued by the prospect of permanent eye-liner.)

I am just sentimental enough to bite on the heavy-handed hint from our youngest (and best) brother Rob that Lynn might like to add to her Pandora charm bracelet as a thoughtful birthday present. This little social-media campaign started months ago.  Rob did his duty and was successfully manipulated into adding two charms to the collection. Dan followed suit with another. Sundance would not be tempted. Greg simply procrastinated until it was too late. (Rob wins again! Naturally.) I did not want to be a sucker and open Pandora’s Box. But I did. At lunch, I presented a new charm to Lynn in a gift I wrapped in such a way as not to allow her to guess what it was. To my delight, she seemed genuinely thrilled by the gift box, the card and the charm as presented.   

The waitress laughs when I cut her off abruptly as she starts to explain potential dessert options. “No Thank You, we’ll just take the check. We are headed to the movie theater at Chase Park Plaza.” Mathew McConaughey dominates the marketing for Magic Mike. (The dramatic comedy love story isn’t even about his character.) The theater is filled with women giggling in anticipation of a movie about male strippers in Tampa, Florida. Lynn finds it amusing that I am the only guy in the theater. The movie is contrived but it has its moments. I can’t help wondering how challenging it must be to make a motion picture commercially viable. Maybe to sell tickets you have to play to the lowest common-denominator. Here I am in a theater full of women, feeling a little bit like a piece of meat.

Lynn is returned safely to her hotel, a Comfort Inn on Lindell before 11:00 p.m. She insists they told her when she made her reservation that she would have a room facing the pool. (Ha – the place doesn’t have a pool.) She didn’t have a valid credit card and wanted to pay cash. This is a dilemma for any hotel clerk, especially one who speaks English as his second language.  (Ha – travel 101.) So, my credit card guarantees the room. I hope she doesn’t get any funny ideas. She asked about room-service (Ha – no room service. This is a Comfort Inn.)  There is a friendly but mysterious woman hanging out in the lobby who acts as a self-appointed tourist ambassador. “Do you work here?” Lynn wants to know. (Ha – this woman is a vagrant!)  “Can I have some ice delivered to my room?” (Ha – by now everyone in the place is trying to cater to the delusional hotel guest, Mary Lynn Morgan. She is about to turn the big 6-0 don’t cha know?) A cleaning woman fills an ice bucket and presents to Lynn. “Is there an Honor Bar in the room?” (Ha!) Well, in fact there is: it consists of a giant bottle of turpentine (an off-brand vodka) and your choice of mixer – cranberry or tomato juice. Some things you just cannot leave to chance. A trip to Schnuck’s Grocery was an essential stop between the sculpture park and Dressel’s Public House. Pleasant dreams Lynn.

TEXT MESSAGE at 7:01 a.m from Lynn Morgan the morning of her Birthday

 – thanks for making my birthday extra great xo.

Lynn must be making her way over to the Chase Park Plaza (accross the street) to be poolside. She has plans with a gentleman caller for dinner and wants to add a bit of golden color (tan) before then. Tomorrow,  a reunion with Erin and some other cronies from STL. Who would question Zsa Zsa at the pool? Who are you calling delusional?  She is a Morgan.