Tag Archives: Potter Hazlehurst

1990-1995 TSI: AdDept: The Installation at P.A. Bergner & Co.

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She knows there’s no success like failure, and failure is no success at all.—Bob Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” Continue reading →

In the early years of the marketing of TSI’s GrandAd system for advertising agencies I distinctly remember being disappointed that the second installation (at Potter Hazlehurst) was even more difficult than the first. This tendency was definitely repeated with the system for retail advertising departments, AdDept (design described here). The second installation, which was began in the spring of 1990, was much more problematic than the first.

I had never heard of P.A. Bergner & Co. I now know that the chain’s original store was in Peoria, IL. After it acquired the Boston Store chain in 1985, the company moved its headquarters to the upper floors of the Boston Store in downtown Milwaukee. In 1989 the company also acquired the Carson Pirie Scott stores. The corporate management of all of these stores, including all aspects of advertising, was handled in Milwaukee.

I was not yet familiar enough with the nature and history of American department stores to understand the importance of the timing of that last acquisition. Bergner’s advertising department was presumably given a budget to acquire a computer system to enable it to handle the absorption of the Carson’s stores. The money probably had to be spent in 1990. Any portion that was not spent vanished. Little or nothing for future years was budgeted. I came to understand these things later. I wish that the situation had been spelled out to me.

Moreover, Sue and I continually tried to portray TSI as a strong stable organization that was especially good at big projects. That was true a few years later, but in 1990 the company consisted of:

  • Me,
  • Sue Comparetto (who basically wrote checks, closed the books, and did presidential stuff),
  • Sandy Sant’Angelo, who could do simple programming, of which there was still quite a lot,
  • Kate Behart, who helped with marketing and served as day-to-day contact with some clients,
  • Denise Bessette, who worked only part time, all of which was devoted to projects for Macy’s East,
  • One or two administrative people.

The only way that the whole Bergner’s project could be implemented on time was for me to do almost all the programming work myself. The closest that I came to admitting this to Bergner’s was when I told them that Sue was terrible about time. Anything with a deadline had to come through me. Dan Stroman was quite taken aback when I said this. I was also pretty shocked when I had discovered this, but there was no sense in denying it.

Maybe I should try to grow a big white mustache.

Several IBM reps were involved in the sale of the AS/400 for the AdDept system to Bergner’s. The one whom I remember best was Sue Mueller. One of our last meetings took place shortly after the trip that Sue Comparetto and I took to England (described here). Sue brought to Milwaukee a copy of the magazine. When Sue Mueller saw my picture on the cover, she literally did not believe that it was a photo of me.

My recollection is that IBM sold Bergner’s a model B30 of the AS/400, the same machine that Macy’s was using. I think that it also had the faxing software and the modem that it required, and it definitely included OfficeVision/400, the word processing software.

Our primary contract person at Bergner’s during the negotiations was Dan Stroman1, who was either the advertising director or the production manager. He arranged for me to meet with the individual managers—production, ROP, direct mail, and business office. Either I did not do a very good job of collecting the requirements from them, or they did not do a good job of describing what they needed.

We tried to emphasize to Dan the importance of having one person designated as the liaison between TSI and the users. At first he wanted the liaison to be a person from the IT department. However, everyone agreed that the person whom the IT department assigned to the project, Kee-Huat Chua, would never have worked for many reasons. So, the job was given to Sheree Marlow Wicklund2, who at the time was the manager of the merchandise loan room.

I don’t think that in 1990 TSI yet owned the tools to produce detailed design documents. If we did, we certainly did not use them for that purpose in this installation. I merely described in the proposal what we planned to do.

The project was focused on quite a few things that required significant design changes.

  • Bergner’s stores had four or five logos (the name on the store’s signs). So, a table for logos had to be created, and separate versions of each ad were needed for each version of an ad.
  • On some pages of some direct mail catalogs and newspaper inserts the merchandise varied by market. That is, one “block” on a page might show items from one department in one market and different ones in others. Bergner’s called these “swing pages”. Providing a way to handle them meant, among other things, that the entire approach to measuring books needed to be rethought.
  • Bergner’s wanted to use the system to “traffic” production jobs. We proposed to do this by defining lists of steps, which we called “production schedules” and “timetables”—date relationships to the release date (the date that the materials were delivered to the printer or the newspaper). This approach worked well for setting up the original schedule, but the traffic coordinators did not like to use it, and I never did figure out how we could make it more useful for them. Sheree was certainly of little help.
  • Macy’s newspaper coordinators ordered their space reservations by phone. Joyce Nelson3, the newspaper manager at Bergner’s, sent a schedule to each paper once per week with all the ads, positioning requests, and other notes for every ad to be run in that paper over the next week. She wanted the system to fax them all. I was very happy to add this feature.
  • Bergner’s employees wanted to be able to record comments in many places. These requests were often difficult to accommodate. I devised a trick to handle some of them. IBM’s office-vision software had the ability to run programs within documents and to display the output sent to an output queue within the document instead! The parameters for the program could even be included in the document. So, a form letter could be created for sending detailed information about an ad to a group of people. The text surrounding the report could be changed every time. I especially liked this approach because I was fairly certain that it could not be replicated on any other system.
I was signed on to our B10 all day every day.

By the time that the software was delivered, TSI had a small AS/400 in its office, and we quickly established peer-to-peer communication with Bergner’s system. This allowed us to sign on to their system from TSI’s office and to send programs directly from our AS/400 to theirs over the phone lines. I worked all day on programs in TSI’s office and installed the ones that I deemed to be working early in the morning. This was feasible because our office was an hour ahead of theirs.

I communicated with Sheree via the AS/400’s messaging system, which supported both plain text and word processing documents. Kate communicated with Sheree by telephone. I expected Sheree to interact with the users and managers personally. Instead they had weekly meetings that all the managers attended. They appear to have been mostly gripe sessions. Sheree took notes and sent me a list of the issues reported. She did not send one document per area; all areas were included on one document.

I liked the idea that we received a written record of the issues, but my responses expressed my exasperation at some of them. Often users were still complaining about things that I was positive had been fixed. In other cases they had changed their minds about decisions that they had previously made and we had implemented. I responded to all of the issues that Sheree had sent in one document. I did not anticipate that Sheree would share all of my responses with all of the managers. I guess that I should have anticipated that possibility, but I had not worked at a large company for seventeen years, and the meetings at Macy’s were usually limited to one area at a time.

At any rate, I ended up on several shit lists because I responded negatively in print to some managers’ comments, and all of the other managers got to read. It never occurred to Sheree that if I had wanted everyone to read my answers, I could easily have sent the document with the responses to each of them.

More than a scribe.

Privately I was outraged that Sheree had violated what I considered to be a special relationship between the developer and the liaison. I expected her to be a strong advocate for the system when working with the users and an equally strong advocate for the users when speaking with us. She evidently considered herself more of a project manager whose responsibility was to organize and keep everyone informed. She did this. However, for such a complex system with such a compressed timeline, this was just not enough.

I talked with Dan about the situation, and I pleaded for a different liaison. He said that it was out of his hands. Ouch.

The installation at Bergner’s should have been a great success story. Some of the areas—notably the newspaper and loan room areas—were working very well in record time. The other areas proceeded much more slowly. I felt extremely frustrated by the incredibly inefficient process upon which Bergner’s insisted.

Bergner’s put the X back in Xmas.

Nevertheless, by the time of my visit in December of 1990 the ill will had dissipated to the point that they invited me to the department’s Christmas party. I could hardly believe it. A live band was playing. There was a mosh pit! The young people who worked in the creative and production areas were going crazy. The old fogeys with whom I dealt were much more subdued.

That evening Joyce Nelson asked me to give her a demonstration of my technique of throwing playing cards. She produced a deck of bridge cards, which are not as easy to throw as poker cards. However, I was sure that I could spin one at least twenty yards. Unfortunately, the ceiling was too low. To get a card to go a long way, its flight must describe a loop. I could not possibly throw a card at high velocity without it crashing into the ceiling or floor after a few yards. I had to demur, and I never got another chance to display my prowess.

Not for jugglers.

I located in our basement a few pages of memos written by me or Sheree about the installation. Kate had written notes in the margins. At a distance of thirty years (!) I could not understand the details of what was being discussed, but it was evident that I was trying to juggle a large number of balls at once. However, the use of the test system and the attitude of some managers made it seem like the balls were all coated with fly paper.

At some point in 1991 Bergner’s agreed that we had met the terms of the contract, which, by the way, was TSI’s simple version with only a few amendments. They made the last payment and also indicated that they also wanted to prepay TSI’s software maintenance for, I think it was, a year. They asked us to send them an invoice for this, but they wanted the description to be something like “Miscellaneous programming projects”.

The proverbial wolf was at TSI’s door again, and we had never turned down a check. So we did what they asked.

Bergner’s also approved quite a few enhancements that TSI had quoted. These projects were not covered by the original contract. So, I was still very busy with writing and installing all of the new code.

We used part of the money to hire Tom Moran to help with marketing. His role at TSI is discussed here. Perhaps I should have hired a programmer instead. I was more confident in my ability to produce an abundance of good code than my skill at closing sales. Also, I could not afford to devote the time necessary to train a programmer.

Bankruptcy: By August of 1991 Bergner’s had not sent TSI any checks in several months. We learned that the company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. My recollection is that they owed us more than $10,000. We had no experience with this; none of our previous clients had ever done this.

Our first experience.

Dan told me on the phone that Bergner’s would not be allowed to pay any invoice that was received prior to the default date and was still open. I realized immediately that they must have suspected that this was coming. That “miscellaneous” check was done that way so that we would be obliged to provide support for programming projects that they never paid for.

Maybe no letter?

I wrote them a letter that said that we intended to apply the money from the miscellaneous check to the projects that we had delivered but they had not paid for, and we would begin to bill them for software maintenance. The Senior VP of advertising, Ed Carroll3, was furious at me personally. Dan Stroman called me about the situation. He said that I didn’t know who our friends were.4 Well, he might have been a friend, but I don’t think that many people at Bergner’s qualified for that distinction. I told him that our legal advisers (Me, Myself, and I) said that money given on deposit like that could be applied to open invoices. Dan did not respond to that. Instead, he asked if he wanted us to continue as a customer. I told him that I wanted them to become a paying customer.

I don’t remember the details of the rest of this episode. We continued to support the users at Bergner’s. They asked for a few more projects. We felt compelled to bill them at higher rates to try to make up for the money that we had lost.

I learned later that much of the retail advertising community considered Ed Carroll a sleazeball. What his advertising department did with that invoice was probably illegal or at least against company policy. He resented that what I proposed would make him look bad.

Test Environment: I found a letter dated May 13, 1992 that Kee-Huat Chua sent to TSI. It began with these two sentence fragments.

As you are aware of PAB’s intention to set up separate program environments for the AS/400 system. What it entails: one environment for intensive testing by users and one environment for developer/programmer to perform units [sic] test on the program module(s).

It then describes electronic forms that we needed to fill out before we made changes to the system. After we sent the form to him, he would copy the entire production library and the entire data library to the test environment. When this would happen is not designated in the letter. It could not be done if anyone was using the system. So, presumably it would be done at night.

After the libraries were duplicated, we would be allowed to sign on and implement the changes. We were also supposed to test them and send him a memo documenting that we tested them.

I guess that the users would then test them, but the letter does not mention it. It also does not mention how the changes will get into the production environment.

However, it does emphasize (in bold print, capital letters, and underlines), “NO COMPILING OF PROGRAMS ALLOWED DURING OFFICE HOURS UNLESS UNDER SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES; when making program modification.” Those special circumstances are not described.

Kee also included a list or reasons why this approach would be good for “TSI/Programmer:”

– To better perform & concentrate on their development.
– Less interruption and delay for development tasks.
– Secure production application: AdDept.

Although I considered this additional requirement a breach of our contract, I did not feel that I could refuse outright. I was sure that no matter what the missing details were, it would slow down our delivery of projects that they had requested by 50 percent or more. It also pretty much excluded them from ever getting new releases of our software.

This time Dan called me. I told him that we could have done it using test libraries from the beginning, but the project would have been hopelessly behind schedule if we had. He replied that he thought that that was what I would say.

I didn’t say this to Dan, but I also knew that this approach guaranteed that we would be doing a lot of extra work for which we would not be compensated. I cannot imagine who would really benefit from this. The alleged benefits for Bergner’s were equally bogus:

– To stabilize the “live”/production system both in the short run and the long run.
– To adhere with PAB’s standard of implementing computer systems established by Management Information Systems
– To encourage more users involvement with the implementation of the application.

I was mostly thankful that they did not come up with the idea of inserting this guy from the IT department between us and their system while we were still working on the base system specified in the contract.

I made lots of mistakes, but I also fixed problems very rapidly.

This was a good example of why it always took IT departments ages to develop and install new software and why so many companies ended up outsourcing the IT department itself. My shoot-from-the-hip approach admittedly required some pain and frustration for a short period of time. However, it had worked extremely well in the ad agency environment, and it would also eventually prove effective in many other retail advertising departments.

If only it were that easy.

Documentation and Ease of Use: Macy’s East’s long and involved contract did not require TSI to provide written documentation of how the programs worked. Although they demanded a commission for any AdDept systems sold in the first year after it was signed, they considered the whole project a custom job.

I no longer possess a copy of our contract with Bergner’s, and so I cannot check on whether it specified anything about documentation or not. I doubt it. Producing a user’s handbook that covered every eventuality of every aspect of the system would have been an overwhelming undertaking that got worse with every program change or new module. Instead, I made a conscientious effort to try to make the system fairly easy to use.

  • The layout of all of the screens was consistent.
    • The top three lines of data entry screens described the purpose. The screen number was in the upper right corner.
    • If a new item was being created, the word “New” was also in the upper right corner, and it blinked.
    • If the item already existed, the user ID, date, and time of the creation and last change were displayed.
    • All binary fields required the entry of Y or N. The 5250 standards used by all of the terminals and PC’s did not support check boxes.
    • The options for all fields that would have had radio buttons on a GUI (graphical user interface)5 were listed on the screen.
    • Two function keys were available at all fields that were verified against the database. F2 produced a detailed description of the field. F4 called a program that allowed the user to list and from the existing entries. Exiting these programs returned the user to the original screen with the cursor position maintained.
    • All dates were entered in the form MMDDYY.
    • All fields were verified when the Enter key was pressed. Any entries that were not valid were highlighted, and the cursor was positioned there.
  • The format for all reports was as consistent as possible. The report number was almost always in the upper right corner.
  • A list of the names of the most important tables and their key fields was provided for querying purposes. The names of the fields was consistent from table to table.

The biggest gripes were the lack of a user handbook and that the system was not “intuitive”. I considered trying to write a handbook, but I could not figure out a way to do it. Furthermore, I could not even start on it until all the programming required in the contract had been completed.

In all honest, I have never seen a system that was intuitive. The text-based user interface, which the only thing IBM provided at the time, probably seemed difficult to people who had never learned the keyboard.

I thought of a few ways to provide better documentation later, and we provided them to both new and existing clients. By then, however, Bergner’s had decided to try to find a different system.

Camex Interface: We were not the only software developers who felt Bergner’s wrath. When the AdDept installation began, Bergner’s produced its ads using Camex software on very expensive workstations from Sun Microsystems. Macy’s East did, too. Both of them wanted Camex to work with us for a two-way interface between the two systems. The story of how this project never got off the ground is recounted here.

Epilogue: The story of the installation has at least four epilogues:

  1. I think that after the bankruptcy brouhaha Bergner’s hired Gary Beberman, who had done a fantastic job as our liaison at Macy’s East, to help them. He called me about it. I told him that they had a good system installed, but we did not get along with some of the people there. I told him about the restrictive process that IT had set up for me to use. He was sympathetic, but he had no advice about how to turn around. He also warned me not to use Bergner’s as a reference account.
  2. Bergner’s advertising department tried unsuccessfully to replace AdDept for years, maybe even decades. I went back there for something some time in (I think) 1992. Joyce told me that they now had two systems, a pretty one and an ugly one. She said that she preferred the ugly one that worked.
  3. Bergner’s emerged from bankruptcy in 1993. They paid us pennies on the dollar. In 1998 the company, then known as Carson’s, was acquired by Proffitt’s Inc., which later became Saks Inc. All of the other Saks Inc. divisions used AdDept. Carson’s was merged with Younkers and Herberger’s, which both had successfully used AdDept. The resulting entity was called the “northern division”. Saks Inc. sold the division to the Bon-Ton in 2005, which closed down all 267 stores in 2018. During that entire disastrous sequence of events Ed Carroll ran the advertising department in Bergner’s. Carson’s, the northern division of Saks Inc., and the entire Bon-Ton.
  4. Some time early in the 2000’s I unexpectedly ran into Ed and Sheree (?!) at Saks Inc. in Birmingham, AL. Steve VeZain, who was in charge of the corporate marketing group, had asked me to come there for some other reason. Sheree was cordial to me, but when Ed saw me he barked, “What are you doing here?” More about this event is documented here. I never saw Dan Stroman again. I have no idea what happened to him.

Miscellaneous: Here are a few things that I remember about the installation:

Lovable Bucky?
  • Dan and his wife had Sue and me over for supper on evening. She was a big University of Wisconsin fan. I remember her saying “How could you not love Bucky Badger?” I thought that Bucky Badger was ridiculous then. I have subsequently learned to hate him. The Stromans’ house was on a large pond. Dan had a boat. I don’t know why, but he revealed to me that he had had a vasectomy.
  • Bergner’s insisted that I stay at the Mark Plaza Hotel when I was in Milwaukee. It had a doorman. He held the door for me even though I always had a free hand. I guess that that was his job, but it annoyed me. I have always hated it when people offered an unsolicited service and then expected a tip.
  • One evening I tried to get some work done in TSI’s office, where I had “passed through” to Bergner’s system. After a while I became too drowsy to be productive. So, I intended to end my remote session. Unfortunately I keyed in PWRDWNSYS on a command line rather than ENDPASTHR. I accidentally shut down their system! I had to call the IT support line in Milwaukee and talk someone through starting it up again from the system console.
  • The German food in Milwaukee was unbeatable.
  • One day Dan Stroman, a guy from production whose name I don’t remember, and I went to lunch at a Thai place. I didn’t think much of it.
  • I had fun jogging down by Lake Michigan in the evenings.

Failure: This entry has made me think about the nature of failure.

For about thirty-five years I designed, wrote, implemented, documented, and supported software systems. In the fifteen-year period that we actively marketed AdDept, we had thirty-five installations. Of all of those, the only one that I would characterize as a failure was the one at P.A. Bergner & Co.

I probably made mistakes. I tried to work on everything at once. I wanted to provide each stakeholder in the department with something to show that we were making progress.

Perhaps I should have insisted on doing one media at a time. Would Bergner’s have accepted that strategy? Who can say? They put a lot of pressure on us to get the entire project delivered. They seemed to have underestimated how much new programming they wanted. I am certain that I never said that we had already written software that was not actually working, but we were definitely trying to be optimistic. We desperately wanted the job. Maybe some statements that we made got misinterpreted.

I often took the “one area at a time” approach in other installations. We usually started with ROP and quickly achieved successful faxing of insertion orders and printing of schedules. That served as a confidence booster. If we had achieved important objectives quickly, perhaps no one would have suggested that wretched test environment. That approach would probably have also eliminated the weekly committee meetings. If my reports had been to one manager at a time, I would have been more careful in my comments.

In some future installations I designed one-time programs to help with the initial loading of tables by reading in user-supplied spreadsheet files. It did not occur to me to try this at Bergner’s, and no one suggested it. I am not sure that they actually had any files that I could have used.

I learned my lesson. In all subsequent AdDept presentations, I emphasized what I called “our dirty little secret”, to whit, the biggest factor in determining the success of an installation was the person who acted as liaison. I also took pains to specify what precisely the liaison’s responsibility and traits should be.

I also recognized that I should never have put in writing anything even slightly derogatory about a third party. Thereafter I always assumed that everyone would read every word that I wrote.

I learned one other lesson from this experience. I needed to investigate prospective clients more closely. From then on I asked prospective clients why they had decided to pursue automation of their advertising department at this point in time.

I can’t be too hard on myself, however. I don’t know of anyone else who managed to automate two advertising departments of large retailers. Over the years I installed thirty-five AdDept systems.

1. I never saw Dan Stroman again. I have no idea what happened to him. I suspect that he must fallen out of Ed’s favor. He may have been blamed for selecting TSI to design and implement the administrative system and for the collapse of the Camex interface project.

2. Sheree (pronounced like Sherry) Wicklund now goes by Sheree Marlow. Her LinkedIn page is here.

Ed
Joyce

3. Joyce Nelson worked for the company until 2004. Her LinkedIn page is here.

4. Ed Carroll, one of the very few people in my life who really hated me, died in 2016. His obituary is here.

5. IBM did not provide OS/400 with a real GUI until more than a decade later, and even then what they suggested was slow, resource-intensive, and lame compared to what people were accustomed to on PC’s and Macs. TSI’s screens maintained the same format throughout the history of the company because we never found a way to convert the hundreds of screens that we had to produce something that was reasonably attractive. The approach that came closest was to write everything over in a language that used CGI for HTML files. That was how AxN worked.

1985-1988 TSI: Adventures in Marketing

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Building a better mousetrap was not enough. Continue reading →

When we moved from Michigan to Rockville, Sue and I knew almost nothing about marketing. When the business was closed over three decades later, we knew a lot more. Unfortunately, at least half of what we had learned was probably wrong.

In Detroit Sue had depended on IBM for referrals. When we moved we learned that the branch offices had no specific policy on this. Each salesperson knew a few of the independent software companies. Since no one in the Hartford office knew us, it was folly to depend on IBM in Connecticut.

The first year or so was the only time in the first three decades of the company’s existence that I had time on my hands. I wrote a little system on the 5120 to keep track of leads. I got most of my information from the Yellow Pages in the reference room of the Hartford Public Library.

I definitely remember sending a letter to the area’s jewelry stores. I think that we also sent one to construction companies. I do not remember how we did these exactly. Perhaps I just wrote a program on the 5120 to print letters with data from the lead tracking system. It seems unlikely that we had letterhead and company envelopes with our Rockville address yet.

I think that we got the lead for the Harstans account from the jewelry store mailing. I don’t remember any responses from anything in the construction industry. If we received any inquiries, Sue would have dealt with them.

I found a business card from the Detroit days in our basement.

After we had purchased a Datamaster with a letter-quality printer, we converted the lead tracking system to run on the new machine. We also invested in company letterhead and web-mounted company invoices. Both were Nantucket grey with light blue lettering. The TSI was striped in imitation of IBM’s logo, but we used a sans serif font.

We definitely did several mailings to ad agencies. Potter Hazlehurst responded to the first mailing. Other mailings may have at least produced a few lukewarm leads.

We received two free pieces of publicity. The GrandAd installation at Harland-Tine was featured in Basic Society News. This was described here. The other article, an interview with Dick Keiler, was published a few years later in AdWeek New England. It is described here.

We also bought our only ad ever in the same issue of that magazine. It was a waste of money.

By 1983 we began to get quite a few leads from IBM. We closed many of these deals, but most required significant custom programming and offered virtually no opportunity for additional business. What we wanted to sell were ad agency systems that took advantage of work that we had already done.

We participated in a campaign organized by a marketing manager at IBM to allow its salesmen to promote “IBM Advertising Agency Solutions.” He asked the third-party developers of ad agency software to provide a list of how their software could benefit ad agencies. Someone then took all of these items, assembled and sorted them all into one huge list, and put them into an attractive fold-out piece in which each of these advantages was claimed for “IBM solutions.”

Of course, no system marketed by anyone actually did all of those things, and some of the advantages were incompatible with others. Furthermore, none of the names of the companies that marketed and supported the software were included. The pamphlet only mentioned “IBM solutions” until the very last paragraph, which stated, “When you combine the specialized capabilities of IBM Business Partner applications for advertising with the quality control, product support and service that accompanies IBM systems, you have a comprehensive and powerful solution. One that can meet the needs of your agency today—and continue to serve you and your clients tomorrow.”

I was very upset when they sent the finished product. Set aside the atrocious grammar of the last sentence fragment. Who will possibly use this piece? IBM reps could not (or at least should not) use it because it doesn’t indicate which business partner could address which problem. No ethical business partner could hand it out because the prospect might think that the software company was claiming all of these advantages for its own product. I suppose that if we were allowed to white-out the parts that did not apply to our systems, we might be able to use it, but it would not look too professional.

When I explained that this was false advertising because the “IBM solution” described within did not exist, he was taken aback. He honestly thought that we would all be happy just to be associated with IBM. I admitted that we were. However we were ALWAYS in competitive situations. We could not afford to be associated with erroneous claims like “IBM creative applications help your writers and artists work more efficiently.” Our software did not improve the efficiency of the creative staff one iota, and if we tried to get the writers and artists to trade in their Macs for IBM iron, we would be run out of the office on a rail.

In addition, there were a couple of advantages that were unique to our approach. Of course, I had listed them, and they appeared in the pamphlet. I resented that every other Business Partner was authorized to claim these advantages, if only implicitly, for its own software.

With the help of Ken Owen of the Edward Owen Company we developed some leave-behinds that were at least a little professional looking and much less likely to get us sued. We put the write-ups of various aspects of the system in notebooks that had the company’s name and logo on it. The first batch were blue with white lettering. Subsequently we reversed the color scheme.

When we gave presentations. we put all of the handouts in folder like the one shown at left. The cover was generic enough that we could use it for any of our software products.

Our mailings for the ad agency system included self-addressed prepaid bounce-back cards on which the recipient could indicate the agency’s interest in our product. This certainly increased the quantity of positive responses that we got, but it also meant that we needed to spend more time qualifying the leads.

By 1986 Sue and I were frustrated with our sales efforts. We had been in business for more than five years. We had amassed a reliable set of reference accounts, but we were still struggling just to meet our payroll.

Sue set up some kind of business relationship with a guy named Joe Danko. I think that he was a consultant who had somehow come across our GrandAd product. He wanted to be our representative in southeast New England. Since the proposed arrangement involved no investment on our part, we agreed to it.

Sue corresponded with a former IBM VAR (as we were) named Jim Holland, who had started a business in Colorado helping others selling “turnkey systems”. Sue liked his approach, but he sold his business to a company in Paramus, NJ, called Motivational Marketing1. He convinced us to drive there for a “Motivational Marketing Working Session” in January of 1987.

We drove to the company’s offices and met with, I think, one of the founders of the company, Gary Farber2. We told him that we were having trouble closing deals for our software system for advertising agencies. We thought that we needed to hire a salesman, but we were not sure how to do it. He outlined a plan for us. It seemed pretty costly and did not directly address the need for a salesman, but if we scored even one or two deals, it would be worth it.

Two guys from the marketing company came to our office in Rockville. The older guy was named Irving; the younger one was Nick Pitasi. They told us that the first step in their plan was to contact our clients to get a more objective view of TSI’s strengths and weaknesses. Nick called everyone on our list of clients. He reported back to us that our clients loved us, and they particularly liked the fact that we educated them. This was rather nice to hear, but we already knew that we had very good reference accounts. We had thought that we were not doing a good job of using this information to our advantage.

Since we had said that we needed a “closer”, and since we already had a relationship with Joe Danko, Irving invited him to our office to interview for the job of salesman. Irving conducted the interview in Sue’s office upstairs in Rockville. I sat in. Sue might have attended as well, but she doesn’t remember it.

I was astounded at how awful Joe’s performance was. Without being asked about it, he went on and on about his involvement in lawsuits over his divorce. I would never have considered hiring him to take out the trash.

After the interview Irving told us that he thought that Joe would be OK as our salesman. Perhaps we should have cut our losses at this point. Irving and Nick might be able to help us in some way, but they certainly seemed unwilling or unable to address what we considered our most critical problem.

Their next step was to hire someone to call the presidents of ad agencies. We had a pretty good list in our lead tracking system. By this time Nick was handling our account by himself. He engaged a guy named Paul Schrenker for this purpose. Nick wrote a script for him. I could not believe how many presidents talked with him when he asked for them by name. I would have bet that he would not reach any of them.

The only person who accepted Paul’s call and expressed any interest was Bill Ervin at O’Neal and Prelle in Hartford. I visited them a couple of times, and they eventually agreed to a contract. The story of that installation is here.

One day I observed Nick while he was calling one of the presidents. It was impressive. A secretary answered the phone. Nick said, “Put Bill on, please.” When the secretary asked who was calling, he just said with supreme confidence, “It’s Nick from TSI.” The president picked up the phone, and Nick talked with him. I certainly couldn’t have done this.

Nick dropped by the office a couple of times after that. He had been in the office enough to see how things were run. By then he was familiar with how Sue would miss appointments and how disorganized she was. On one occasion I asked him whether he thought that we could make a go of it. He said that he did not see how. What a depressing moment that was.

Maybe I should have given up at that point, but I had no plan B. I was almost forty years old. I had burned through several occupations already. I did not want to start over.

When I first started to work with Sue I figured that I would do most of the programming, and she would do the rest of the work. After all, she had much more experience in business than I did, and she loved to talk on the telephone. She was certainly much more of a “people person” and less of a tireless coder She could figure out how programs worked and fix them, but I had never seen her write so much as a single program.

That was not the way that things worked out. As the years went by I took on more and more of the responsibilities. By the late eighties she was doing the accounting and the payroll, and that was about all. Even so, she could not keep up with it. The answer was not increased staff. We went through as many administrative employees as Murphy Brown.

We needed help with sales. The marketing consultants were nearly as worthless as all the other consultants that we had dealt with. We needed to hire a salesman. We terminated our agreement with Motivational Marketing in February 1988.

On March 2, 1987 (Sue’s thirty-sixth birthday), we sent out out a newsletter to all of our clients. It was three pages of 10-pitch single-spaced type on 8½x11″ paper. Mostly it dealt with hardware, but there was also half a page of information about changes that we were making to the S/36 version of the GrandAd system.

I located copies of issues numbered 1 through 6. The fifth issue, dated March 29, 1988, reflects the influence of Michael Symolon, our first marketing director. The first page of this issue announces three new ad agency clients. In addition, the first page is printed on GrandAd stationery that Michael ordered rather than on TSI letterhead. A post-it note attached to the copy that I found indicated that I was slightly annoyed that the subsequent pages did not match the cover page in either color or weight.

This issue is really meaty. I think that Michael or Kate Behart must have done most of the work on this issue and the others in this format. Issue #5 contained six pages of text and a copy of an article from the November 30, 1987, issue of ADWEEK about the installation of the GrandAd system at Rossin, Greenberg, Seronick, and Hill.3

I do not remember how many issues of those newsletters we produced. After I purchased and taught myself how to use PageMaker, the name of the newsletter was changed to Sound Bytes from TSI. At first it was 8½x11″, but the later versions were printed on both sides of 8½x14″ paper and folded to be 8½x7″. They also contained two columns per page, different fonts, and graphics. I located only one copy of each of these formats.

The main purpose of most of the subsequent newsletters was to announce new AdDept clients or new modules developed for existing AdDept clients. There may have also been one focused on TSI’s Internet insertion order system, AxN.

1. I think that Motivational Marketing still exists, but it has now evolved into a call center located in Rochelle Park, NJ. Its website is here.

2. Gary Farber’s LinkedIn page is here.

3. Much more about Michael Symolon’s career at TSI can be read here. More about Kate Behart has been posted here. The description of the installation at RGS&G is here.

1981-1983 TSI: GrandAd: The First Two Clients

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We were very fortunate that IBM announced the Datamaster in 1981, the same year that Harland-Tine (H-T), an advertising agency in downtown Hartford, began its search for a computerized administrative system. Most advertising agencies both produce and place ads. At almost any ad agency that was large enough to consider automating, those two functions were assigned to separate groups of people. All previous low-end (under $20,000) IBM computers had no way for two users to share data. More details about the Datamaster can be read here.

Harland-Tine’s offices were in this building at 15 Lewis St., near Bushnell Park.

1981 was also the year that Sue and I moved back to Connecticut. We were also fortunate that Harland-Tine happened to have the same accountant, Dan Marra from Massa and Hensley, that TSI used. Dan told Dave Tine, the president of Harland-Tine about the time and materials billing system that we had written for his firm. As Bob Dylan sang in “Idiot Wind”, “I can’t help it if I’m lucky.”

The unique nature of advertising agencies is described here. The system that we designed for Harland-Tine is described in considerable detail here.

The installation, which began in December of 1981, went pretty well. Westy Jones1, the office manager, oversaw the installation. In phase 1, which lasted about six months, the system consisted of a job costing module, production and fee billing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and general ledger.

Near the end of the first phase Sue worked with the people at H-T to generate some publicity for both companies. The Basic Society News, a tabloid-sized monthly newspaper dedicated to the Datamaster community, published on the front page of its August 1982 edition a rather detailed account of the installation. It was a really nice write-up with well-chosen photos. We showed it to whomever we encountered.

Until I reread the article for this blog entry, I had forgotten that H-T had also purchased a second Datamaster to use for word processing. The Datamaster had outstanding WP software, but I don’t remember ever having seen a daisy-wheel printer in H-T’s office. The Datamaster’s dot-matrix printer did have a “letter-quality” mode that sort of filled in the dots, but I would not expect any advertising agency to settle for that. Agencies are all about presentation, and dot-matrix output has never really been considered appropriate for important communications.

I have no memory of anyone named Janna Sherman. Maybe she used the Datamaster for word processing.

The second phase of the installation involved the module for media scheduling—including insertion orders, media billing, and media payables—and cost accounting (client profitability). My recollection is that H-T was able to use most of what we had developed for Potter Hazlehurst without significant changes.

I am pretty sure that H-T purchased the 30MB hard drive when they for the second phase. I don’t remember whether they purchased a third Datamaster for the media department. They might have used the one that had originally been intended for word processing.

Westy is standing. The guy is an artist who had little or no involvement in the installation. This photo was probably staged.

Considering how much time that I spent on this project, I have surprisingly few vivid memories. Westy hired Diane Ciarcia2 as a bookkeeper and primary operator of our system. She was, thank goodness, easy to work with. She was good at explaining why she didn’t like something that the software did. So, we were able to make the system rather easy to use without too many missteps.

At about the same time that Diane was hired, Sandy Bailey, a wise-cracking New Yorker, was hired as Director of Finance. She and I got along very well. She must have still been there in 1988. I remember remarking that we were furiously pitching the advertising department at Macy’s in New York. She said “If you get Macy’s, you’re all set.”

In 1984, I think, Harland-Tine merged with another Hartford agency the name of which escapes me. The other agency had been one of the very first agencies in the country to automate. Fortunately for us, their system ran on an outdated IBM 5120. So, the new agency, which set up shop in H-T’s office space, continued to use our software.

This, I take it, is a Sunfish.

The new agency was named Harland, O’Conner, Tine, and White3. I never met O’Conner; I don’t even know the right pronoun to use. I occasionally saw Will White4 in his office, which contained several copies of The Sunfish Book that he wrote. I guess that it contained all that you ever need to know about a type of sailboat that I, a native of Kansas, had never heard of. You can still get a copy on Amazon.

Diane Ciarcia left the agency during this period. A young lady from Jamaica was hired to replace her. Because the system was rather stable by this time, we did not need to work closely with her. Eventually someone discovered that she had been issuing checks to accounts that she had opened under various reasonable-sounding names and booked them as production expenses for the agency’s largest account, Hitchcock Chair.

She was not able to run this scam for very long. Dan Marra discovered discrepancies using the month-end reports that our system produced. He credited the audit trails that the system provided with unearthing the scheme. H-T definitely fired her. I don’t know if she was ever prosecuted.

Everyone should agree that flavored coffees have no place in an office. If employees what to put stuff in their cups, fine. MAKE MINE BLACK!

I have one other strong memory of TSI’s first agency installation. This was the beginning of the period, which lasted for more than two decades, during which I consistently worked long hours often seven days per week. I also needed to be very alert whenever I was working. It was very easy to make catastrophic mistakes, and, as always, nobody checked my work. I had become dependent on help from coffee, especially when I was on the road.

I remember wandering into Harland-Tine’s kitchen5 one morning. I poured myself a cup of bitter black caffeine and ported it back to the accounting area. When the first few drops hit my tongue I almost spit them back into the cup. Evidently someone thought that it would be “a nice change” to add a little flavor.

The second ad agency that we landed was Potter Hazlehurst Incorporated (PHI) of East Greenwich, RI. As I recall, they responded to a mailing that we did in 1982. Sue and I drove to their office on Route 2, where we met with Russ Hahn, the office manager, and Bruce Brewster, the accounting manager. Russ said that he liked what we had done, but they also needed a system for media. He also said that they needed to be able to see a summary of the profitability of each client on one report. He showed me what he did by hand for Herb Sawyer, the agency’s president.

We drove back to Rockville and drew up a proposal. IBM proposed two Datamasters and the hard drive that acted as a server for both data and programs. One computer was designated for accounting and one for media.

Potter Hazlehurts’s offices were in this building. The parking lot was bigger in the eighties. They had about forty employees. Herb had a reserved spot for his black Celica.

On the second trip we met with Herb for lunch, which was served all’aperto. He had not been available to meet with us on the first visit. I was almost as nervous as I had been back in 1962 in my first debate in high school, which is described here. Herb was friendly but serious. I could see that he had some doubts about our ability to pull this off. In the end he signed the contract, and we went to work.

A very fortunate thing for us was that PHI billed all of its media in advance. For example, they billed in the month of November the ads scheduled to run in December,. We designed the system so that prebilling the media was the norm. This helped us in the future in two distinct ways.

  1. It was much easier to accommodate billing in the same month or a later month than it would have been if we had started with the assumption that the ads had already run and tried to come up with a way of handling prebilled placements.
  2. It gave us a valuable selling feature. If the agency already prebilled their media, the system could handle it. On the other hand, if it did not, using our system gave the agency the opportunity to try to convince their clients that they should get the invoices in the preceding month so that they paid in the month that the ads ran. In those inflationary times, receiving the money a month or two earlier could be a big factor.
In the eighties “Online” and “Mobile” were science fiction, but “Print” included newspapers, magazines, direct mail, polybags, yellow pages, and others.

A difficult decision had to be made about the design of the media scheduling system. The different types of media differed greatly. For example ads in print media generally ran only once in an issue of a publication. Broadcast ads almost always ran repeatedly, and most of the time the date and even the program might not be specified. The size of a print ad was measured in column inches. The size of a broadcast ad was measured in seconds. The most surprising thing to me was the “broadcast calendar” that began every month on a Monday.

Furthermore, some types of ads, like billboards or yellow page advertising were sui generis.

On the other hand, it would be easier for the accounting people if the important financial information was in one place. Data entry for billing and payment would be easier, and the programs would run faster.

I decided to designate one file in which all ads were defined. It contained all the financial information and all of the other information for print ads. The fields that were peculiar to broadcast were kept in a separate file. Eventually we created a file for yellow pages, too.

The key to the ads file was the client number, the ad number (usually, but not always the production job number), and a one-character version code to distinguish different sizes of the same basic ad. I never regretted handling media this way.

I spent many days at PHI. I remember every inch of the drive. Most of the morning drives were toward the east. The sun was directly in my eyes. The return trips were mostly due west, and the sun was again in my eyes. I did not own prescription sunglasses. If there were clip-ons available, I did not know about them. It was brutal.

The Burger King in Killingly is still there, but now it has a lot of competition.

There was not much in the way of retail between Rhode Island and Rockville. On return trips I would almost always stop at the drive-through window of the Burger King on Route 101 in Killingly, CT. The consistent part of my order was a large Diet Coke to keep me alert for the rest of the journey.

If, as often happened, it was late, I would also order a whopper. One time they had a special on “Bullseye burgers”, which were two regular BK hamburgers that were a little thicker than usual and cooked with Bullseye barbecue sauce. The burgers were placed on a long roll and topped with bacon. I ordered one, and I really liked it. Ever since, whenever I cook burgers for myself on the grill, I mix Bullseye barbecue sauce in with the ground beef before cooking.

Hold the cheese.

Incidentally, I have very long fingers. At the time BK advertised that “It takes two hands to handle a Whopper.” I can assure you that I was easily able to drive while holding any BK sandwich in one hand. It did get a little clumsy if I had to change gears on my Celica.

I remember that one time I worked so late that I had to stay overnight. PHI arranged a room for me at a motel in North Kingstown, the next town to the south. It was run by an Indian couple (a rarity in New England in the eighties) with forty or fifty children who had the run of the place. It was an unusual experience for a Kansan, but I did not encounter any difficulties.

I cannot remember much about any of PHI’s employees other than Russ and Bruce. I remember noticing that over half of them had Italian names.

Bruce was a little younger than I was. He was a big guy. He was really into sailing. He had a boat of his own, and he devoted most of his spare time to it. He also disclosed to me that he would really like to be a crewman on a yacht that competed for the America’s Cup.

Russ was a few years older than I was. He was a bit of a fuddy-duddy, but he always took me to lunch. I really appreciated that. When the agency’s fortunes began to slide in the nineties, he was one of the first employees to be laid off.

I am not sure of the year in which PHI closed its doors for good. At the very end Herb Sawyer was operating the Datamaster by himself and calling us for help in closing the books. I found this rather sad.

When the PHI installation stabilized, we no longer had two customers with separate systems. We had two diverse advertising agencies using customized versions of the GrandAd system. I was fairly confident that we could market it successfully.

1. I think that Westy’s last name is now King, and in 2021 she resides in Enfield.

2.Diane’s married name is Carrabba. In 2021 she apparently lives in Bloomfield.

3. The accepted abbreviation was “Hot W”. If I had been asked my opinion, I would have suggested putting Mister White first and using “White hot” for short. It is probably a good thing that they didn’t. Shortly after incorporating, they changed the name to Harland & Tine & White.

4. I think that Will White is living in Arcadia, FL, in 2021.

5. It was a real kitchen, not just a place to make coffee and keep lunches. Susan Harland often prepared gourmet meals for clients and prospects.