Last time I told you about finally getting hired on at the Star in advertising. The advertising department went through many changes. When I first started the artists were separated from the sales staff, even located on a different floor of the building. We had what we called a traffic manager who dealt with the salespeople and would get changes and bring them to us and proof the ads. Within six months of starting, they moved the art department down to the third floor in a huge space that was totally remodeled. We went from having makeshift computer desks (a door laid across 2 huge trash cans) to pods (cubicles) with all new coordinating furniture. At first we were still kept separated in our own large pods with 5 or 6 artists each.
Then in the year 2000 they started a new concept of creating sales teams that consisted of a couple of artists, a couple of customer service representative and 4 or 5 salespeople with a team manager. They had an experimental team at first to see if it would work and then decided to do the whole department. We had a National team, Majors, Automotive, Real Estate and so on. I was put on the mid-size accounts team which meant the clients spent a good chunk of money, but were local businesses. My partner, Joanie and I both went to Herron just a couple years apart, but never knew each other, until we worked together at the Star. She had been at the Star since Herron — over 35 years.
We were a great team and handled up to 500 accounts over the years. We archived every ad on zip discs, since there was no backup system in place at the time. We had over 300 zip discs and all the younger artists and management thought we were foolish to keep everything, but thanked us more than once when we saved their butts by finding an old ad they needed.
We numbered every zip disc and kept an alphabetical catalogue on our computers with what zip disc had whatever client’s ads.
Nowadays the Star has gone back to the old system where the artists never see the salespeople and the customer service staff handle all the layout and corrections of the ads. Some ads are even outsourced to India — I’m not kidding!
I did ads for everything from funeral homes to local bars. I seemed to always get thrown a project that either no one else would attempt or that I was too naive to say no to.
Do you remember when Planet Hollywood opened up downtown on Illinois? Well, the client wanted a 6 page section just like all the other cities had had when they had their Grand Opening. Since it involved a model photo shoot I was coerced into doing the section. Now I love a challenge, so I called a local modeling agency and I lined up 3 models. They were to meet the photographer and me the next morning at sunrise in Highland Park on East New York Street to do a shot with the skyline of Indianapolis in the background, for the cover of this 6 page section. We got there and the sky was overcast and you couldn’t even see the skyline. We decided to postpone until the next morning. When I got into work and started working on the rest of the section, I found out the deadline was moved up and it was going to press at midnight that day. I called back the models and we met on Monument Circle at sunset to do the photo. All the models were wearing jeans and the photographer said it was a shame neither of the girls had a skirt on. I had a denim wraparound skirt on, so I took one of the models down to the restroom under the Circle and we traded clothes. I’m just over 5’and she was 5’ 10”. The skirt looked really cute and short on her and her jeans were dragging on me. We barely got the shot in before dark, but it worked and looked great!
I went back to work and put the whole rest of the section together and made my deadline by midnight — an 18 hour day and I was salaried, so no overtime pay and no pay for those last 10 hours.
Another difficult project was with Mr. D’s grocery. I did their ads every week along with everything else I did and always stayed until 10 or 11 on Tuesday nights, when it went to press. The salesman promised the client we could do high-gloss color brochures for all their specialty services like catering, fruit baskets, deli lunches to go, etc. Again I got to use my years of styling photo shoots to work with Chef Osgood down at Mr. D’s. He was quite a chef, trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and very talented. He cooked up all kinds of wonderful dishes and I arranged them and we got some great shots. I would stand behind our photographer Randy with forks and as soon as the shot looked good, we dug in to the still steaming plate of food. I love good food, so this was my perk. The brochures turned out well and I even got a Hoosier Press award for one of them (can’t remember which one).
My partner Joanie and I enjoyed the work and had so many things in common. We both like hot tea, so she got us vintage china teacups for Christmas one year. We had a hot water dispenser in our advertising department. I remember one time going to the dispenser for hot water with my teapot, when a young salesman said “what’s that?” and I said “a teapot with tea in it.” Clueless young man!
Joanie and I both like smoked oysters and we many times popped open a can and sat it on the counter between us. We freaked out the young salesman in the pod. But one time our client from La-Z-Boy (the owner) stopped by while in the department and was thrilled to have some smoked oysters for a snack.
At one point my partner’s husband became deathly ill and she had to take a family leave for three months, while he was in hospice at home. They held her job, but I had to cover for us both with no extra pay for all the extra hours I worked. Joanie and I did all the ads for the family owned furniture stores in Indy like La-Z-Boy, Godby, Holder, Gerdt and L. Fish. Gerdt would only deal with Joanie because she had been doing their ads for 30 years, so it wasn’t easy for me to convince the owner that I could do it while she was gone. When she returned to work, she paid me back by taking me on a Caribbean Cruise with her brother and his wife. We had a wonderful time!
In our pod we had three very young salesman — I think the oldest was 23. Joanie and I felt like their mothers, so for Christmas one year we got them all new BVDs and wrote their names in the waistbands. They got a kick out of them and really could use ‘em.
I’ve told you before our department was not equipped to do large multi-paged projects. Our computers didn’t have the memory for huge files of high resolution photos, but that didn’t stop our salesman from selling things we weren’t set up to do. For example, I had a multi-page brochure to do for one of those Oak furniture stores. I had to come in one weekend and hook up to six other computers to hold all the dozens of photos. I kept getting an error message on my computer and I couldn’t get it to go to press. I had opened and checked every photo and couldn’t figure out which one was corrupt and not linking up to the brochure (I had been saying to myself, I’ve tried “everything but the kitchen sink”) and then I found it (guess what it was—the Oak Dry-sink piece that was the problem – once I got it to link it went to press).
The stories could go on and on, but out of the blue, after 9 years pumping out ads and making deadline every day, I got called to the boss’s office. I was asked if I wanted to go out to the newly purchased (by Gannett) Eastside Herald. They needed someone to be manager and to do all the ad building and page layout and since it was in my neighborhood….
Next month: Life at the Eastside Herald