You've Just Ruined 36 Years of Marketing Success!

This photo popped up into my timeline and I had a flashback to 1985!

It was my worst business day and one of my best all rolled into one day!

Add a few years and pounds, bald head, grey hair and glasses and Anderson Cooper is my former boss Harold Powell.

The Harold in “Harold’s”. 

You know the guy who created “Clothing for a Lifestyle” for generations of Oklahoman's and Texan's!

The Harold who started his own clothing store in 1948 at 329 West Boyd in the heart of Campus Corner in Norman.

As the story goes, Harold was a senior in college when he told the owner of the clothing store he was working at the time, that his mom wasn’t renewing his rent and that he would be opening his own store after graduation.

And Voila’ “Harold’s” was born.

Harold’s marketing strategy was simple:

Hire all the young Greeks on campus and feature them in your advertisements in the student newspaper the “Oklahoma Daily.”

And that pretty much was a mint to print money up to our story which begins 37 years later in 1985.

I had worked at The Oklahoma Daily in college as I was finishing my Journalism Degree in Advertising so I knew full well the power of the Harold’s brand. 

Because I had seen it for the three years I attended OU every time I went anywhere and saw all the Ralph Lauren Polo shirts! They were everywhere. And all the ”cool” kids were wearing them.

Now, Harolds wasn’t the only place you could buy a Polo but Harold’s advertising made you think that was true because all the “cool” kids you aspired to be like were wearing them. And they all seemed to work at Harold's!

I had also been to the annual “Midnight Madness” Sale Harold’s had every year. It was a “happening” on a Thursday night with beer kegs, live music, balloons and deep discounts on clothes!

It was an event in Norman that was bigger than the annual OU Football spring game!

Harold had held the “Midnight Madness” sale since 1948. He had always done the same thing.  There was no variation.

Then one year in 1984, the previous Advertising Director decided that the 50 Penn Place store in Oklahoma City deserved a  “Midnight Madness” sale.

So she took the Harold’s Campus Corner 36-years of marketing success to Oklahoma City.

On a Friday night.

And it bombed.

It bombed so bad that she didn’t make it to the next sale!

And that’s where 23-year old me comes into the picture. 

My former boss at the Oklahoma Daily called and told me about the Advertising Director job at Harold’s.

I was the Advertising Director for an Oklahoma City newspaper, so I drove from Oklahoma City to Norman and interviewed with Harold and got the job.

By now Harold had grown to 9 stores in three states and was a big retail business.

Not just the one-trick pony college town store Harold started in his mother’s building on Campus Corner in 1948.

He even had a 3-person buying office and an Executive Vice President named Jerry who ran the men's operations.

However, Harold’s name was on the door and he ran the operation with an iron fist.

So one of my first assignments, other than the 9 weekly advertising deadlines in newspapers from Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Norman, Fort Worth and Jackson, Mississippi, was to analyze the 1984 “Midnight Madness” sale results.

Nothing major jumped out other than some minor type details.

But the big change was the weekday changed to Friday night from Thursday.

And that was huge.

You could get away with a Thursday night event in a college town because that was the beginning of the weekend.

But in Oklahoma City that was “date night” and who wanted to go to a clothing store sale on Friday night date night?

Apparently no one in Oklahoma City.

So I met with Jerry, the Executive Vice President, and presented my marketing strategy (which included the first radio buy in Harold’s history) and recommended the date change to Thursday night for the 1985 Harold’s “Midnight Madness” sale at 50 Penn Place.

He approved everything but added that he had decided to offer discounts to the downtown Oklahoma City men’s store during the day as well and asked me to include that in the ads.

The 50 Penn Place store had only done $30,000 at the sale last year and he hoped we could add a little downtown this year, too.

So I was excited as I bounced into work on sale day.

Soon the newspapers would arrive and I could see our ads in person.

And I had all the times our radio spot would air on the one radio station in Oklahoma City.

Harold walked in the office shortly thereafter and soon I heard the words that sent chills down my spine:

“Ahh, G.W., can you come into my office?”

You see I didn’t talk to Harold everyday. Heck sometimes I would go days where I wouldn’t even see him.

But my office was just a few steps from his and it wasn’t really an office.

I had a cubby hole that had been cut out of the hallway between Harold’s office and the accounting department. It included a closet across the hall that had all of my advertising clip books and supplies.

I had weekly newspaper deadlines and my job was to manually layout every Harold’s ad that week down to setting the border tape on the ad layout.

I would pick the photo, write the copy, crop the photo, add the logo prominently at the bottom and spelled all the boiler plate info correctly and roll it up into a mailing tube and take it to the newspaper.

There was no computer or e.mail back in those days.

All the newspapers art departments produced the actual final layout from my drafts.

So when I wasn’t laying out ads I was in my car driving them to the Journal Record, Daily Oklahoman, Friday Newspaper in Oklahoma City and running over to Copeland Hall to the Oklahoma Daily.

Tulsa, Fort Worth and Jackson ads were taken to the Norman post office and mailed USPS. 

I was basically a draftsman and courier!

So when Harold bellowed my name down the hall I knew I was in big trouble.

I grabbed my legal pad and pencil put on my suit coat and walked into his office.

He was seated behind a big flat table-like desk reading the Daily Oklahoman, the bible of newspapers in Oklahoma.

After I sat down, Harold folded up the newspaper and tossed it across the desk and said rhetorically, “What’s wrong with this ad?”

My eyes immediately went to the bottom of the ad to proofread the boiler plate info for typos.

I checked the logo, proofed the headline again and replied, “I don’t see anything wrong, Harold.”

This is where the Anderson Cooper facial expression comes in.

When Harold was not pleased with something or someone he had a habit of chewing on a pencil.

He always had a yellow legal pad scratch pad and #2 pencils handy so he could sketch out a new design, ad or doodle. He doodled a lot.

So after I reviewed the ad I looked up to see Harold chewing a #2 pencil.

Harold also had a habit of taking his hands under his glasses and rubbing his forehead. It took great skill to do this while keeping your glasses on your head.

So when Harold proceeded to both chew his pencil while rubbing his forehead simultaneously, I knew I was fired!

After Harold rubbed his forehead  he broke his silence,

“Look at that ad! What does it say?”

I replied,

“Midnight Madness Sale!”

Harold continued,

“Now read the time. What time does it say?”

I took a deep breath and read the fine print,

“Downtown, 100 Park Avenue Noon to 5 p.m.

Further Savings, 50 Penn Place

7 p.m. to 10 p.m.”

Harold stated,

“When is midnight?”

After a silence,  he yelled,

“It sure as hell isn’t noon to 5 p.m.!”

And there was the rub. 

To Harold, his eyes went straight to the boiler plate type and saw we were advertising a “Midnight Madness” sale during the daytime.

He didn’t even read the “Further Savings, 50 Penn Place. 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.”

And we were changing the strategy. The strategy he spent 36 years perfecting.

That’s when he said,

“You’ve just ruined 36 years of marketing success!”

And with that I was dismissed.

And crushed.

I could handle a mistake of a typo or bad ad placement (we always requested a right-hand read, far-forward placement unless we had purchased the back page.)

But to be told you had ruined 36 years of marketing success was pretty heavy for a 23-year old.

So as I walked back to my office thinking about cleaning out my desk, I remembered we had bought radio ads.

And if Harold reacted the way he did to the newspaper ad what would he do when he heard “the fun starts Downtown at Noon to 5 p.m.” in a radio ad?

So I went to the Accounting Director and gave her the radio times and asked her to change the station for the rest of the day!

That took care of the radio ads because Harold only listed to NPR in his car.

You see Harold was a print guy. A throwback to 1948. 

He believed you couldn’t know if an ad ran unless you could read it or touch it in your local newspaper. 

He not only didn’t listen to radio but he didn’t believe in it.

So I went to see Jerry the Executive Vice President and gave him a recap of my meeting with Harold.

Told him about the ruining of 36 years of marketing success, the midnight in the daytime gaffe and reminded him about the radio spots he had approved.

He reassured me everything would be fine and to join him at the 50 Penn Place sale later that night to help with the anticipated crowd.

So I did and we crushed it!

People were jammed into the store like sardines.

We were putting lost kids into clothes racks.

It was pandemonium.

I walked into the office the next morning and heard the following from the buying office,

“How does it feel hero?”

I stopped and stepped into the office and Jerry was beaming ear-to-ear as he met me and shook my hand.

It seemed the 50 Penn Place “Midnight Madness” sale was a huge success.

How huge?

The store did over $90,000 alone, tripling the $30,000 done in 1984,  plus the downtown store did another $30,000 during the day from Noon 5 p.m.!

It was the largest year-over-year increase in Harold’s history!

Boom!

And just as we were celebrating in walks Harold.

The offices were above the Norman store so one had to walk up a large outdoor staircase from the back parking lot to reach the offices.

The door was heavy and the only hallway led directly to Harold’s office.

So we could hear it was Harold coming up the steps and opening the door.

But we also heard him whistling and he never whistled!

As Harold walked by he looked through the window and saw us celebrating.

He back-tracked down the stairs and entered the buying office to an awkward silence.

Which he broke by putting his hands in both pants pockets, leaned back and said,

“Well, I guess we did alright last night!”

I was overjoyed. To me that was the best apology Harold could’ve given. I was thrilled to hear him say that. For him, that was his way of saying I’m sorry.

But not to Carl the buyer from Chicago. Carl was a meek, mild -mannered bespectacled man who wore nattily attired tweed sport coats and ties from his days as a Marshall Field and Lord and Taylor buyer.

I don’t think I had heard Carl speak in the six months I had worked at Harold's.

So when Carl responded to Harold the entire buying office was stunned.

Carl slapped both hands on his cubby hole desk, slammed his pencil down on the desk so hard it flew into the ceiling sticking a perfect 10 into the tile and pushed his chair away right in front of Harold saying,

“Ok Harold? Ok? We did fu@$ing great last night Harold!”

To which a surprised Harold said “Uh. Right. Ok. See ya later”, as he proceeded whistling down the hall.

Now, Harold never said a word to me about the sale results.

Or the Midnight Madness sale during-the-day-strategy or the ruining 36 years of marketing success remark either.

Until one year later on the day of the 1986 Midnight Madness sale in Oklahoma City.

Now, we were doing them in all cities. 

Harold called me into his office again.

I was scared to death as he was sitting behind his desk reading the Daily Oklahoman.

What did I screw up this time?

Harold put down the paper long enough to look at me through his glasses that were perfectly perched on his face and ask,

“Ah, G.W., did we run the radio ads again in Oklahoma City today?”

I smiled and replied, “Yes we did. Bought three stations, too!”

He smiled back and resumed reading his paper.

And that’s the story I recalled by seeing Anderson Cooper’s face today!

I always liked and  respected Harold.

He was an interesting man to work for.

He really was an advertising maven.

I learned alot from him about advertising and retail marketing that helped me the rest of my career.

However, when I left Harold's and ended up at Oklahoma City-based advertising agency Ackerman McQueen, that experience didn't go very far.

My job was in account service not creative.

My new boss told me I'd never touch a piece of border tape again!

He was right!

Harold's catalog from 1985.