From the Desk of our Production and Media Manager, Jeff Gray, who is celebrating 25 years with LO!

In April of 1985, I was fast approaching my 10th anniversary in the Production/Internal Control department at Ketchum Advertising/ Pittsburgh. Out of the blue, I received a call from Jim Wisniewski, a former copywriter with Ketchum who had become the creative director at a small agency named Hawbaker Communications. He told me that their production manager was going to be taking an early retirement for health reasons, and asked if I would be interested in applying to be his replacement. I interviewed with Ron Larson and Dave Hawbaker, and was offered the position. I accepted and began my new role on April 22.

During my early years at HCI, my “desktop technology” consisted of an IBM Correcting Selectric II® typewriter (at right) and a calculator. The agency’s secretaries, copywriters, and Dave Hawbaker had DECMate® II word processors. The agency had a stat camera and a CompuGraphic 8400 typesetting machine, which took up an entire office and used lots of chemicals. Layouts were still done with markers and pencils, and finished art (called key art) was done on boards, with type and “For Position Only” stats of the artwork pasted into position using hot wax, rubber cement, or spray adhesive. Our in-house photographic capabilities consisted of the latest in Polaroid™ cameras.

Unlike today, many printers did not have in-house pre-press capabilities, so producing a brochure required the use of a pre-press house that did the color separations, film preparation and proofing. Upon approval of the proofs, the film was released to a printer, who used the furnished film to make the printing plates, and print the job. Bindery capabilities at most printers was quite often pretty limited, so it was not unusual to have the finished press sheets sent to a trade bindery for completion of the job. Production of advertising material was also handled by a pre-press house in a similar manner. This process took several days, and we usually allowed 6 to 10 working days in the production schedule to allow for production, changes and approvals.

In the late 1980’s, Hawbaker entered the computer era, purchasing a Novell network system and getting everybody in the agency an Acer desktop computer…with 4 megs of RAM and a monochrome monitor. Woo-hoo!

During the 1990’s, our art department left the wonderful world of paste-up art and smelly chemicals behind when we purchased our first Apple Macintosh computers. This revolutionized the way artwork was prepared, and made typesetting equipment and stat cameras obsolete. Also on their way out were the rack upon rack of pencils and markers in all the Pantone® colors, and pads of drawing paper.

It was also around this time that pre-press houses and printers started to replace their aging cameras and analog scanners with new digital technology. Scitex® and Crossfield® systems were installed, enabling color manipulation and retouching of photography in ways never imagined. Art directors were in their glory! These also made the several days of production time needed to produce proofs of ads and brochures a thing of the past; one- and two- day turnaround for ad production was becoming the norm.

When Dave Hawbaker’s retirement date of September 1998 was fast approaching, plans for the future of the agency were explored. There was an agency in Erie, PA, with whom we had worked with on some projects, and Dave contacted Jack O’Brien, president of JRO Advertising. Initial discussions led to serious talks, which ultimately lead to the merger of the two firms in May of 1998. Upon Dave’s retirement, Hawbaker & Partners officially became LarsonO’Brien Advertising-PR, Inc.

Over the next several years, technology exploded. Bigger and faster computers appeared in the agency, which soon gave way to smaller and even faster laptop units replacing many of the desktop machines. Digital photography was quickly replacing conventional film photos, and eventually our agency’s Polaroid Spectra™ was replaced by a high-end digital camera, allowing us to do our own photography for many projects. We purchased a good quality desk-top scanner, which allowed us to now produce almost all of the art our printed material 100% digitally! The continued improvements to software such as Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® made pre-press houses and their Scitex-type systems nearly obsolete. Gone were the over-sized envelopes full of transparencies and retouched photo prints and large pieces of key art which were picked up by our vendors’ messengers…replaced by digital media that easily fit into one 6”x9” envelope. And now, overnight is not when it absolutely, positively has to be there…we can now send files to printers’ and publications’ FTP sites. I could never have imagined final digital files being sent from LarsonO’Brien’s office in Bethel Park to anywhere else in the world in a matter of minutes!

Y2K came and went, with all our electronic “stuff” still working on January 1, 2000. And as the 21st Century began, LarsonO’Brien continued to grow. New clients came on board, and a few of our old ones faded away. Our PR department expanded rapidly, and in the middle of the decade, LarsonO’Brien decided that we were the best agency at marketing for the building industry. We made that our focus…and we haven’t looked back. We added an Interactive Department to develop on-line marketing. And as we neared the end of the decade, we entered the world of continuing education, developing AIA approved courses for architects.

Video conferencing, “Skype™-ing”, “GoToMeeting™.com” and things that were only dreamed of when I started at Hawbaker (Al Gore had yet to invent the world wide web) have made our world very, very small indeed. In fact, most of our current clients are not even located in Pennsylvania – let alone the Pittsburgh area. We have clients based in West Virginia, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, California – and even in Australia.

The quarter of a century that I have spent at LarsonO’Brien has gone by quickly. It’s still (usually) fun to work in this ever-changing business, especially since I continue to learn new things.  I have had the privilege of working with some of the best in the business…both on the client-side and here in the agency. I still do.

When I was fresh out of high school back in 1975, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. After spending nearly 35 years in the advertising business…the last 25 here at LO…I don’t think I’d want to do anything else. Except maybe hit the lottery.

Congratulations Jeff! And thank you for all of your hard work.