By 1994 my promotion wasn’t published anymore. By 2026 you self-published your promotion on LinkedIn (and earned 77 “likes”).
But 1992?
In 1992 you’d submit org structure changes to DMNews so that you could communicate to the entire Catalog Industry just how sophisticated your intentions were.
- “LL Bean announced today the promotion of Shannon Ellison to Director of Circulation. She brings with her nearly eight years of experience. Ellison mentioned that she’s ‘… looking forward to partnering with our printer to bring perfect binding to the Christmas catalog’. At press time, LL Bean has not decided whether the Christmas catalog will be 256 pages or 260 pages.”
These announcements meant something. There was actual gossip … “do you think LL Bean could go to 264 pages, I mean, Ellison likes a meaty assortment from what I’ve heard.” I recall our restructure in 1992 to a “Customer Planning and Development” framework (or maybe we left that framework, I don’t know). We announced a new Director and new Managers. My goodness, the stimulating conversations as LL Bean and Lands’ End held an “exchange” meeting (to exchange names with each other) in room 318 at the Marriott during the Catalog Conference, with 18 people (including 6 actual employees from LL Bean and Lands’ End paired with 12 kind vendor-supporting staffers) sitting around two queen beds negotiating the trade of 1.6 million names at $0.005 each.
Twenty years later? All of it … gone. All of it. Replaced by Google.
Imagine everything that exists today … gone in 2046. It’s going to happen.
