Pam Edstrom Burnished the Image of Bill Gates and Microsoft
April 07 2017 - 10:29AM
Dow Jones News
By James R. Hagerty
When Pam Edstrom became public relations manager for Microsoft
Corp. in 1982, it was just a "scrappy little startup," as she later
put it, and journalists weren't lining up to meet the boyish
chairman, Bill Gates.
She sought an appointment with a New York Times technology
editor. "I don't talk to public relations people," she recalled
being told. Before long, as Microsoft emerged as a dominant force
in computer software, Mr. Gates was beaming from the cover of Time
magazine. "A few days later, the technology editor for the New York
Times called me," she said in a University of Minnesota
commencement address last year.
A New York Times spokeswoman declined to comment.
Among Microsoft's marketing tactics was arranging for thousands
of pillow cases with Windows logos to be placed in Las Vegas hotels
during a technology show in the early 1980s. Ms. Edstrom left
Microsoft in 1984 to become co-founder of what is now WE
Communications, a global PR firm with 800 employees and revenue of
$102 million last year.
When she started out, technology companies' news releases tended
to focus on the technical details of a product's performance. She
broadened the message to suggest what the product would do for
people who didn't care about the technicalities.
Ms. Edstrom died March 28 of cancer at her home in Vancouver,
Wash. She was 71.
Early in her career, Ms. Edstrom found that PR people could get
so wrapped up in a press release or event that they forgot the
bigger picture. "What business problem are we trying to solve?" she
often asked. She also preached brevity. "Be brief, be bright and be
done," she sometimes advised colleagues before meeting with
clients.
Mr. Gates said through a spokeswoman that Ms. Edstrom had "made
a huge mark on Microsoft and the entire industry."
Her success in depicting Mr. Gates as an amiable savant suffered
a setback in 1998 when her daughter, Jennifer Edstrom, and Marlin
Eller released "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates," a book saying Mr.
Gates had become distracted and let Microsoft become "just another
lumbering giant."
At the time, Jennifer Edstrom was widely quoted as saying her
mother was upset by the book and no longer talking to her.
Communications had resumed by the time Pam Edstrom died, friends
said. Jennifer Edstrom didn't respond to requests for comment.
Pamela Newsome, who adopted the name Edstrom during her first
marriage, was born Feb. 15, 1946, in Minneapolis. With the help of
an American Legion scholarship, she earned a bachelor's degree in
sociology and theater at the University of Minnesota, then took
courses in criminology at Portland State University. Her goal was
to be an FBI agent or police officer, but she was told that,
standing at five feet, she was too short.
So she applied for a job at Tektronix Inc., a maker of
electronic instruments. She waited until after 5 p.m. to call the
CEO, guessing correctly that his secretary would be gone by then.
When he picked up the phone, she asked for five minutes. Before she
could finish her pitch, he said her five minutes were up. She kept
trying and eventually got a public-relations job at Tektronix in
1979.
In 1982 she joined Microsoft. Less than two years later, she was
recruited to join a fledgling PR firm headed by another former
Tektronix manager. Ms. Edstrom and Melissa Waggener Zorkin joined
forces to build what became Waggener Edstrom and more recently WE
Communications.
Ms. Waggener Zorkin, chief executive of WE, said she and Ms.
Edstrom frequently went on long speed-walks to hash out business
issues. "We would talk a mile a minute," Ms. Waggener Zorkin
said.
Ms. Edstrom's survivors include her husband, Joseph Lamberton,
and daughter, Jennifer. An earlier marriage ended in divorce.
Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 07, 2017 10:14 ET (14:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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