As described in a previous Throwback post, life was different in the pre-Internet days. Though the print delivery staff was under far less time pressure and the sweet sound of music filled the data center, times were tough for those involved in enterprise print management.
Networks were flaky and often reeeeeaaaaalllly slow. Many companies had not yet standardized on TCP/IP, and there was a lot of data stream conversion required to print across mainframe, PC, and UNIX networks. Then, as now, IT administrators were always searching for a better way to manage printing. But back before search engines and subreddits, these folks turned to trade magazines for answers. So we did a fair amount of print advertising.
Here is an example from an ad campaign we ran more than 20 years ago… Some of these haven’t aged well, but they definitely captured the attention of the IT crowd in the 90’s. What can I say, it was a different time… an era when people still giggled at images of nerds beating on office equipment with a baseball bat, most video was distributed in VHS format, and people danced the Macarena without shame.
If you look closely at the ad, you’ll see one of the earliest print references to the LRS website, which we launched in 1996 — two years before Google launched theirs.
Enjoy!
