GiftAmerica Experience
by Gaye Praml Fontoura
After a career in advertising and publicity writing in NYC, I was hired by a Mr. Levine, Advertising Manager of GiftAmerica in Upper Saddle River, NJ. I was to be his assistant, writer of the newsletter, and publicity. Actually, my responsibilities were rather vague. I called on a Friday to say hello to him and he said he had just been fired but I should report on Monday anyway which I did. I was greeted by Beth, his secretary, and ushered into a huge glamorous office overlooking the Ramapo Mountains alive with fall colors. I was told by the president, a former Navy admiral, a wonderful man, that I was to "fill in" until they hired another advertising manager. There was a merchandising manager executive with no experience whatsoever. It looked like I was the only one with proper experience for the job. So when the president asked me to write a job description, I called the American Management Association and of course, added my background from radio and tv stations, Allied Stores, Charles of the Ritz, Lanvin, Arpege, ad agencies, etc.. From the beginning, the other male executives at GiftAmerica were rather cold and would not have lunch with me, epitomizing the "old boy" network. Needless to say, after three months they hired a preppy guy from Proctor and Gamble and I was ushered into a tiny cubicle.Although it fell on deaf ears, I told them that the people who purchased presents were primarily women not men. All their ads appeared in men's magazines, football games and other tv shows that men watched. With all their expensive research by J. Walter Thompson and Burson Marsteller, at the end they realized that I was correct and the president told me so, that women buy presents. The gifts were so bad! Pop corn poppers, toasters, flowers (that was OK), etc., the kind of things that banks give away. J. Walter Thompson ran a full page ad in the NY Times which had this typo, "A handsome Jap robe for football games" (lap robe). When I called the ad exec to tell him, he said, "Gaye, please keep this low profile."
The rest of the regular employees at Western Union were furious at us because of the amount of money draining from them and we were treated with hostility. If I remember correctly, GiftAmerica cost Western Union 20 million dollars and made 5 Million dollars. Little by little people were given their pink slips. I was kept near the very end. Finally, the Admiral came into my little cubicle with tears in his eyes saying I had to go and I had done a great job. He gave me a great letter of recommendation and retired. And that was my interesting GiftAmerica experience.