Byline: BETH NEGUS VIVEIROS
Other than giving millions an unexpected three-day weekend, the great blackout of 2003 did little to disrupt the business of direct marketing long term.
The outage occurred Thursday, Aug. 14, shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern time. Numerous New York City-based companies - including the Direct Marketing Association and Direct's main editorial offices - stayed closed the next day, following Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's advice for non-essential business personnel not to commute to work.
Like many New York firms, the DMA's offices close early on Friday afternoons in the summer. "So we really only lost a half day," noted spokeswoman Christina Duffney.
Duffney housed three coworkers who couldn't get home on Thursday night, including two members of the association's IT staff who needed to be in the office on Friday to make sure the DMA's systems were rebooted properly.
Harte-Hanks' Chet Dalzell also housed a stranded out-of-town colleague that evening. When the power went out, personnel in the company's New York office used cell phones to call its San Antonio office to find out which locations across the country still had power. An e-mail was quickly sent out updating employees of New York's status.
For some firms, though, business was almost "as usual" the next day.
Kathy Duggan-Josephs, president of Ridgefield, CT-based list company D-J Associates, said her company had "no horror stories" to report. Because the outage occurred so late in the business day and was so widely publicized, no clients called in a panic, she said.
ClientLogic Specialists Marketing Services' power came back around 7 a.m. Friday, said marketing services officer Lon Mandel. Other than sporadic inbound phone service, the Weehawken, NJ company experienced no technology problems. When the blackout began, he said, servers were brought down and backed up.
"After Sept. 11, we kind of trained for this sort of situation," he said.
James DiFrangia, president of the Northeast Ohio Direct Marketing Association, said that because many of NODMA's member companies were located in downtown Cleveland, it took their firms a little longer to get up and running again.
DiFrangia, a consultant who works from a home office in the Cleveland area, was on a golf course with a client when the blackout occurred. His power was restored about 9:30 the same evening.
Novi, MI-based Motor City Interactive had backup servers in place when the power went out, so no data was lost, said president and CEO Jeff Stanislow. But colleagues in the Direct Marketing Association of Detroit who were hosting their own servers didn't fare as well.
"It was really an eye-opener, given all the things like lights and power that we take for granted as Americans," he said. "But other than a day and a half of productivity, we didn't lose anything."
MeritDirect's power in White Plains, NY was restored at about 1:15 a.m. Aug. 15, said senior vice president Paulette Schlotman.
"When the blackout occurred, our immediate concern was our servers," said Schlotman by e-mail. "Thankfully nothing was lost, as our backup system performed splendidly. We were without e-mail overnight, but everything, including our phone system, was up and in working order at the start of the business day."
No power meant delays for the nation's major delivery services. Mark Saunders, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, said many Friday deliveries were suspended in Cleveland; Detroit; Royal Oak, MI; and the New York City metropolitan area, with the exception of Staten Island.
For Memphis, TN-based Federal Express, the blackout meant flight delays and limited pickup and delivery in affected areas, said spokesman Steve Barber. Both FedEx and UPS worked throughout that weekend to get deliveries back on schedule.
UPS spokesman Norman Black said the biggest problem his company faced was the large number of customers who didn't open for business on Friday, and thus weren't able to take delivery on packages.
Surprisingly, there was little impact on the air side, he said, noting that with the exception of JFK airport, by late Thursday evening UPS was able to get cargo flights out of other airports in the New York area.
Rye, NY-based Lillian Vernon felt a "noticeable impact" on phone orders from the Northeast on Friday thanks to the blackout. Company spokesman David Hochberg chalked it up to the fact that "people either had no power or because of the distraction factor. They're glued to their TV sets and not ordering."
"The good news for catalogers," he added, "is this is not our peak season. So if something like this has to happen, this is a good time. There's no holidays looming. It's a quiet time."
At the corporate headquarters, power came back in the middle of the night and most employees made it into work Friday. About a dozen employees who live in Manhattan car-pooled home on Thursday night, but couldn't make it back to work Friday because the Metro-North commuter trains weren't running. The power outage was not felt in Virginia Beach, VA, where the company's fulfillment operations are centered.
Reacting to the blackout, the American Teleservices Association called on Congress to act quickly in passing H.R. 2250. The bill would direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop the Responsive Emergency Alert and Dissemination of Information Call System (READICall) to be used in the event of a national emergency.
Introduced by U.S. Representative Kendrick B. Meek (D-FL), READICall is a telephone alert system designed to notify people of imminent or current hazardous events caused by acts of terrorism or other man-made disasters. The system would provide information regarding appropriate measures to alleviate or minimize safety threats posed by such events. - With additional reporting by Kris Oser
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