Recollections of IABC's early days.

It's the 20th birthday year for IABC. But don't think IABC was born full-grown at a communication conference in Pittsburgh, PA. in June 1970. Far from it. The structure, the services, the values, the membership resulted from the work and effort of people working in pioneering communication organizations 10, 20 and even 30 years before 1970. During those pre-IABC years they put down the solid foundation on which IABC could build.

And those early efforts were not made by top management in several companies, as well as several management organizations, who saw the growing value of communication and put their support behind communicators and those early communication organizations.

The chronology of those early communication organizations appears on other pages in this issue. What follows are the recollections of one of those who took part in the creation and development of values, services and strategies of those early organizations, who lent support in the joining together that resulted in IABC, and helped adapt and improve what had been done earlier.

First, from what seeds did IABC's invaluable services grow? The awards programs? The structure of chapters and districts? The publications? The surveys that provide profiles of organization communicators, their status, their earnings, their education? The number of males and females? How did the library and information service grow? How did the research that zeroed in on business communication-and what was and wasn't effective-get started? When did the relationship with management organizations begin?

Here's a brief look at how some of those projects were initiated and developed so that they were ready for IABC to cultivate and improve for members.

The structure? You'll read elsewhere of the growth in the 40s of the American Association of Industrial Editors (AAIE), made up of individuals as well as of local groups in the cities and regions ... of the split resulting from the desire of local associations for an association of associations, as opposed to an association of individuals ... of how the splinter group became the National Council of Industrial Editors-much larger than the remaining AAIE group because the local networking, or association, groups went with NCIE ... and how NCIE soon became the International Council of Industrial Editors with the affiliation of the Canadian association and others.

Although professional associations treaded water during WWII, communication became more important. Many government agencies required that suppliers initiate publications to motivate employees in the support of the war effort. Major manufacturers organized all-out-war-production committees made up of employee and management representatives with communicators playing key roles.

Then with the war's end, and a booming competitive marketplace, communicators retained their importance-and their professional associations could now do much more in serving members.

Both ICIE and AAIE developed publications to serve members. AAIE provided members with a large magazine-Editors Notebook; ICIE, with many chapters, each developing new ideas, reported on the activities and ideas of chapters in news-style stories that were combined in a magazine format called Reporting.

In the late '40s ICIE, with growing chapters and rose-colored glasses, set up the first US national headquarters of a professional communication association with a paid director.

But costs of that New York City office outran income. Headquarters returned to the offices of ICIE volunteers. A heavy debt-for those days-faced the organization. Facing bankruptcy, it was saved when a charter member whose management believed in the association and its importance took over responsibility for Reporting magazine until the red ink faded ... the company was National Cash Register.

With the beginning '50s and continuing growth in internal and external publications by business, ICIE carefully developed new and needed projects and services.

An Evaluation and Awards Program was initiated, providing a means for communicators to win recognition and to obtain evaluations of their work by peers and management representatives. (In 1951, I recall walking off with 13 first place awards at the Minneapolis conference. Somehow it told me that many entrants were failing to tackle communication problems of their companies).

AAIE established a Gold Quill awards program which IABC chose to use for its awards program when the two organizations joined in 1970.

In the 50s we felt-as we do today-that there was need to get a periodic picture of the membership and the communication function in different companies. After two initial surveys of smaller audiences, the third was called "Operation Tapemeasure" and sought to cover the company publication field-internal and external-profiling the communication function in different categories of organizations. The survey focused on publications since most effort by companies at that time was in the publications area.

Opinion Research Corporation-a leading survey group-helped, as did psychologists at General Electric ... Respondents numbered 2,000 covering the then estimated field of 10,000 publications for all audiences, internal and external, of companies in nearly a dozen categories of business. We developed statistics on respondents covering earnings, reporting status, budgets (where those were provided), publication circulation, and their objectives-or lack of them.

Some interesting findings: In that year of 1955 about a third of publication editors (or communicators with other media) were women. Nearly half of the communicators were age 40 or more. Average salary for those over 40 was US $12,000, or more. Maybe much more. Communicators under 30 averaged about $7,000. But this was in a period that operated under a different cost of living. A $12,000 salary could mean a house with two cars. When we look at inflation since then, we might question progress in any occupation.

But figures in another area brought different questions. Most communicators had been reporting to external promotion departments, no matter what their audiences. In 1955, with business facing growing employee problems, there appeared to be a steady shift of internal editors to being part of the internal relations staff.

Company investment in regular publications also told a story different from today's. It should be emphasized that figures represent more than employee publications-customer, shareholder, dealer and others were represented. The 1,000 respondents who furnished figures on those questions indicated their publications had a total circulation of 36 million.

Projecting that to the 10,000 known company publications, we estimated a total circulation of nearly 400 million. (Obviously there was much duplication then as now.) Average cost per copy for the 1,000 companies providing figures for publications was 48 cents. Projecting that provided an estimated investment of far more than $500 million for company publications.

But the finding that won the most interest in the business world was that huge numbers of company publications had no business-related objectives. That gave ICIE-and AAIE-A peg on which to develop programs and services to make communication more valuable to sponsoring companies. The survey finding and the resulting ICIE plans and initiatives made headlines in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and business magazines, plus offers by the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations to work with our organizations.

American Management Association put emphasis on a new series of seminars for business communicators and ICIE and AAIE leaders were asked to help.

Also in the '50s, Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations asked communicators with experience in the labor relations area to help in the development of short courses to help communicators increase their effectiveness in the pay, benefits and human resources areas. Out of these annual short courses grew a group now called the Council for Communication Management.

But ICIE as an organization-and members as individuals-probably received the greatest help from Oklahoma A & M's Professor Clement Trout who annually conducted seminars for company publication editors and served in an ex-officio capacity to ICIE throughout the 50s. Leaders in the departments of journalism in a number of universities provided aid and advice to ICIE chapters in their areas.

In the mid-'50s, having emphasized the need for business-related objectives for company communication programs, I persuaded half a dozen ICIE members to work on a project called the "Tangible Results Committee." Our work would be to produce a collection of communication case histories in which specific company publications or other media had a measurable effect on organizations' achievements. Here's why:

I'd spent several moonlighting years teaching the Psychology of Communication at Columbia University and persuaded ICIE that we needed to make use of one of the basic psychological principles: that a collection of specific communication case histories and the positive results for sponsoring organizations could well be more useful than a collection of statistics and percentages in persuading companies and management to tackle business-related objectives in communication.

Eventually, out came the results of the work-a score of case histories describing numerous tangible results from specific communication programs in company publications and other media-programs resulting in lower turnover, increased sales, better understanding and acceptance of misunderstood health care plans and pension plans and more.

The booklet with its emphasis on specific events provided headlines for the WSJ and other business publications. It provided material for ICIE and AAIE speakers. It was reprinted by one of the US' leading management publications.

The booklet led eventually, in the early '60s, to a new category in ICIE's awards program, the "Achievement for Management" awards, in which entries described the planning of programs, their objectives and tangible results and how they were achieved. That approach became a part of IABC's awards programs later in the 1970s.

Another project came out of psychological principles applied to business communication-one I'd loaded on Columbia students as well as GE communicators. It was the one that tells us that, as part of any communication program, we need to use the supporting words of peers of those we want to persuade. That principle provided ICIE with an opportunity: if we wanted to reach top management across business with a message on the importance of communication, what better way to do it than to honor each year a CEO, or top management individual, who had supported effective communication programs in a specific company-and the programs that had helped reach specific business goals.

So, in the early 60s, ICIE set up an award to honor the top management individual who had contributed strongly to the support of communication within an organization. The honoree would address our ICIE annual conference. His or her words would emphasize to the audience of communicators just how important an effective business-related communication program can be. But, just as important, through the press and business management media, those words would reach an audience of the honorees' peers across the country and, just maybe, might persuade a number of managements that their communication programs could be made more valuable.

We called the award the "Communicator of the Year" award. That confused many ICIE members who immediately nominated political leaders, newscasters, entertainers and others who are professional communicators. It detracted from the effectiveness of the winner's words with peers. It was proof of how a couple of words can cause misunderstanding.

The name of the award has been changed several times. Today it's the "Excellence in Communication Leadership Award." Maybe there's still opportunity for improvement.

In the mid-'50s ICIE again-and more successfully-opened a headquarters or central office. This time in Akron, Ohio at an address which many veterans will remember-2108 Braewick Circle. The volunteer executive director, Ludel Sauvageot, continued a full-time public relations job. She was assisted by Geraldine Keating, who in 1960 became executive secretary with the growth of that job.

The central office and Gerry Keating carried over into the early years of IABC. Its work and support made it possible for me, and many later ICIE presidents, to achieve the results with which we were credited.

Reporting became a full-fledged magazine, edited eventually by Larry Ragan, ABC.

Our work with management and government groups enabled us to start a newsletter called Contact. It zeroed in on problems of companies, on the efforts to improve employee and public economic understanding of business, and on government legislation affecting business. It indicated to communicators that they could play more important roles in these areas. ICIE members passed this newsletter to their managements to help show what they could do within their own companies.

The need for increasingly effective communication in business led ICIE leaders to help in the forming of a new management organization devoted to encouraging companies to communicate on key employee relations problems that were developing in the US. The group was called the "Employer Labor Relations Information Committee." It published a monthly magazine for top management-The ELRIC Communicator. In many cases it made ICIE and AAIE members aware of objectives their management might want worked on.

This, and other cooperative ventures with management groups, set the stage for IABC's mid-'70s work with the Business Roundtable, an organization of CEOs of major companies. Working with the Roundtable, IABC leaders developed a US-wide tour of seminars aimed at helping communicators in every company to develop programs to increase employee and community understanding of the economics of business. One reason: the growing need for employees and communities to be involved in successfully meeting a company's competition at home and abroad.

In the 60s, with the invaluable help of the small headquarters staff, ICIE was able to initiate a syndication service, sending regular mailings to members, providing them with specific examples of the way delicate problems had been tackled by others.

Also in the 60s, with the help of W. Charles Redding, Ph.D., head of communication research at Purdue University; Albert Walker, Ph.D., at Northern Illinois University, as well as other educators who had provided ICIE with research help over the years, we initiated regular reports to members on communication research findings. The central office began the library and information service which IABC has now developed into such a valuable membership service.

A placement service also was undertaken. The organizational structure of chapters and districts was in place and working.

But by now talks were going on among ICIE, AAIE and Canadian association leaders-talks that were leading to the amalgamation of ICIE and AAIE that was voted on and became a fact in june, 1970. The july 1970 issue of Reporting had an underline-"A publication of the International Association of Business Communicators." There were those who argued that the word "business" shouldn't be in there. Those in favor said that, thinking broadly, every organization, whether education, government, healthcare or association-had business problems and a major objective of their communicators was communicating on those problems.

With June, 1970, Bill Irby of Avondale Mills became IABC's first president, and John McGovern of F.W. Woolworth became executive vice president (or president elect). Many of us who had been serving as district vice presidents were re-elected to make it possible for the new organization to be off and running on the date of its birth.

Looking back at that speech I made at the first IABC conference in 1970, in which I tried to persuade everyone to involve employees in their companies by communicating about customers, competition, costs, change, compensation and concern, I have a feeling that, since then, many have made those subjects part of their objectives-including many who never heard of my speech,