Who said “losers never win?” This is a story about Charles W. Lamar Sr., who was president of American National Bank in Pensacola, Fla., in the early 1900s. The bank occupied small offices within the famed Pensacola Opera House.
John McClay Coe, who was manager of the opera house, took on Lamar as a business partner in 1902. When Coe opted to retire in 1908, he and Lamar settled on a coin toss as way to divide their assets.
Coe won…and claimed the
rights to retain the lucrative opera house with its 1,400-seat theater. Lamar lost.
He got what was left – the Pensacola Advertising Company, which had been created
to produce posters to promote coming attractions at the opera house. Lamar renamed
the little print shop operation as Lamar Advertising Company.
The opera house was heavily damaged in two 1916 hurricanes. The structure was demolished after receiving further damage from the yet another hurricane in 1917.
Lamar Advertising, on the
other hand, was able to make a go of it…and more.
Today, Lamar is America’s premier outdoor advertising company, owning more than 161,300 billboard faces from coast-to-coast. Lamar billboards are fairly plentiful in Carteret County along the major arteries of U.S. Route 70 and N.C. Routes 24 and 58.
In addition to its vast billboard empire that spans 43 states, Lamar operates transit advertising franchises in 12 states with displays posted on buses, bus shelters and benches.
Through a subsidiary, Interstate Logos, Inc., the company provides 97,500 logo displays for limited access highways, including federal interstates. These are green highway exit signs that post logo information about nearby restaurants, gas stations and lodging.
Lamar’s annual revenues in
2022 approached $2.08 billion.
Lamar’s current president
is Sean E. Reilly, 62, a fourth-generation descendant of Charles Lamar Sr.
Educated at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., Reilly
also earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1989. He assumed the role
as Lamar’s CEO in 2011, succeeding an older brother, Kevin P. Reilly Jr.
Sean Reilly told Patricia Olsen of Family Business Magazine that his first job at Lamar was painting signs by hand. “Holiday Inn this exit,” he said.
Sean Reilly said his father, Kevin P. Reilly Sr., who served as Lamar’s third president from 1960-89, taught his children two basic rules. “One was the golden rule: Treat others as you’d like to be treated, and the rest will take care of itself. The other was to leave everything better than you found it. That could be the company, your community, your country or, frankly, the kitchen.”
“My advice for other family business leaders? Stay true to your family values,” Sean Reilly said.
During a 2022 interview
with VermontBiz, an online business forum, Sean Reilly said that one of Lamar’s
milestones was its “pioneering efforts to create large-format digital
billboards in 2004. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing. But we were
willing to experiment. We were willing to take a chance.”
“And as we learned more about its capabilities and more about what our customers wanted out of it, we greatly refined the model. And today, it’s the standard of the industry. It is generating great revenues for Lamar, but more importantly, great results for our customers,” he said.
Sean Reilly said that Lamar adheres to “a bottom-up organizational style, where the staff at the corporate level works to help our people in the field to be the best they can be.”
“If you want to know the
secret sauce, that’s it,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment