Pam Edstrom Burnished the Image of Bill Gates and Microsoft

By James R. Hagerty 

When Pam Edstrom became public relations manager for Microsoft Corp. in 1982, it was just a "scrappy little startup," as she later put it, and journalists weren't lining up to meet the boyish chairman, Bill Gates.

She sought an appointment with a New York Times technology editor. "I don't talk to public relations people," she recalled being told. Before long, as Microsoft emerged as a dominant force in computer software, Mr. Gates was beaming from the cover of Time magazine. "A few days later, the technology editor for the New York Times called me," she said in a University of Minnesota commencement address last year.

A New York Times spokeswoman declined to comment.

Among Microsoft's marketing tactics was arranging for thousands of pillow cases with Windows logos to be placed in Las Vegas hotels during a technology show in the early 1980s. Ms. Edstrom left Microsoft in 1984 to become co-founder of what is now WE Communications, a global PR firm with 800 employees and revenue of $102 million last year.

When she started out, technology companies' news releases tended to focus on the technical details of a product's performance. She broadened the message to suggest what the product would do for people who didn't care about the technicalities.

Ms. Edstrom died March 28 of cancer at her home in Vancouver, Wash. She was 71.

Early in her career, Ms. Edstrom found that PR people could get so wrapped up in a press release or event that they forgot the bigger picture. "What business problem are we trying to solve?" she often asked. She also preached brevity. "Be brief, be bright and be done," she sometimes advised colleagues before meeting with clients.

Mr. Gates said through a spokeswoman that Ms. Edstrom had "made a huge mark on Microsoft and the entire industry."

Her success in depicting Mr. Gates as an amiable savant suffered a setback in 1998 when her daughter, Jennifer Edstrom, and Marlin Eller released "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates," a book saying Mr. Gates had become distracted and let Microsoft become "just another lumbering giant."

At the time, Jennifer Edstrom was widely quoted as saying her mother was upset by the book and no longer talking to her. Communications had resumed by the time Pam Edstrom died, friends said. Jennifer Edstrom didn't respond to requests for comment.

Pamela Newsome, who adopted the name Edstrom during her first marriage, was born Feb. 15, 1946, in Minneapolis. With the help of an American Legion scholarship, she earned a bachelor's degree in sociology and theater at the University of Minnesota, then took courses in criminology at Portland State University. Her goal was to be an FBI agent or police officer, but she was told that, standing at five feet, she was too short.

So she applied for a job at Tektronix Inc., a maker of electronic instruments. She waited until after 5 p.m. to call the CEO, guessing correctly that his secretary would be gone by then. When he picked up the phone, she asked for five minutes. Before she could finish her pitch, he said her five minutes were up. She kept trying and eventually got a public-relations job at Tektronix in 1979.

In 1982 she joined Microsoft. Less than two years later, she was recruited to join a fledgling PR firm headed by another former Tektronix manager. Ms. Edstrom and Melissa Waggener Zorkin joined forces to build what became Waggener Edstrom and more recently WE Communications.

Ms. Waggener Zorkin, chief executive of WE, said she and Ms. Edstrom frequently went on long speed-walks to hash out business issues. "We would talk a mile a minute," Ms. Waggener Zorkin said.

Ms. Edstrom's survivors include her husband, Joseph Lamberton, and daughter, Jennifer. An earlier marriage ended in divorce.

Write to James R. Hagerty at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 07, 2017 10:14 ET (14:14 GMT)

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