Jodi’s Journal: For Lawrence and Schiller, the next chapter awaits

Jan. 29, 2023

Picture this:

It’s the mid-1970s. Craig Lawrence and Paul Schiller had decided to leave their full-time advertising jobs to start their own agency.

They sat in a car and flipped a coin.

Whoever won would have his name first in the business. Whoever lost would be the president.

“I don’t know if I won or lost,” joked Lawrence, looking back on the moment decades later.

“We really didn’t have much of a plan,” Schiller added.

But they did have creative talent, vision and the ability to bring something new to a Sioux Falls market that already had its share of agencies.

Lawrence and Schiller might have been in the ad business – but they approached it like the reporters and storytellers they are.

“I think where we really succeeded was we were first journalists, and we needed to get the information for our clients,” Schiller said.

They would listen to a business leader express a vision for where the company wanted to go and then ask questions.

“A year from now, what do you want people to be thinking about you?” Lawrence said. “Well, then let’s get to it.”

That meant continually gathering data, which led to creating “very effective messaging tools,” Schiller continued.

It also led the entrepreneurs into an entirely new venture, which became L&S Teleservices and then Five Star Call Centers.

That’s why I sat down with the founders recently as they sold the call center business to its leadership team at the end of 2022. They transitioned out of the marketing firm a decade prior.

It was a fun chance for me to reflect with two leaders I admire in my own industry as our parallels paths of journalism and marketing bear some similarities, albeit decades apart.

I enjoy people who disrupt their industry a bit, think differently from others and know how to show and tell a great story. They certainly check those boxes and more.

“Still crazy after all these years,” is how Lawrence put it. But it’s a good kind of crazy. In the hour we spent together, we quickly bonded over the media industry, innovative ad campaigns and entrepreneurship.

A few quick stories worth repeating:

Schiller used to make $2 per photo and Lawrence 35 cents per column inch when they worked together as photographer and reporter at USD. From there, Lawrence went to the Brookings Register for a year before getting into TV news, and Schiller went to the Yankton Press & Dakotan before serving in Germany during the Vietnam War.

Paul Schiller

They stayed friends, with Lawrence even winning an essay contest sponsored by Germany asking for thoughts on “how Berlin can build its image in the U.S.” The future brand-builder’s skills won him a trip to the country where his friend Schiller was serving.

One time – and this might not be too tough to imagine – Lawrence remembers racing a news car for what was then KSFY-TV with 16mm film to Harold’s Photo. The rule was whichever news station got there first got its film processed first.

“We went past a highway patrolman on the side of the road, but he didn’t stop us,” Lawrence said.

Craig Lawrence

They both eventually migrated into marketing jobs before deciding to form a firm themselves.

With their Lawrence & Schiller agency, one of their clients was Ben-Hur Ford, a major local auto dealer.

They decided to fill a 1,000-gallon swimming pool with red Jell-O and numbered Ping-Pong balls to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

“You’d come jump in the pool of Jell-O and win a prize,” Lawrence said. “That’s crazy.”

Maybe, but the client sold 150 cars because of it.

As they assess the state of the industry today, they sometimes ask: “Where’s the daring? Where’s the creative? Where’s the ‘out there’?” Schiller said. “Name me one campaign in this town that’s preeminent in our market.”

Fair question. And I struggled for an answer, but it did make me think. Which is why it’s so valuable to sit down with leaders like these who understand what it takes to move industries forward.

They’re role models not just for me but for so many in this market who have evolved marketing and storytelling. They also prove that one endeavor can lead to new ones, as they did with Five Star, and how surrounding yourself with the right people makes all the difference.

“If Five Star is successful, it’s not because of Paul and I,” Lawrence said. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We lost lots of money, and then we met Joel and Troy and Ray – brilliant guys experienced from running Wells Fargo call centers.”

They sold that business to Troy Holt, Ray Peterson and Joel Sylvester at the end of 2022.

“They just have such a different perspective than we do,” Sylvester said. “They were ad guys, and we’re call center guys. What we looked at as easy stuff was stuff they struggled with. And we’re very humble, we do our job, but we didn’t always do a great job telling the story of our accomplishments. We didn’t have the connections to business leaders throughout Sioux Falls, and they helped us gain an understanding of what was needed in the market.”

So what’s next? I figured it was impossible for Lawrence and Schiller to take any kind of average path to retirement, and they didn’t disappoint.

Schiller continues to wow with his iconic photography of South Dakota landscapes, rooted in a mission to show the world this is so much more than “flyover country.” Look for a coffee-table book on the prairie – with writing, of course, from Lawrence.

The two also are collaborating on a meaningful effort in honor of Lawrence’s son, Chris, who is a survivor of stage four bile duct cancer. The nonprofit Hope Has Arrived, helps bring hope, strength and peace against cancer. There are shared stories of hope and content designed to bring peace and inspiration.

A book is being created to compile many of the stories – with photos from Schiller.

How do two people work together for so long in so many ways? I asked, and they pointed me to a book they published several years ago with the answer.

In the forward, it reads that they have “learned how to live with each other’s habits and quirks, studiously avoiding conflict.”

“This isn’t because we’re great humanitarians. It’s because we’re pragmatic. We know that if we’re focused on conflict we can’t be focused on the mission: growing the company.”

Despite what they told me their upcoming time will involve, I suspect there’s more coming for their own stories too.

We’re lucky, in Sioux Falls and in South Dakota, that these two storytellers have used their words and images to capture so much.

As I wrapped up this column, I glanced at my desk calendar – which I do multiple times daily – and beneath the Paul Schiller photo on it for the month of January was the caption “New Beginnings.” As usual, they found the right words for the occasion.

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Jodi’s Journal: For Lawrence and Schiller, the next chapter awaits

Their own branding was decided by a coin flip. This and other tales as we look back on a varied career and what’s next with the men who helped build the city’s largest ad agency and a rapidly growing call center business.

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