Sean Reilly on Lamar’s origin, decentralized management and a long term mindset.

Sean Reilly, CEO, Lamar Advertising

Ian Dallimore interviewed Sean Reilly on yesterday’s Digital and Dirt podcast.  Some highlights.

Lamar’s origin story

The year was 1902.  This is our 120th year in business…There was a buy named Charlie Lamar and he was a banker in Pensacola Florida and on the side he ran the opera house in Pensacola…The opera house was really the town square.  It was where people gathered and they used to post on the side of the opera house the coming attractions…One day in 1902 a gentleman from the Coca-Cola Bottling Company came down from Atlanta…and said to Charlie Lamar and his partner…”when you post the coming attractions would you post drink Coca-Cola right beside it and I’ll pay you $5 a month” and a little lightbulb goes over the two Charlie’s heads…and they said yeah we’ll put it up there.  We’ll also put it up over here, put it up over there, put it up over here…

Lamar’s decentralized philosophy

My dad had really good business instincts…and he believed in what the business school books call a flat decentralized org chart.  He believed in granting his managers a lot of autonomy to run their businesses and treating them like owners.  That philosophy continues to this day.  We have a flat decentralized org chart.  We have 200 some general managers around the country.  They control every aspect of their business…Not ever business runs itself that way but that’s the way we’ve done it…if you go to Little Rock, Arkansas and talk to the Mayor he thinks that our manager there Tom Givens owns Lamar…that is sort of the secret sauce that makes Lamar a special place.

Why Lamar doesn’t have a fancy mission statement.

I find those things to be a little bit top-downish, instead of bottom-upish…In lieu of a mission statement we have a couple of very, very simple business philosophies…The first and most important one is treat others like you want to be treated…Number two is leave it better than you found it…leave the community better than you found it, leave the company better than you found it…

A long term mindset.

We are building this business to run forever.  We’re not sellers.  We’re builders…As I tell our investors, if your time horizon is next quarter don’t invest in Lamar because my time horizon is forever…

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One Comment

  1. would have been fun to have the story of the card game in there.