They call it a "click," and it happens when a person meets someone for the first time and knows right away they are meant to be the greatest of friends. In 1988, it happened to Peg Devlyn and Pat Heffernan, two high-powered businesswomen who were working in the same Burlington ad agency.
As they soon discovered, the two women had a lot in common. They had both worked all their lives. They had both been extremely successful despite the fact that they had to deal with serious illness. And, most important of all, they shared a set of values which they applied to business as well as to life.
"I had a yearning for a colleague someone to share things with," Heffernan said. "Peg and I immediately clicked. We even liked working with the same clients - clients with values messages. We felt most enthusiastic in the non-profit sector, or with progressive businesses. That's where we felt we do the best work. when we're really engaged in what we're doing."
It didn't take long for the two women to create their own ad agency, Marketing Partners, Inc, which has over $1 million in yearly billings, has earned a multitude of awards, employs six people, and just celebrated its 12th anniversary on July 1.
What makes Marketing Partners unique is the way it applies the principles of social responsibility to the advertising business.
"In our circle of business associates, people are very suspicious of the ad industry and marketing," Devlyn said. "Some people thought the job of a marketer is to sell people things they don't need and shouldn't want."
Marketing Partners created a set of guidelines, called "Communication Principles," which laid out Devlyn and Heffernan's beliefs. The first says that marketing should benefit society as well as the client's bottom line:
"To merit the expenditure of human effort and the use of public space or airwaves, messages and information should have benefits beyond profit to their originators. They should educate, illuminate, encourage, enable or inspire to the end that individuals or groups of people benefit from them."
Another principal dictates that: "People have a right to expect public communications to be honest and accurate."
Devlyn and Heffernan walk the socially responsible walk as well as talking the talk. They are founding members of Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility and have served that organization in a number of roles in front of and behind the scenes. They will not represent tobacco, alcohol or gambling interests because of the social problems related to them.
Instead, their clientele is devoted and high-principled. Whether it is a state agency, a non-profit organization or a forprofit business, to be a client of Marketing Partners, it has to be doing right at the same time it's doing well.
One client is Don Mayer, the CEO and founder of Small Dog Electronics, Inc and currently chairman of the board of VBSR. He calls Devyln and Heffernan "two of the most intelligent people I've ever met in my life," and credits them with improving his business as well as his bottom line.
"Peg and Pat are very selective of their clients, and we are very honored that they work with us," Mayer said. "They've given us many ideas which helped to make our business a better business. They've helped move our business forward by getting the kind of publicity we needed to establish our brand in the computer technology industry, and also for our socially responsible business practices, both locally and nationally. I rely on them not only as consultants for marketing and public relations but as valued advisers for my company."
Among their other clients have been Autumn Harp, Inc, Gardeners Supply Company, the Vermont Bread Company, the Vermont Butter & Cheese Co., NRG Systems, Inc, the state's departments of Health, Corrections, Banking & Insurance, and Social Welfare, and many nonprofits.
Being socially responsible does not always mean being serious.
"One of the energizing things about this business is you do have fun," Devyln said. "You laugh. When you walk in this office, people are happy. They're laughing. There's a lot of sharing. The partnership works because we pay attention to enjoying it."
Devyln is an attractive woman who laughingly describes herself as "a clotheshorse." Diagnosed at 23 with rheumatoid arthritis, she now glides elegantly around the office in a power wheelchair.
When she was still a child, Devlyn earned her very first dollar as a writer; as an adult, her first job was as a freelance journalist. She served on the staff of US Senator Robert Stafford from 1982 to 1988. After she appeared on Vermont Public Radios Switchboard for a debate about school funding, she was asked to be a regular VPR commentator; she kept that side job for five years, until a bout of illness temporarily slowed her down.
Aside from her work for VBSR, she is a former president of the Alzheimer's Association Green Mountain Chapter, a former vice-chair of the Vermont Land Trust board, and now serves on the board of the Special Services Transportation Agency.
"She's a strong contributor," said SSTA executive director Murray Benner.
"She's also a consumer of our service, so she gives us a different perspective. She's an asset all the way around. She's jovial and handles herself well, and she can give it as well as take it."
Divorced in 1982, Devlyn is the proud mother of four and grandmother of eight, and is also active in her church.
Heffernan, now widowed, is a nononsense dresser who lives for skiing, bicycling and kayaking. Devlyn teases her that her middle name should be "Outdoors."
Heffernan was chair of the Killington Mountain School Board for 10 years and of the Sherburne Planning Commission and Sherburne Zoning Board for 12 years. For more than nine years, she was the Associate Dean of the Vermont Law School. She is the founder of the
Women Business Owners Network of Vermont and New Hampshire
and founding president and board member of VBSR.
These are two women of considerable accomplishment, yet once they begin talking together, they create a happy energy field of brightness, caring, humor, affection, attention and honesty.
"It's a hoot to watch the two of them," said Jane Campbell, executive director of the Copley Hospital Foundation and former long-term executive director of VBSR. "They know each other's strengths very well, and play off them, but they'll also rib each other. What makes them such a dynamic duo is they know what issues they're passionate about, and they built their lives around that passion. They both have such a combination of strength and graciousness - somehow they combine both of those."
Most people who know Devlyn and Heffernan find it difficult to praise them highly enough. "Professional," "wonderfill," "highest integrity," "first-class act," "inspiring," "feisty' and, best of all, "fun," are the some of the words people use.
Julie Davis, currently the executive director of Vermont Hitec (Health Care Information Technology Education Center), a Williston nonprofit, met Devlyn and Heffernan when she became legislative coordinator for VBSR.
"Both of them are wonderful people," Davis said. "They're a great match, because they each have a special art. Peg is a natural leader. She knows people inside and out. She has a way of viewing the world in a positive way. She sees both sides of things, but she's able to put everything in a positive light. And Pat is an absolutely brilliant strategist and very disciplined. Both of them are very creative. They understand the art of public policy how, given the circumstances of the day to move from one point to another to move an issue forward."
At VBSR, public policy meetings under Devlyn and Heffernan were remarkably productive, Davis said.
"In an hour's worth of time, we could accomplish what most organizational meetings would take two or three weeks," she said. "And everything is always done cooperatively. They never push their ideas on people. They take the people's ideas and opinions and build from the ground up. If they have an agenda, it's hard to see. That's why they're so successful. I see a lot of win-wins come out of the work that they do."
Marketing Partners' values are what attracted NRG Systems, Inc, which manufactures instruments used internationally to measure wind.
"Since we're in the renewable business, we didn't want to go with marketing firms that were representing the nuclear business," said president David Blittersdorf. "Devlyn and Heffernan have very high levels of integrity and honesty, and we like dealing with folks like that. Public relations is kind of mushy to measure, and it takes time, but they've been good at informing us of what they do. They've been very effective and at a reasonable cost. Sometimes business owners start to panic, but Peg and Pat are very calm folk, and they have a very good staff that supports them, so things get done timewise. They're very competent folks, but the main thing is they share our social mission."
Devlyn's Backstory
Margaret E Devlyn, 62, had a rough childhood in Philadelphia.
Her father was a soldier who took part in the invasion of Normandy but came back damaged from the war. Her mother divorced him, but then she died young, leaving Devlyn and her younger sister in the hands of the foster care system. They grew up bouncing from one home to another.
"There was one very good experience, but most of them were cases of people who take in children to get money," Devlyn said. "I learned the value of independence, and that's the biggest contributor to where I am now. I think that was a positive outcome of realizing very young that I didn't have all the support and family that other kids had, and I had to look out for myself and my baby sister."
In church one Sunday, young Devlyn read that the Sunday school newsletter would pay a dollar for any letter it printed.
"So I sat in the boring church service and wrote a letter to the editor, and got a dollar in the mail," Devlyn said. All her money, from allowances, birthday gifts and jobs like babysitting, she said she spent on clothes.
As a child she was never taught to manage money. Now she is teaching her 18-year-old grandson some of the lessons she had to learn the hard way.
"I want him to know the value of money over time, and how valuable at 18 his money is - and will never be again," Devlyn said. "I want him to know what I didn't know when I was his age."
Devlyn married when she was still a teenager and quickly began her family. Because she wanted to work from home and earn extra income, she became a freelance journalist.
"I found that with a typewriter I could sit at home and write stories and articles and people would send me money in the mail," Devlyn said. "So that's what I did. Of course, I also have a big collection of rejection letters."
Her first article, for a now-defunct evening Philadelphia newspaper, was about marrying young. She continued to write for that paper and several magazines. She even wrote Christmas cards for a while.
When her husband, an engineer with IBM, was transferred to Vermont, Devlyn knew that she wanted to put down roots in the Green Mountain State. She volunteered to work for her new town, Colchester.
"I wasn't looking for a paying job," Devlyn said. "And they had a vacancy. I had no idea what it was, so I bought a book on Vermont town government so I could learn. I was the Town Service Officer. In 1969, we had just turned to a new state welfare system. I was the person who could write vouchers for food and oil and that kind of thing. Nobody else wanted the job."
Later, from 1972 to 1977, Devlyn covered Colchester and wrote feature stories for the Burlington Free Press. Soon she was specializing in health stories and landed a contract writing educational materials for the American Lung Association. To increase her credibility, when she was 27, she put together a portfolio of her prior learning experiences and took a BA degree from the University of Vermont.
She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when she was 23.
"This is a disease that affects people differently," Devlyn said. "I've been told my case is a severe one. I deal with this by staying as generally healthy as I can and keeping a positive outlook. I focus on my abilities and not my 'disabilities. I learn what I can, watch my weight and exercise - all that boring stuff. It works."
Heffernan's Backstory
Patrician C Heffernan, 57, the oldest of four, was born on Long Island to an oil company executive father and a full-time mother. Her family moved often -"wherever there was oil," - and she grew up in England, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and South America.
"We would come back into New York when school got out," Heffernan said.
"My family maintained a home there, and we would get our shots, go to the dentist, and buy clothes for the year."
In the summers, or while awaiting reassignment, the family retired to a cabin in Castleton.
"My father was from Oklahoma," Heffernan said. "He was a ranch and farm boy. My mother was from South Carolina. She was of Cherokee Indian heritage. They were extremely poor growing up. They were both also outdoor people. My mother called New York City 'a god-forsaken place.' The closest they could come to a place where they were comfortable, with four kids to pack in the car and head out, was Vermont."
The family cabin had an outhouse and no running water.
"I'll never forget one year we spent Thanksgiving there in sub-zero weather," Heffernan said. "The turkey congealed as my mother brought it from the oven to the table. But my parents were very comfortable there. I was in college before my mother said we needed running water."
Heffernan's parents taught her to be conservative with money.
"My folks were the save-a-piece-of-string, save-the-tin-foil kind," Heffernan said. "I had a savings account in England when I was in what we would call pre-K. And I kept it up wherever I was. When we came back to New York, we would go to Chase Bank and have our bankbooks updated and see what compound interest had done for us."
Heffernan was diagnosed with epilepsy when she was 15.
"Seizures were severe and uncontrolled to the point that I nearly died," Heffernan said. "I spent much of my last two years of high school in various hospitals. I actually graduated from high school from the hospital via 'speaker box'. As a last resort, my parents gave permission to use experimental medications to bring it under control."
Heffernan manages her epilepsy with a life of healthy moderation.
"It means avoiding physically stressful extremes - lack of sleep, dehydration, too much alcohol, extreme heat - and managing the various medications and their side effects," she said. "As a business owner, it boils down to being mindful of the need to make time to allow for self-care/moderation amid the day-to-day pressures of running a business."
Early on, Heffernan's parents warned her that there wouldn't be enough money to send all four children to go to college, and that her younger brother "had the preference."
It meant she needed to work and save if she wanted to go to college. She took her BA at the University of Virginia.
"I worked several jobs while in college, and during my last two years I also took out small school loans to help get me through," Heffernan said. "Since I spent a lot of time during high school in the hospital, unable to work, that means I had saved up quite a bit."
There was never any question in her mind that upon graduation, she would return to Vermont.
"I loved it," Heffernan said. "I'm very much attracted to the outdoors, to our mix of smaller hills and green. It's a scale I feel comfortable with. I find it soothing and energizing. And I loved the people. There were no airs about Vermonters. You got what you saw, and there was no pretension."
Working Lives
In 1968, Heffernan took a job teaching in New Hampshire, where her take-home pay was $82 a week. To augment her salary and pay off her student loans, she took a second job weekends as a waitress in Killington. "My very first night working at the Wobbly Barn, I had $102 cash in tips in my pocket," Heffernan said. "And I thought, 'This is a much better way'."
She left teaching, planning to pay off her loans by waitressing and then go to graduate school.
"But it didn't happen that way," Heffernan said. "I met someone and got married and stayed here."
Heffernan's husband was the bartender of the Wobbly Barn, and she continued to work there, eventually managing its dining room and keeping its books.
"I had been an English and fine arts major, so I took correspondence courses in bookkeeping," Heffernan said. "Then the place was sold to an out-of-state company, and they sent in accountants from Price Waterhouse. They were there for three days, looked through everything I had done, didn't make a single adjustment, and billed us $3,000. I said, 'I'm going to study accounting, because I'm at the wrong end of this.' So I did."
Life was good, with skiing, working in the lodges and restaurants, and freelance bookkeeping. But Heffernan needed something more.
"I decided I needed to get back to education and the non-profit world, which was a higher mission, if you will," she said.
She began teaching and doing administration work for the nowdefunct Woodstock Country School, a progressive, non-profit private, co-educational boarding and day school. Eventually, she became assistant headmaster.
It was the time of the founding of the Vermont Law School, and soon scandal rocked the state.
"It became apparent that the founder of the law school was a crook," Heffernan said. "Students in that first entering class did some research and came up with the fact that he was a convicted felon from Philadelphia. The board had audits from a CPA firm, also in Philadelphia, that were basically fraudulent. And you cannot have an accreditation from the American Bar Association with a founding dean who is a felon."
Several of the law school's founding board members were also on the board of the Woodstock Country School.
"They basically wooed me to leave the Country School, look at the finances of the law school, and help them get this school up and running smoothly and take care of the students," Heffernan said. "I respected these men, and so I said yes. That was in 1974."
Heffernan became associate dean of the law school with responsibilities in administration and finance. She stayed for close to 10 years, during which time the school's finances were straightened out, buildings were renovated, new ones were built, accreditation was gained, and the Environmental Law Center was founded.
When Heffernan began thinking about leaving, she took a MBA from Suffolk University.
"I'd been managing millions of dollars, but I needed the credibility," Heffernan said. "I don't think I would have felt that need if I were a man. I worked more than full time at the law school and commuted to Boston every weekend for three years."
Devlyn was also on a high-level career path at the time. Because of her work in public education for the American Lung Association, it was a natural progression to work with the Clean Air Coalition.
"Ronald Reagan was president, and (US Senator) Bob Stafford was chairman of the Environment and; Public Works Committee," Devlyn said. "There was a conflict between pro-environment and antienvironment forces at that time. We realized how important Senator Stafford was, as a Republican, being the chair of that powerful committee with President Reagan dedicated to getting the Clean Air Act removed."
Stafford wanted to retire, but gave in to the pressure on him to protect the nation's environmental legislation. He sought another term.
"So I walked in and said, 'I'm a writer. What can I do to help you?'" Devlyn said, "This can only happen in Vermont. I ended up being his public information director for his reelection campaign. When he got reelected, I went to work on his staff. I worked for him in the Vermont office for eight years. I was his field director and Vermont communications director. I worked for him until he, finally did retire."
Advertising
Being Associate Dean of the Vermont Law School was gratifying to Heffernan, but she was afraid of becoming too comfortable.
"I didn't want to become a lawyer, and I didn't want to leave Vermont," Heffernan said. "I was being paid very well, and I worried that in the next 10 years I might get bored. The only way I could control what I want to do and do what I really love was to start something myself."
In 1982 Heffernan started a consulting firm for non-profits; among her clients were the Woodstock Foundation, Dartmouth Medical Center, and the law school. She quickly became aware, however, that she was lonely without colleagues. Eventually she founded the Women Business Owners Network to fill that gap. She also began a stint on the Governor's Commission on Women.
She ran her consulting firm for five years.
"I realized it wasn't much fun," Heffernan said. "If I go on vacation, no money goes into the firm, and very little happens. And I've got no one to laugh with when it's funny, to celebrate when it's great, and to cry with when there's a disappointment. You need colleagues. And I was traveling out of the state four nights a week, and that's not why I'm living in Vermont."
In 1987, she was recruited by Barbara Sandage of Sandage Advertising and Marketing; she became a partner and vice president. Devlyn was recruited as a vice president in 1988. Next came a "click," and rest is Marketing Partners history.
VBSR
The idea that businesses could be socially responsible as well as profitable was new in the early 1990s. A New England group formed the first socially responsible business organization devoted to education, but in Vermont, the movement took a different direction. The people who founded VBSR in 1990 wanted to be political activists as well as educators.
With a mission to "foster a business ethic in Vermont that recognizes the opportunity and responsibility of the business community to set a high standard for protecting the natural, human and economic environment of our citizens," VBSR membership has grown to 483 businesses. They all subscribe to the value of a dual bottom line profit as well as social responsibility.
"We knew that there were businesses in Vermont who did not feel represented by conventional business organizations," Devlyn said. "Businesses were always against any increase in the minimum wage and always against any tax increase. We knew there were people who wanted to have a higher purpose."
From the start, VBSR has been for and about business.
"There was a requirement that to join, you had to be in a business, because all the non-profits immediately wanted to join," Devlyn said. "They have their own group now. We needed to have the credibility of a business group. If we went to the Legislature and said an increase in the minimum wage would not destroy businesses, and instead would be good for businesses, we needed to be talking as business people."
"As well as for the education piece," Heffernan said. "If you're talking to other business owners about workplace issues and policies, if you haven't been there, if you've never met payroll or worried about meeting a payroll, then no one hears you. You don't have the credibility. You're just a do-gooder."
Some of the issues taken up by VBSR have been livable wages, open books, equal employment, community involvement, environmental protection, and employee wellness and safety.
"At our meetings we've discussed how to be environmentally responsible as a business, how to balance the cost against your profits, how you treat people as a business manager and how to do that in a socially responsible way," Devlyn said. "We actually had a workshop once on firing people and why that was the right thing to do sometimes. It was effective. But it had to come from business people who wanted to do the right moral thing."
Spence Putnam, the current executive director of VBSR, praises Devlyn and Heffernan for the wide variety of roles they have played in the organization.
"Both of them are very active and engaged people who give freely of their time and talents," Putnam said. "They also do a lot of work through their company. Pat has rejoined the board. When Peg did commentaries on VPR, although that was not a VBSR activity, many of her topics came out of the philosophy that led her to be active in the organization. As a member of VBSR's public policy committee, Pat has worked on many issues, including wages, safety, family policies, environmental issues, energy, health care there's hardly an issue that Pat hasn't been involved in."
Socially Responsible Advertising
After a few years, Heffernan decided she was not comfortable at Sandage.
"I had discussed values with Sandage when economic times were good, and I did not think to probe around how they would respond if the industry turned down," Heffernan said. "It's a very cyclical industry. So then it turned down, and they were not in accord with how I would have wished us to respond. It was all focused on the bottom line instead of on the employees and the clients."
When Heffernan told Devlyn that she was planning to leave, Devlyn saw an opportunity and jumped on it.
"I said, 'Let's both leave,' Devlyn said.
"We were not free to do the work for our clients the way we wanted to do it. We had started VBSR and the rest of the firm did not buy into those values. We couldn't have the same kind of relationship with clients that we wanted to have."
In 1992, Devlyn and Heffernan started Marketing Partners. They didn't take any of their clients with them, and so, worried about cash flow, they used Devlyn's Colchester living and dining rooms instead of renting office space.
"We did what women do," Devlyn said. "We both cooked up the maximum credit on our credit cards to make sure we could survive without any money at all for six months."
They need not have worried. From the beginning, clients sought them out.
"People were so glad to hear we were on our own, and immediately they came around and asked us to work for them," Heffernan said. "They were not Sandage clients."
"They were VBSR kinds of people, who didn't want to be the clients of a standard ad agency," Devlyn said. "They understood that we were going to do things differently. They were so happy to come and sign up. So we immediately had a feasible business. It's not too much to say we immediately had a successful business."
A few months later, Devlyn and Heffernan moved their business to Pine Street in Burlington, and a few years later, to their present offices on Battery Street.
An advertising agency has several ways to bill. It can charge an hourly or a contract fee, like an accounting firm or law firm, or it can mark up and take commissions on things like advertising and printing.
"Classically, the standard in the industry has been that if we place an
