1998: Where Were You?
Thirteen years ago this week, we began our journey as a full-service marketing agency. Being a “trend setter” at heart, we were “virtual” before most knew what a virtual office was and well before the word “tele-commuter” became part of a job description. The virtual model offered some unique benefits—we were also “green” before being “green” was popular. We relied on home offices instead of an office building, PDFs instead of paper; email rather than overnight mail and teleconferencing instead of conference rooms.
In 1998 gas was $1.15 per gallon, postage was $.32, and a gallon of milk was $1.31.
Windows 98 was the hot new operating system, Google was just being introduced as a search engine and Apple introduced the revolutionary iMac. 1998 was also the year that IPO’s were a dime a dozen and high-tech companies were popping up everywhere, with most of them going belly up by the year 2001.
Bill Clinton was President and infamously denied that he had “sexual relations” with you-know-who!
1998 was the year of the Great Pager Blackout after a glitch with a wayward satellite silenced 45 million of the units. Cell phones sales were ramping up, and had just surpassed pagers as the device of choice.
The most popular movies were: Titanic, Saving Private Ryan and There’s Something about Mary. The Billboard Hot 100 included Brandy & Monica, “This Boy is Mine” and Shania Twain, “You’re Still the One”. In 1998 Green Day, the Spice Girls, Alanis Morissette, and Marilyn Manson were all the rage and on tour.
If you were into TV, you were probably watching NYPD Blue, Frasier, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, The Jerry Springer Show and The Nanny. In 1998, we still didn’t know what ‘reality TV was or the impact it would have on popular culture.
Where were you in 1998? What are some of your fondest memories? Are you willing to admit you sported a mullet? Share with us, we really want to know!
No mullet, but I did wear capri pants!
I remember holding out hope that someday I’d be sporting one of those fancy text pagers, instead of the strictly numeric one. And of course, I salivated over the new iMacs. The cost was so prohibitive (next to a PC), that it seemed just a pipedream! I did end up getting a blue one a couple years later…and still have it!
I still wear capri pants! Oh no!
In 1998, I was living in the Las Vegas area, so many of my memories are Vegas specific. You could still find $1 drinks, and $1-$3 blackjack in Vegas. The Bellagio Hotel opened in October, and up until that point, there was only one Cirque de Soleil on the Vegas Strip, unlike the 5 or 6 they have now. I did have a cell phone because I worked for a company that engineered hi tech casino products, and at one time, I actually got paid to gamble at work (aka “Market Research”). Fun times!!!
Happy anniversary ETMG! Thanks for the jog down memory lane. I think I was about a year into my first high tech job, driving an old beat up VW GTI and my guilty pleasure was watching Jerry Springer – loved that show!
Happy 13 years ETMG and congrats! Hmmm… 1998…. I was working in the SunService Marketing department of Sun Microsystems as a Marcom Manager and all-around Web dude (Webmaster was a little too pretentious for me even then). One note of interest that I recall from that time was about the rumors going around the company that Sun was positioning to buy Apple Computers, which was a bit down on its luck at that point. Apple was trading at about $7 and Sun was sitting pretty after a number of stock splits.and an continuous “to the right and up” trend.. Today, Apple is trading at $332 and I’m not able to find JAVA anywhere on the charts (except tucked under ORCL). Stick that in the “What would the world have looked like if…” category! Today Apple rocks with the iEverything products and the Sun has set… The more things change… well, the more they change!