Vance L. Stickell, Executive VP of Marketing for The Times, Dies

Vance L. Stickell, whose contributions to the world of newspaper advertising were as many and diverse as the honors that accompanied them, died Monday after a protracted battle with cancer. The executive vice president for marketing of the Los Angeles Times was 62 and died at his home in Pasadena.

A marketing expert throughout his professional life, Stickell took a newspaper that had been unchallenged as America’s advertising leader since 1955 into ever-increasing years of record revenues by pioneering the concept of advertising in geographic zones and providing personalized service to its thousands of advertisers.

And from the time he started with The Times in 1948 as a young man soliciting ads from grocery stores to the August day in 1981 when he was named one of the top five executives of this newspaper, he said he always “loved what I’m doing.”

Those who worked with him couldn’t help sharing his infectious enthusiasm.

William F. Thomas, who as Times editor heads a department that traditionally is at odds with advertising over allocation of space and expenditure of funds, called Stickell “one of the finest men I have ever met, and the easiest to work with.”

“We argued a lot, but even that was fun. He was a kind, compassionate, thoughtful person. We’ll miss him.”

Otis Chandler, the former Times publisher who promoted Stickell to display advertising manager in 1961 said, “The Times and the newspaper industry have lost a wonderfully talented individual who in the last 35 years has contributed as much as any other newspaper marketing executive I ever knew.

“So often, when articles and books are written about the last 25 years of The Times, it is the editorial achievements and awards that receive most of the credit. All of us who worked with Vance and the team that he created in the advertising and circulation departments know that the progress and growth of The Times is in a large measure due to his achievements and the fulfillment of his dreams.”

And Tom Johnson, who succeeded Chandler as publisher in 1980, called Stickell “a giant in the newspaper business and a magnificent leader of the Los Angeles Times. Beyond all else, Vance was a friend we will miss greatly.”

Stickell himself attributed his successful tenure to keeping in touch with the advertisers.

“We take care of our people (advertisers),” he told Sales and Marketing magazine in 1986, shortly before his fatal illness began to take its toll. (His) “managers are not in that limestone building in Times Mirror Square. They’re outside often enough working with accounts so that they know what’s going on at a grass-roots level.”

And almost without exception those advertisers came to regard Stickell as a close personal friend.

Glen Peters, who retired last April as retail advertising manager of the paper and knew Stickell for nearly 40 years, said Stickell “had an extraordinary capacity for making people want to do their very, very best.”

Those attitudes and the high standards that Stickell set for Times account representatives pushed the paper past the $800-million mark in revenues for 1986.

Early Career Start

Stickell came early to the world of newspapering, selling papers in his native Ong, Neb. (population 190), where he was born into a farming family. His father left the farm to enter the grocery business in Los Angeles. Stickell was then 10, and he was nearly 18 and a senior at Glendale High School when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

After graduation he joined the Navy and was sent to De Pauw University in Greencastle, Ind., where he trained to be a doctor. But his program was disbanded and he found himself on Kwajalein in the South Pacific, building a clinical laboratory instead of studying anatomy books.

At war’s end he returned to De Pauw to get a degree, this time in liberal arts. After graduating in 1948 he was hired by The Times as a merchandising trainee, servicing markets. He became, consecutively, a national sales representative, staff assistant, assistant to the advertising manager, assistant display advertising manager and, in 1961--a year after Chandler had become publisher--display advertising manager.

The paper had sent him to UCLA’s Graduate School of Business where he earned a degree in 1960.

Ties to Community

And as he aged, he found he didn’t fit the traditional California mold that should have shaped him.

“I’ve been with The Times 35 years,” he told AdWeek magazine in 1984. “I’ve been married to the same lady for 30 years and until six years ago my wife and I lived 22 years in a house we designed and built.”

Also as he grew older he had begun to repay the community for his success.

He served on the boards or was active in many charitable and municipal groups, including the Crippled Children’s Society, the Skid Row Development Corp., Big Brothers, the Greater Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau, the American Red Cross, Barlow Hospital and the Los Angeles Times Fund, which solicits donations so underprivileged children can attend summer camp. He also established a Retail Marketing Scholarship at California State University, Los Angeles.

Range of Accolades

His professional accolades ranged from the American Advertising Federation’s Silver Medal Award to his being selected chairman of the Council of Judges for the Advertising Hall of Fame. He also was a vice chairman of the Advertising Council and headed a task force for the Future of Advertising Committee.

He seemed to always take the most pride in what he did for a living--the selling of advertising.

“I can tell you one thing,” he told Sales and Marketing. “There’s nothing like the truth of successful advertising. That’s when the cash register rings, and, boy, do we make it ring!”

Stickell is survived by his wife, Betty Lee, his mother, Helen, and a sister, Helen Kerr. Services at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena are pending.