Affiliate Marketing on September 11, 2001

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It was a beautiful sunny day when I showed up to work at ClubMom at 8:30 am on 9/11/01. At the time, the office was located a block from the Empire State Building.

After settling in, I started up my ritual of going through e-mail from affiliates.

Shortly before 9:00 am, I got an e-mail from one of the tech guys. It was a forward of a news alert he’d gotten from CNN.com with a picture of the North Tower of the World Trade Center burning.

My first thought - why would this jackass PhotoShop up such a nasty image. Then I thought - he wouldn’t send a fake picture like that to the whole company. So I tried to go to CNN.com to see what was up. The site was down - every news site I tried was down.

People started buzzing about it, so we turned on the TVs in the office and the world changed. Everything was in slow motion as we watched the coverage of hell breaking loose just a mile away.

It was weird. Nobody was leaving the office. At about 10:25 am, I decided I was getting out of there. The South Tower of the World Trade Center had just collapsed and I was wigging out.

I headed out with hopes of escaping from New York by any means necessary. About six hours later, I walked through my front door, hugged my wife and daughter, grabbed a beer and checked my e-mail.

I had a mailing scheduled to drop at 11:00 am that morning to my affiliates, and many had responded to check in on me. It was a good feeling to know that the affiliate to affiliate manager relationship was more than a monthly check.

After sending quick assurances to my affiliates, I checked in on my affiliate manager discussion list and shared my experience:

The ClubMom crew is ok - our office is in midtown Manhattan. But since we’re close to the Empire State Building, I was a little freaked out that it might also be a target, and I
left for home at 10:30 AM.

Just seconds after I left the office, I was walking down Fifth Avenue and people started
screaming and crying - I looked up and the 2nd World Trade Center tower was collapsing
before my eyes.

It was a real nightmare - people were hysterical and transportation was shut down. I was afraid I
would not be able to leave the city - as I made it to the West Side, I saw people running uptown on the West Side Highway - many were covered in soot, some were bloody - a really horrible scene.

Fortunately, the ferries were running, and I was able to get across the Hudson River to NJ, where I took a bus to Giants Stadium, and then hitchhiked home.

My prayers go out to all who are affected by this (who isn’t?).

Be safe,
Shawn Collins
ClubMom

Affiliate managers gathered on the discussion list that day and the days that followed to express shock, outrage, sympathy, and to share ideas for helping the victims of the terrorist attacks on the U.S.

I collected all of those posts and put them together at http://www.affiliatemanager.net/remember.pdf

Five years later - wow. It’s hard to believe. So much has changed in the world. When I re-read all of those posts today, I found it remarkable that so many people who commented are still big figures in the industry.

Jamie Birch, Marty Fahncke, Peter Figueredo, Karen Garcia, Rachel Honoway, Corey Newhouse, Andy Rodriguez, Wendy Shepherd, Wade Tonkin, Linda Woods, and others were there then and they’re still central to the life of affiliate marketing.

With so many harsh memories from 9/11, it warms the heart to relive that feeling of affiliate marketers coming together for the greater good.

As a postscript, a guy I know named Steven Rosenbaum directed a great film called “7 Days In September” that captures that time better than anything else I’ve seen.

He took material from almost thirty filmmakers covering the events of September 11, 2001 to tell the story of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the resulting catastrophic loss, and then New York City’s tremendous ability to rebuild, through will and compassion.

Nothing like that reality to bring things into perspective. Let’s do good things in affiliate marketing and the world around us.