HSA 65th Anniversary Book

fy
03
FEBRUARY 1, 2002 –
JANUARY 31, 2003
PRESIDENT
Bradley
Olson
OFFICES
67 Mt. Auburn St.
17 Holyoke St.
52 JFK St.
HARVARD
STUDENT
AGENCIES
The height of Let’s Go: 41 guides
and over 200 Researcher-Writers
Unofficial Publications branched out with a new book, The Guide to Getting In, which St. Martin’s Press
released nationally to strong sales on August 2, 2002. HSR collaborated with Unofficial Publications to
launch a college-admissions course to accompany the book. The office of the Vice President moved to 17
Holyoke St., where Rosa Wu ’03 reigned over the newly renovated storefront. Students, alums, staff, and
friends celebrated HSA’s 45th anniversary in October with a tailgate luncheon followed by the Harvard-
Northeastern football game. By the time Hail and Farewell rolled around, HSA had paid out over $2.7
million in student wages, tops in company history.
In The Harvard Shop’s first full year as an HSA subsidiary, the corporation attempted to bring it into
the 20th century, let alone the 21st. Inventory was now tracked with Retail Pro software (rather than
Paul Corcoran’s unfailing memory), checkout procedures were done with a computer and barcode scanner
(rather than a 1960s cash register), and an e-commerce presence was launched. Corcoran and Doris Jones
trained the agency’s first student managers, and Jones stayed on at 52 JFK St. to handle the bookkeeping.
Despite Jones’s “ justifiable daily urge to throttle” the two managers, The Harvard Shop posted record sales
in FY03, a 15% increase over the previous year.
A wave of backlash against Let’s Go’s success crashed ashore. As critics griped and competitor guides began
to eat into sales figures, St. Martin’s began to sour on the Let’s Go brand and prescribed a massive series
relaunch. The books’ tone, format, and covers were revamped in an attempt to broaden their consumer
base. It marked the birth of series mainstays like Price Diversity, features, and the Alternatives to Tourism
chapter, offering conscientious travelers ways to study, work, and volunteer abroad. Devastatingly, however,
the sleek black covers replaced the classic thumbpick with a nondescript textual logo.
The reinvented series debuted in November 2002 and included four new
titles: Let’s Go: Hawaii, Let’s Go: Chile, Let’s Go: Costa Rica, and Let’s Go:
Thailand. Let’s Go now sat at a high-water mark of 41 guides and more than
200 RWs. One hundred office staffers crammed the basement, third floor,
and fourth floor of Burke-McCoy Hall to the gills. Uncle!
WHERE THEY ARE NOW...
Adam Grant | ’03
President Bradley Olson ’03, MBA ’08, and
Vice President Rosa Wu.
JOBS AT HSA: Senior Advertising Associate, Let’s Go Ad Sales, FY01; Director of Advertising Sales, Let’s Go Ad Sales, FY02;
Marketing and Publicity Manager, Let’s Go Publications, FY03; Clerk, HSA/Let’s Go Board of Directors, FY02 – FY03.
JOBS SINCE HSA: Received his PhD and MS in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2006; spent two
years as an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; moved to the University of Pennsylvania’s
Wharton School in 2009, where he became the youngest tenured professor in Wharton history at age 28; now host of the
WorkLife podcast and author of four New York Times bestsellers, Give and Take, Originals, Option B (with Sheryl Sandberg),
and Think Again.
HOW HAS LET’S GO INFORMED YOUR RESEARCH ON WORKPLACE PSYCHOLOGY? “Working at HSA and Let’s
Go was life-changing in many ways. One of them was, I was interested in studying team effectiveness, and I thought, ‘What a
fascinating place to do it.’ … I basically surveyed all the Editors and Associate Editors at the beginning of the summer, looking
at their perceptions of their work, the project they were working on, and the people they were working with, trying to get a sense
of what was motivating them and what the team was focused on. Then I got data at the end of the summer on the quality of the
books they produced. … It turns out that the single strongest predictor of creating a high-quality book was the belief at the start
that their work made a difference. … That was the first seed of my doctoral dissertation and the research that became my first
book, Give and Take, which is that a lot of people do jobs that have an impact but they don’t know who’s benefiting and how.”
LET’S GO TITLES
• Europe
• Britain & Ireland
• France
• Italy
• USA
• Greece
• Turkey
• Israel
AGENCIES
• Middle East
• California
• Alaska & the
Pacific Northwest
• Spain & Portugal
• Mexico
• New York City
• London
• Washington, D.C.
• Germany
• Austria & Switzerland
• Paris
• Rome
• Ireland
• Southeast Asia
• Eastern Europe
• Central America
• India & Nepal
• Peru, Ecuador
& Bolivia
• Australia
• New Zealand
• South Africa
• China
• Boston
• San Francisco
• Western Europe
• Amsterdam
• Barcelona
• Egypt
• Southwest USA
Adventure Guide
• Hawaii
• Chile
• Costa Rica
• Thailand
OTHER TITLES
• The Unofficial Guide to
Life at Harvard
• The Guide to Getting In
WHAT’S ONE GOOD MEMORY YOU HAVE FROM LET’S GO? “Brad Olson and I were managers the same year; he was
running Unofficial Guide ad sales. … We were trying to improve the hiring process, and Brad came up with a crazy idea: we should
do a demo. Let’s have them sell us something, but why not have them sell something that’s even harder to sell than an ad? We
ended up asking them to sell us rotten apples. … One [candidate] came in and said, ‘It may look like I’m selling rotten apples, but
I’m really selling antique apples.’ … We ended up hiring him, and he was the best Ad Associate I had ever seen.”
WHAT’S ONE BAD MEMORY YOU HAVE FROM LET’S GO? “I remember panicking when we got a letter from a writer who
said that he had gotten gangrene and had to amputate his own toe. I’m not even sure if it was true or not, but it was kind of a
shock.”
WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR CURRENT STUDENTS? “Don’t take advice from strangers. Seriously. Advice is meant to
be tailored to you, and people who don’t know you are not well tailored to give you recommendations that could shape your future.
Whatever decision you’re grappling with, I think the best thing you can do is find someone with a similar dilemma and give them
advice, and you will generally find that the advice you gave to others is the advice you need to take for yourself.”
• HSA Cleaners
• Let’s Go Publications
• Harvard Student Resources
• Harvard Distribution
Services
• Let’s Go Ad Sales
• Harvard Graphic Design
• Unofficial Publications
• Center for Enterprise
• HSA Rentals
• The Harvard Shop
78 HSA 65th Anniversary History Book 79