The Links, Inc. - North Shore Chapter

Well, you know, let's kind of touch, touch base a little bit on Xerox [Xerox Corporation]. Off camera you just mentioned the environment and I think you mentioned something about it being a--$$It was an all male environment as far as the professional careers and there were female secretaries, but in terms of any managers they were all white men and Xerox was a household name and so I was very gratified to be able to get an internship with them and to be able to I thought, contribute, who knows what interns are actually are able to do, but they gave me real world assignments as opposed to just make work, so that, that was really great. I had my own little apartment. It was, it was, it was wonderful.$$How as Rochester [New York] overall?$$Rochester, nothing to it (laughter).$$But it was nice to have your own place, have enough cash?$$Yes and could, could walk to work so it, it was, it was all very good.$$That was a summer internship?$$Yes.$$Okay, thank you, so let's go to Leo Burnett [Leo Burnett Company Inc.]. What was the woman's name again, Judy--?$$Carol Singer.$$Carol Singer, I'm sorry, I don't know where Judy came from, Carol Singer. How did you end up getting a position with Leo Burnett, I mean she came recruited, how, how did you get the job?$$And so then once Carol went back to the headquarters in Chicago [Illinois] at Burnett, obviously they get together and talk about all the different candidates that they've seen and then you're invited up for an interview and so I came up to Chicago to interview with a number of individuals and then I was invited back again for another follow up interview and then made a job offer.$$Okay, and time wise, this is when about, late '70s [1970s] or so?$$Yes, '78 [1978].$$Thanks and you got an offer to, to join Leo Burnett as, in what capacity? What was your position?$$Trainee (laughter). Back in those days we lovingly called the entrance level position as working in the pit, and that's because you went, when you went to work it was dark, when you left work it was dark and you were amongst your peers learning the ropes. You, you were put into different positions, whether it was research, spot buying, writing so that you learned a little bit about every discipline within advertising, which was really quite great because many companies don't do that now because they've become specialists, but I, I was able to be exposed to virtually every position and that's helped me as I worked my way up the ladder so to speak. My first assignment was on Kelloggs [Kellogg Company] and after I left the pit (laughter) and there I had ninety spot TV markets that I analyzed and purchased media for and then after that I went into account management on the Pillsbury account [Pillsbury Company, LLC] where you get into more of the strategic arm, of, of marketing.$Before we get to the 2000s, so you're, you're, you're moving up the, the ladder very nicely, senior vice president in the early 1990s, executive vice president. What was your role within the agency [Burrell Communications Group, Chicago, Illinois] and with the clients at those kinds of levels? What was that like?$$I was actually the director of client services, so I was over all of the accounts in the agency, but being a small agency--so I've gone from large to midsize to small, my job was not--I didn't, I had direct accounts that I worked on, but then I had accounts that I may not be directly involved with, but I was also charged with mentoring and nurturing the account directors to help them grow in their roles and also took on more of a role in terms of financial accountability and profitably for the agency, again the numbers are important on the agency side as well (laughter).$$Absolutely, absolutely, and you had some major clients, beside McDonald's [McDonald's Corporation] you had Exxon Mobil [Exxon Mobil Corporation], Sears [Sears, Roebuck and Co.], Kellogg [Kellogg Company], Coca-Cola [The Coca-Cola Company], Nation- Nationwide Insurance group [Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company], P and G [Procter and Gamble Company], did you, were you accountable with client services that if something is going awry you, you have to step in?$$Yes, yes, yes and in fact--$$Not that it ever did.$$(Laughter) No we all have our challenges.$$You have your challenges, thank you.$$So in fact, there was a point and time when the McDonald's account was going through a number of issues and I was not working day to day on the account at the time and so Tom [HistoryMaker Thomas J. Burrell] tapped me on my shoulder and said, "Hey, we need you over here." (Laughter) And I was like, "Oh god, no." (Laughter) Because it was interesting that the McDonald's folks were always busy, they're always running around, it was--I said, "I don't get that. What's going on?" (Laughter) I soon found out, it's a retail account, so it was one of the agency's busiest accounts because we were literally doing every month what it took most of the other accounts six months to a year to do, so we were in production every month of the year, which, and we were at client meetings all the time, so it was a totally different environment and it was, it was fascinating in a very different way. I never thought that I could go from a slow, steady, steady pace on a packaged goods client, like a Procter or a General Mills [General Mills Inc.] to a McDonald's, but once I was there it took about, you know, a little bit, six months before I accepted it (laughter), but once I was there I was like wow, this is really what it's about and I, I don't know that I could ever go back, that, that pace, that energy, that excitement, it's, there's, there's exhilaration, there's nothing like it.