How World’s Top Woman Ad Executive Hit the Heights : Marketing: Ogilvy & Mather CEO Charlotte Beers is smart, has rapport with clients and gives her staff credit, observers say.
When Charlotte Beers was tapped to lead the troubled global advertising giant Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in early April, she became more than just the boss at one of advertising’s most famous shops.
She became the most prominent and arguably the most powerful woman in the ad business. No woman has ever headed an ad company this large.
But the 56-year-old Texan, who spent the past 10 years as chief executive at the much smaller Tatham RSCG agency in Chicago, shrugs off that description.
“I must tell you I think that this ‘the most’ part of the title will be short-lived because I think there are a number of women ready to join me--and I look forward to that day,” Beers said. “I think the day will come soon (that) people won’t single out a CEO because they happen to be female.”
In the meantime, she is in the spotlight. Her new agency dwarfs her old one, handling $5.4 billion in ad spending annually through 281 offices worldwide. That compares to $325 million and one office at Tatham.
But Ogilvy has had recent setbacks that she will have to grapple with, including the loss of key staffers and the American Express green card account.
People who have worked with her describe Beers as smart, direct and a professional known for her rapport with clients and for giving her staff credit for good work.
Bill Connell, an ex-Procter & Gamble advertising manager who worked with Beers on brands like Mr. Clean and Head & Shoulders shampoo, was impressed at her ability to keep “a continuing surge of ideas swirling” on assignments.
She also knows how to motivate her staff. He recalled that she once interrupted a presentation of new ads by singling out an agency staffer for an idea that was obviously being well received. The spontaneous compliment surprised the staffer and impressed P&G; executives.
“It created the impression that there is depth in the organization and the management of the organization that allows great ideas from every level to come to the surface,” Connell said.
Born in 1935 in Beaumont, Tex., Beers grew up in Lafayette, La., and Houston. Her father was an engineer-entrepreneur, and his daughter was instilled with a drive “to do something that would make a contribution and not just get married.”
She went to Baylor University, where she majored in mathematics. She said she wasn’t interested in the “typical courses saved for women” and was attracted by the “wonderful clarity” of math.
A year after graduation in 1958, she went to work in consumer research for Uncle Ben’s Inc. in Houston. She rose fast as a marketer and said she can still talk “longer than anyone would want to hear” about converted rice.
One of the company’s ad agencies, J. Walter Thompson-Chicago, hired her in 1969, giving her the chance to apply her skills to a broader range of products. Her efforts for clients such as Sears, Kraft, Oscar Mayer and Gillette were recognized in the mid-1970s when she became the first woman to be a senior vice president at Thompson.
In one ad presentation for Sears, Beers helped sell a campaign idea that had been rejected earlier. She disassembled a drill before 30 male executives and described features that she felt could be touted better.
Ralph Rydholm, an ad executive who worked with Beers then and succeeded her as CEO at Tatham, said the demonstration helped Beers inspire “a whole new spirit and attitude in how people worked on the business.”
But Beers recalls another demonstration that didn’t work out as well. It was a presentation for Hoover executives that showed how one of its vacuum cleaners could handle a wet spill--inhaling the contents of a goldfish bowl without injuring the fish.
Beers was to push the button that started the machine, and she had two choices. “I accidentally hit the button that disassembles it, and the whole thing flew across the room. The goldfish went leaping off the table. The clients were scrambling to get out of the way of the water,” she recalled.
“I wasn’t asked to demonstrate anymore,” she said.
As at Uncle Ben’s, Beers thrived at Thompson, where she said the environment encouraged advancement for talented women. She was No. 2 in Thompson’s Chicago office when cross-town agency Tatham-Laird Kudner called in 1979.
Tatham boss Jerry Birn said he was looking for a successor. “I was looking for the best man I could find, and it turned out to be a woman,” he recalled.
Beers took the job, attracted by the opportunity to become an owner and by a client list that included Procter & Gamble and Ralston Purina.
She became chief operating officer at Tatham, moved up to chairman and chief executive when Birn left in 1982, broadened the client roster to include a bank and phone company, tripled agency business volume and guided it into a merger with RSCG of Paris in 1988.
The same year, Beers became the first woman to serve as chairman of the American Assn. of Advertising Agencies. Len Matthews, former president of the trade group, said he had been trying to get her to take the one-year assignment for three years.
Tatham RSCG merged with Paris-based Eurocom in 1991, and Beers became vice chairman of the parent company’s board. She was asked to come to Paris but decided it was time to move on. She announced in February that she would resign.
She wanted another job in the ad business but didn’t know how marketable she would be. The search didn’t take long.
Graham Philips, chairman and chief executive at Ogilvy, had privately told his bosses at WPP Group PLC three months earlier that he wanted to leave.
Philips called Beers, along with a number of other agency leaders whom Beers declined to identify. One suitor reportedly was WPP’s rival Saatchi & Saatchi Co.
The Ogilvy courtship included meetings in Paris with agency founder David Ogilvy, who has retired to France. “Charlotte and I talked for seven hours and found nothing to disagree about,” Ogilvy wrote in endorsing her selection.
She was hired April 9, less than 10 days after her resignation from Tatham took effect. She declined to outline her plans at Ogilvy but has immersed herself in getting to know clients and staffers.
But she concedes she is still driven by a lesson she learned as a child. “I have to make a contribution,” she said.
