“Sports is in a hallowed position,” said Ogilvy & Mather Chair Emeritus Shelly Lazarus during Thursday's SportsBusiness Daily/Journal Game Changers Conference at the N.Y. Marriott Marquis. During a featured one-on-one interview, Lazarus, a legend in the advertising business, talked about using sports to connect to a specific audience. “I experience again and again that you get a unique audience for sports,” she said. “We can’t find these people in other places. As long as you keep delivering that audience, we will keep finding you to find your audiences. I’ll find them wherever you aggregate them.” The Columbia grad talked about getting her MBA to avoid being limited to the few jobs -- mostly typing -- that were often associated with women in the ’70s. “Somebody said to me one day, ‘I’ll bet if you had an MBA, they couldn’t make you type,’” Lazarus said. “I’m the only person who went to Columbia Business School because I didn’t want to type.” As one of only four women in a class of 300 and as the only female in numerous boardroom meetings, Lazarus recalled a piece of advice that she said aided her during those times. “If you can’t be brilliant, at least be memorable,” she said. “If you’re the only woman in the room, you are memorable. It’s your moment, but you’ve got to use it well.” Lazarus offered the audience advice on dealing with being the minority. “You have to feel comfortable speaking your point of view and telling people what you think,” she said, “because the reason you’re on board in the first place is not because you’re a woman, it’s because of life experience, business experience, the knowledge and the expertise, and that should give you confidence to speak up.” Lazarus talked about the importance of protecting a brand and the value of a CEO who does it well. “I believe strongly that a brand is the most valuable asset that any company or any team or organization has,” she said. “I don’t understand why a CEO who has that kind of value in his brand would not take that as his or her personal responsibility. In the best-run companies that I see, it’s true that CEOs take that on as their responsibility.”
Quick Hits:
* On ad measurement: “To me there’s only one measure, and that’s sales. I think at the end of the day, somebody’s got to buy something. I think we’re getting better at measuring the stimuli. I’m not sure that we are that much closer to linking it to the ultimate goal, which is sales.”
* On CMOs and CFOs: “The really good part of the news, now that we have CMOs, is that all the marketing and communication and brand building is integrated almost by definition because it all comes together in one place. When I started in business, there was the ad guy, the public relations guy and the sales promotion guy, and they met somewhere in the sky. But there was nobody who was really responsible for the brand. What’s happened now is I find that in the places where there are strong CMOs, there tend to be CEOs who recognize the importance of the brand and who themselves take responsibility for it but then delegate the actual oversight to the CMO.”
* Career advice: “The first job’s the hardest job. There’s so much movement that once you’re in, there will be four opportunities in the next two years that you didn’t even know existed as a job. I only say to people, don’t be that fussy about the entry job, and once there, just start looking around and follow your passion. See what it is that interests you more than anything else.”
