Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/57338
Fill your time with the things you love— and one of them should be your professional life. Speaking of Web sites, you've said that you expect interactive site design to become a bigger part of the package Ogilvy & Mather prepares for its clients. How does such interactive marketing change the relationship between the company and the client? I think about my early days in direct marketing, when we were always trying to simulate a dialogue with customers. Now with all the interactive media, we can actually have an ongoing conversation with customers. This is nirvana! What I find troubling and frustrating and puzzling is that, even though we have the interactive technology, so many compa- nies just put banner ads on the Internet. That's like taking out small print ads. There's no interactivity in them—they just give information about a product or service. With interactive Web sites, companies gain the ability to ask customers questions, ask them to design products, ask them what they think. Some sites are better at that than oth- ers. For instance, Amazon.com tries to engage customers in a dialogue. As soon as you order a book on Amazon, you're told, "People who ordered that book are interested in this other one." More companies need to figure out how to have that kind of dialogue with clients. Years ago, I designed a Web site for Jaguar, and what peo- ple loved most was that the site allowed them to design their own cars. People would stay on the site for 20 or 30 minutes picking their colors, their interiors, their wheels. From this, Jaguar could tell what options were most popular, so they used the site for market research. Asking customers ques- tions and getting them to enter a dialogue—that's what the Internet is all about. The world of business has changed dramatically since you were earning your MBA in 1970. What do you think you learned in your business classes that most prepared you for your career? People often ask me, "Do you need an MBA to work in marketing and advertising?" I always give the same answer, which is, "Business school gave me a way to think about a problem." A client might ask me, "How do I build a brand?" or "How can I establish a communications pro- gram?" But I start farther back. I say, "Give me the business problem you're trying to solve, and then we can talk about what marketing can do within the context of the problem." Business school gave me that broader context. I'm not the ad lady who comes in with a 30-second commercial. I like to think that what I put on the table is a solution to a cli- ent's business problem or opportunity. And without business school, I never would have gotten that perspective. 20 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2008 What do you think is most essential that today's MBA students learn before they go into the world? The basics are the same. How do you read a financial state- ment? How do you assess a balance sheet? Students should learn the principles of marketing, such as how to get con- sumer insights and how to figure out the real value of their offerings. But the context they're working in has changed. Because of the Internet, issues of reputation and brand are global and instantaneous. Everyone knows everything within the space of half an hour. That was never true before. You had time to gather your thoughts and figure out how you were going to communicate. Today there are also the issues of ethics and governance. When I went to business school, there was a conversation about doing business ethically, but we didn't have the situa- tion everyone is dealing with now, where everything is scruti- nized and there's so much more regulation. There is a whole different set of factors that executives have to consider when they're making a business decision today. When you earned your MBA from Columbia Business School, you were one of four women in the class. Today women make up about 30 percent of most MBA classes, which is better than in the past but still hardly impressive. What do you think business schools need to do to attract more women? My impression of organizations in general is that some are naturally diverse and others aren't. And it doesn't matter if they meet all the statistics of having this many women or this many people of color—some places don't feel diverse and others do. And in those places that feel diverse, I don't think anyone notices the percentages any more. I think what business schools need to strive for is a diver- sity of cultures, and I don't just mean paying constant atten- tion to how many women they have, how many African Americans, or how many foreign students. I mean, they should welcome people with different points of view and dif- ferent backgrounds—people who were literature majors or worked in theater. A business school should promote a sense of all peoples, views, and walks of life and make everyone welcome. Then the whole experience is richer. When you speak with business students—men or women—about their upcoming careers, what advice do you give them? I tell everyone that the real challenge is to find a career you love. If you don't like what you're doing professionally, your life will never be in balance.