Jack of all trades …

A couple of weeks ago I had a meeting with a prospective client.  As soon as we all sat down around their boardroom table the senior client in the room asked me to tell them about myself.  As I took them through my various jobs and experiences I realized something:

I always talk about how lucky I am to have worked for the global ad agencies I worked for, on the blue chip accounts I worked on, all the smart and talented people I was exposed to — the ‘bigness’ of everything.

But what I tend to overlook are the small agencies where I also worked.  Where I cut my teeth.  Where I had no real defined job.  Where each and every member of the staff, all four or five or eight or ten of us, had a myriad of jobs we had to do.

We didn’t have the luxury of broadcast producers or multiple layers of account

Day 81. What Happened?

When I worked in the fashion industry back in Montreal, one of my favourite models to work with was a young, beautiful, tall blonde from Czechoslovakia.  Before moving to Canada, in 1975, she was an extremely talented skier.  So good, in fact, she was selected as an alternate on the 1972 Czech Olympic Ski Team.

In all honesty, she was every designer’s favourite model.  She was beautiful, everything looked fabulous on her, she had a great personality on and off the runway, she was very bright and extremely professional.  She was always on time, always prepared, always at her best.  If she partied, and I have no idea whether or not she did, she didn’t the night before a job, that’s for damn sure.  That was very evident.

Her name, when I first met her, was Ivana Winklmayr.  The name you would know her by, though, is Ivana Trump.