Feature: Special report: Women in marketing profiles

Sophie Daranyi and Alex Lloyd, Haygarth

Haygarth has over 150 employees with just over half being female, including chief executive Sophie Daranyi (pictured left) and joint managing director Alex Lloyd (pictured right).

Daranyi started her career in the late 1980s at a number of PR agencies, working her way up before moving client side by joining the global marketing team at Seagram Spirit & Wine Group. She joined Haygarth to set up its PR offering in 1999 and was promoted to managing director in 2003 and chief executive this year. She is responsible for the overall direction of the business but also tries to focus her time on working directly with clients including Nokia and Dairy Crest.

Lloyd is joint managing director with Marcus Sandwith. Her background has seen her rise through the ranks with experience gained in-house and agency side, working on brands such as English Heritage, Ikea and Littlewoods. She joined Haygarth in 2000 and heads up key accounts such as Majestic Wine and Gillette.

Daranyi comments: “We really believe in rewarding excellence – it has nothing to do with whether you’re male or female, but instead whether you are passionate about doing a great job and are prepared to go the extra mile to really make a difference.

“I think the challenges women face today are more about a work-life balance, particularly when they have children. I’m really lucky to have a very rewarding career and a wonderful family, but there have been times when it’s been difficult to get the balance right between the pressures of work and home life.”

Kerry Glazer, chief executive, AAR

Kerry Glazer began her career in nursing but, after five years, went to university to study information science and English. After graduating in 1987, she joined advertising agency JWT and, over the next six years, ran accounts as diverse as De Beers and Golden Wonder Crisps before leaving the agency in 1993 to join communications headhunters Kendall Tarrant, now The Talent Business.

She left to combine being a mother of two with freelance consultancy for WCRS, BBH, JWT and AAR, which provides consultancy for agencies and clients. She joined AAR permanently as commercial director in 1999, became managing director in 2000 and has now been chief executive since February 2006.

As well as expanding the company over the past seven years, she is active with industry trade bodies and is a member of Women in Advertising and Communications London.

“Having worked in the health service, it gave me quite a healthy perspective on working in quite a stressful environment,” she says. “It can feel like life or death but, if you do make a mistake, you have to remember that people aren’t going to die.”

Annie Lord, managing director, Toast

Annie Lord began her professional life in publishing after two years working in Switzerland. She started her agency career at Option One/Tequila in 1986. She went on to work at The Communications Agency and Team LGM, where she was client services director.

She left with two colleagues to set up Toast in 2001 and now combines the job of managing director with being a mother of three (including Rosie, pictured). She believes it is as easy for women in marketing as it is for men. “It’s not the job that changes, it is our own life’s circumstances – we all just have to work with these, which are often our personal choices, and keep getting on with it. I chose to marry, take a year out to travel, have three children, and still keep going – other people make different choices but they are usually all ours to make.”

Debbie Simmons and Barbara Holgate, The Big Kick

The Big Kick was founded by chairman Debbie Simmons eight years ago and she is one of three female directors along with Barbara Holgate.

Simmons started out with a drama degree but took a job as marketing assistant at catalogue company Kays. She later joined The Marketing Store, rising to European board director with responsibility for Walkers, McDonald’s and Masterfoods.

Holgate graduated with a drama and communications degree – as Simmons says: “Marketing is about presenting and persuading people to buy an idea, being able to sell ideas in a way that is compelling and interesting, which is what drama is about.”

Holgate started off as a PA to a theatre producer but, wanting marketing experience, took a similar role at Tim Arnold & Associates and never looked back. She went on to work at The Core Group, Triangle and The Marketing Store before returning to Triangle Group as board director, when she founded its retail specialist company, Storm. She joined The Big Kick in 2003.

Simmons says: “We have a successful formula here. We have a nice mixture of working hard but still having a life outside, so people don’t have to choose between the one or the other – and I can maintain a life where I can see my children.”

Emma Ede, managing director, iD

Specifically recruiting women has never been an intentional strategy at experiential agency iD, yet most of its director positions are held by females, including managing director Emma Ede, finance director Deborah Broadbent and client services director Nicola Jordan on the board along with a business development director, staffing director, recruitment director and group account director.

Ede feels this is a reflection of the industry and even the changing landscape across all professions. “There is definitely a new breed of women,” she says. “These women are focused, driven, ambitious and determined to maintain a healthy balance between family and progressing their careers.”

She joined iD in 2000 as an account manager with a background in corporate hospitality and event management, having worked with clients such as MTV, Carlsberg and Liverpool Football Club.

Aileen Reuter, director of marketing, Maritz

Reuter is responsible for corporate marketing, product strategy and management and creative departments at motivation agency Maritz. She joined the business in 1995 and has held a variety of different client-facing roles, including account group director. Previously, she spent 10 years in marketing in the automotive and petroleum sectors, including running her own marketing services company.

She is a board member of events trade body Eventia and leads both the Eventia One Future carbon responsible events project as well as its corporate social responsibility committee.

She says she fell into marketing by accident, landing a job in the marketing team within a subsidiary of BP for its wholly-owned garages. “I couldn’t believe people got paid to work on such fun stuff and this led me to develop a career in marketing and not teaching on which I had originally set my sights,” she explains.

With a young son, she has found that Maritz, part of the Grass Roots Group, encourages women to develop their careers, but notes that women have been less prevalent as entrepreneurs in the performance improvement sector. “I think challenges exist in companies that don’t have the foresight to look at the breadth of talent in their organisation and consider women alongside men,” she says. “Sadly this challenge is not reserved to just senior positions in marketing and in fact is most evident at managing director level.”

Sharon Richey, managing director, BEcause Experiential Marketing

Sharon Richey set up her first business, a modelling agency, in South Africa when she was 17. After selling it, she came to England where she led a management buy-out of MHP, a staffing agency serving the media sector, in 1995. It developed into experiential marketing and later rebranded as LoewyBe in 2003 and then, last year, as BEcause.

In terms of success, she believes a lot of it is down to consistency. “If you stick at something long enough and try hard enough, success will come. If people tend to move around, and their CV is all over the place, you don’t develop enough strength of character.

“You need drive and determination. Once you have a goal in place, it’s about consistently striving forward to reach that. It is about sacrifices. It is about the desire to succeed.”

Harriet Barnett, Goal

Harriet Barnett, 33, has fulfilled her dream of setting up her own agency after 12 years in the industry. Experiential agency Goal was launched last October with Debbie Simmons, chairman of The Big Kick. “I have always wanted to run my own agency since quite an early age. It’s quite a big risk and a lot of hard work,” she says.

After studying European business studies and French at university, Barnett started her career at Barnett Fletcher Promotions, later BFP Momentum, when she was brought in to manage a campaign involving the Nesquik bunny character in Switzerland. She joined bd-ntwk, where she worked on Bacardi-Martini, and then went to KLP Entertainment, where she helped to develop the Smirnoff Experience concept globally.

After time at The Big Kick working mainly on Walkers, Typhoo and Unilever, she went to staffing agency Kreate to develop its experiential side before leaving to set up Goal.