One Take with Ellen Oppenheim

👉 Full transparency – I have been a card-carrying member of the Ellen Oppenheim fan club for at least 2 decades. But don’t let the friendly accent, which still retains a bit of her southern origins, fool you. Ellen is a New Yorker through and through. Sharp, tough, resilient, she’s made her mark in an industry that was a real boy’s club.

👉 Along the way, Ellen worked on some of the most iconic accounts such as Nabisco, and SCJ; won several “MediaWeek Plan of the Year” awards, drove the agency into direct marketing and more.

👉 Decisive moment – Ellen was interviewing for an internal promotion. After the interview, she circled back to her uber-boss and simply said “I don’t know if I told you how I want the job”. At that moment, she realized the importance of self-advocating, merging the emotional and intellectual parts and standing up for yourself.

👉 A change she would have never imagined – the commoditization of the client-agency relationship. It became so transactional and devalued that it drove all the costs down to the point where important stuff such as training, such as experience in terms of agency-client relationships and the knowledge that it brings, just became unimportant.

👉 What did she do about that – After leaving Y&R and FCB, Ellen has worked for a series of organizations where she can use her wide breadth of knowledge and expertise at building relationships.

👉 About older workers – You have to move forward by yourself. You have to move forward by learning new skills and by harnessing your energy. From the employer side, they need to realize that for many of us, age is, indeed, just a number and that age-diversity is a plus.