I’m barely through the door and haven’t even reached the office
sofa before Linda Smith is talking girly. Where did I get my dress? So
nice. How long have I been dying my hair? Suits me. Female bonding at
its least subtle.
Smith is nervous. Her boss, David Mansfield (chief executive of Capital
Radio, owner of Media Sales & Marketing where Smith is working her
notice as marketing director) has warned against the interview (even
with a sweetie like me). She tells me several times that the whole
interview thing makes her uncomfortable, the sort of bald admission
guaranteed to get a journo salivating. And it’s certainly not the
self-posturing bullshit you might expect from the new commercial
director of one of the most successful media operations in London.
But, unfortunately, Smith’s concerns prove utterly misplaced. Girl talk
aside, the new commercial director of MediaVest conducts herself with a
considered professionalism that sinks the heart of the profile
writer.
It’s soon clear why the unflashy MediaVest has chosen Linda Who? to be
the strategic brains behind its business development.
Plucked from the dying embers of the MSM operation after 13 years
working on the media owner side, Smith is not an obvious choice. Her
lack of agency experience, industry profile and senior client contacts
dictate a vertical learning curve at a time when MediaVest needs to
steam ahead.
Yet ask former colleagues about the 35-year-old Ms Smith and support is
legion. Andy Oldham, now commercial director at TDI, worked along side
Smith at MSM and reveals she was known as ’Mom’ in the office because
she was so supportive of the team around her.
Tess Alps, the executive chairman of Drum PHD, worked with Smith at the
old ITV sales house, MAS. She says: ’Linda is a passionate sales person
with a very sharp intelligence and a crusading zeal undaunted by the
toughest of confrontations.’ It gets better. Known in some quarters as
Joan of Arc, Smith is ’a visionary with high morals who likes a bit of a
scrap imbued with the faint smell of a martyr’s burning flesh’. Which
must be one of the most poetic eulogies afforded anyone in the pages of
Campaign.
At MediaVest Smith’s brief is to help build the company into a more
mature business, embracing new specialist divisions, start-ups and joint
ventures to create a rounded communications offering complementing the
formidable planning and buying operation at the core. It would be a
tough job for the most seasoned of operators and Smith confesses she
finds it ’a scary prospect’.
With MediaVest’s image still largely that of an unreconstructed buying
shop in a market where the lip service of strategic touchy-feely media
is becoming common currency, there’s plenty of graft ahead. Smith is
confident there’s substance in what they do at MediaVest but admits
there is room for some smartening up.
She points to a joint ownership proposition with Premier Sponsorship as
an example of the route MediaVest is preparing to take to develop beyond
simple planning and buying, although she insists that the agency won’t
go rushing into everything that’s fashionable on a whim. ’They haven’t
got an open cheque book down there, they have to prove there’s a return
for them and for their clients.’
But in a condensing global media market, MediaVest will become
increasingly marginalised unless it secures itself an ally. Quiz her on
such issues, though, and Smith is vague. ’I don’t think MediaVest needs
to join forces with anyone else to survive,’ she says hesitantly. ’It
has enough business without having to jump into bed with anyone else to
make it happen for them. It’s making it happen for itself.’
Apart from an appalling misjudgment of the senior management line-up
(the chief executive, Jim Marshall, is ’nice’, Robert Ray is ’a quiet
guy’ and his joint managing director, Chris Locke, is ’eminently
manageable’), Smith is on firmer ground discussing the UK operation, its
team and how she’ll fit in.
She acknowledges that being a woman did her no harm in securing the job
- MediaVest is seen as a lads’ place and is keen to address this. She’s
also confident that her marital credentials (her husband, Philip
Carling, her first boss at Yorkshire Television, is the commercial
director of the Football Association) will give her a currency when it
comes to boys’ talk.
She’s a doer, she says, who’s not interested in the limelight but loves
selling and wants to be on the winning side. At MediaVest she’ll get a
head start. ’This job is a fantastic opportunity. If I don’t make
anything out of it will be because I haven’t done a good job.’
The Smith file
1984
Yorkshire TV/MAS, business manager
1990
Thames TV, international sales manager
1992
Carlton TV, new-business manager
1993
MSM, marketing director
1997
MediaVest, commercial director
