Every woman does it. She just doesn”™t do it to the men she works with.
And that might be the problem, says advertising icon Nina DiSesa.
What”™s “it” all about?
S&M.
Easy now.
That”™s “seduction and manipulation” and nobody does it like DiSesa.
She wrote the book on it. Literally.
“Seducing the Boys Club” is DiSesa”™s latest creative coup. The chairman of McCann Erickson New York ”“ who has a weekend home in Pawling ”“ writes about the challenges she faced as a female leader in the male-dominated kingdom of advertising. Her advice to women is simple: It”™s not a level playing field. Get over it. Then figure out a game plan for playing ball with the big boys.
DiSesa changed her management style ”“ from hot-headed and emotional to focused and persuasive ”“ to get to the top. “I had an epiphany … and realized it”™s not a level playing field, it”™s never going to be ”¦ so what do I need to do in order to win at this game?” she said in a recent interview at her office on the 28th floor of McCann Erickson”™s Third Avenue location. “I spent 15 years arguing with men to get them to do what I wanted them to do. That didn”™t work out too well, so then I spent the next half of my career, my life, trying a different tactic.”
That”™s when she began using S&M ”“ but in a “benevolent” way.
“This isn”™t evil,” she explained. “I benefited because I was the leader. If they did a good job ”¦ and the client was happy ”¦ I would wind up as a beneficiary.”
Simply put: “It”™s like great sex. Everybody comes away feeling good.”
It worked for her.
From 1996 through 2000, under DiSesa”™s leadership, McCann Erickson”™s New York office landed $2.5 billion in new business from giants like MasterCard, Verizon Wireless, Gateway Computers, Kohl”™s, Wendy”™s and Avis Rent A Car.
In her book, DiSesa details how she and her teams at McCann, Young & Rubicam in New York and J. Walter Thompson in Chicago wooed some of these clients and created successful campaigns for others.
And she talks about bad boys, back-stabbing and bullets. “My first mistake was that I believed in fair play ”¦ my second mistake was that I didn”™t appreciate men and thought they were only useful in bed. In business, I saw them as adversaries.”
The book is clever, witty and inspiring. The author doesn”™t rail against men ”“ quite the opposite.
“Once you understand how a man”™s brain is different from yours, then it”™s a lot easier to enjoy them,” she told the Business Journal. “If you”™re bitter and you resent them, that”™s not going to get anyone anywhere.”
She introduces readers to “the bad boys on 27” ”“ a group of ad men who “commandeered” the 27th floor at J. Walter Thompson and “ruled with terror.” DiSesa had left McCann in 1991 and accepted a position as executive creative director at JWT in Chicago, a city that “was notorious for annihilating creative directors from New York.”
She had a tough job in winning over this bunch. But DiSesa was undaunted and helped turn around the office and lure new business.
And, she told us, she likes the bad boys.
“I do like that irreverent behavior. I like creative people who have an edge to them. I don”™t mind difficult personalities at all as long as there”™s an underlying goodness to them. If there”™s a destructive, vicious intent, I don”™t like that.”
In 1994, DiSesa returned to McCann Erickson New York and became its first woman executive vice president, executive creative director. Four years later she was named chairman and chief creative officer. She was the first woman and first creative director to be named chairman in the McCann global network. In 1999, Fortune magazine named her one of the 50 most powerful women in American business.
She is writing another book, which will have more on the bad boys.
What”™s in it for me?
DiSesa is focused and engaging. On a recent Friday morning, she talked candidly about her impressive 30-year career and her journey from a copywriter to the chairman of the world”™s largest advertising agency network.
Over coffee and jellybeans ”“ she always has a bowl in her office ”“ DiSesa explained the impetus for the book.
“I thought it would be good to try and help women who are frustrated in their dealings with men in business ”¦ to give them ways to win without sacrificing any of the things that were important to them.”
She emphasized using certain techniques ”“ flirting, flattery, persuasion ”“ to motivate your team to go to bat for you. “The most powerful question in the English language is ”˜What”™s in it for me?”™ In advertising we learn that if we can”™t answer that question for the consumer we don”™t have a sale. And it”™s true in life, too. If you ask someone in the office to do something and there”™s nothing in it for them, why would they do it?”
And she is hopeful that women ”“ or men ”“ will glean from her story strategies for their own successes.
“There isn”™t anything that I am saying in this book that I didn”™t go through myself. It was a metamorphosis for me and I thought by writing this book in memoir-like fashion, where my mistakes were probably more educational than any good thing I ever did, that women would pick something up from that and it would give them the confidence and the desire to figure out their own route. ”¦ And if they don”™t want to do what I did, just think about their own tactics.
“Everybody has a way to win. You just have to figure out what the game plan is. You need a strategy.”
Excerpts from the interview
”¢ What inspired “Seducing the Boys Club”?
“I had been talking about that book since the year 2000 and I loved the title. I thought, ”˜One day I”™m going to write this book because I think people need to know how to make it in a boys club.”™ ”¦ I never wrote a word of it until about two years ago”¦
“I always worked for men, so I never had a woman mentor. It would have been great to have a woman to talk to and whose brain you could pick without repercussions. And I always tried to be that person ”¦
“(Women) would ask me what they should do in business situations. I would always try to give them good advice but ”¦ give them a tactic to use that would work with their personalities. Not necessarily how I would do it, but how they could do it.”
Ӣ What holds women back?
“We take everything so seriously that it kind of incapacitates us ”¦ I was like that. I made a speech a couple of years ago and I was very funny. And there were women in the audience who I had worked with at Y&R when I was a writer and they came up afterwards and said, ”˜When did you get to be funny? When we knew you all you did was cry.”™ And they were right. The first years ”¦ I didn”™t laugh. I mean I laughed when we were doing work ”¦ but I would see pictures of myself on a TV shoot, where everybody is having fun and I”™m sitting there with a frown on my face, worrying ”¦ I didn”™t relax and I didn”™t enjoy the people around me unless I was writing a funny commercial ”¦ I didn”™t have much of a sense of humor then. I was too uptight.”
Ӣ WhatӪs different about men?
“Men are very decisive but they are very confident because they get a lot of shots. “Somebody is always pitching a ball to them ”¦ if they drop one, it”™s OK, another one is going to come along. For us, we don”™t know when the next opportunity is going to come along, so we have to make sure that everything we do is just perfect ”¦ That makes us less confident, more uptight. I don”™t think it”™s our fault; it”™s just the way of the world, the way of the business world.
“They”™re also more focused. Our brain allows us to multi-task ”¦ a man is never going to have triplets, so he doesn”™t need to multi-task. And he doesn”™t want to ”¦ Men are wired, for the most part, as step thinkers, one thing follows the next. That may take them a longer time to get where they want to go but they know exactly how they got there. We jump to conclusions all over the place. We don”™t know how we got there, but we were fast. And it”™s the same conclusion. But in business, it is probably better to be focused than it is to be scattered.
“If you”™re a leader, solving problems, it”™s better to solve one problem at a time. Concentrate on it. Because that”™s all they”™re going to remember. Did you succeed or did you fail? They”™re not going to remember how many balls you had in the air.”
Ӣ Why S&M?
“You can talk to any of the men in this company and they will never, ever think that they were manipulated. They said I would ”˜maneuver”™ them into the right thing, which is of course what I did do. But if I said ”˜charm and maneuvering”™ nobody would be talking about this. So I wanted to use a phrase that was controversial and ”¦ when I use the word manipulation, it comes out of a place of strength.
“To say to a woman, ”˜You have to cajole the men and get them to see you for who you are,”™ that”™s kind of a victim status. But if say, ”˜You manipulate that situation. You get control of the environment. You decide what you want to do and you figure out what to do to get the result …”™ That”™s a position of strength. But ”¦ anyone who is going to be critical of the book is going to be critical about that.
“And the women who complain about that ”“ which aren”™t many ”¦ figure something else out. They don”™t have to do what I did. This worked for me and it can work for some people but figure out your own tactics ”¦”
”¢ Did you hear from the ”˜boys”™?
“Oh, God, yes. Some of them read the manuscript ”¦ Some of them would come in and say ”˜We thought you loved us.”™ And I said, ”˜I do love you. Just because I love you didn”™t mean I didn”™t have time to control what you were doing ”¦”™
“The younger men, it was a little easier with them. They wanted guidance. Underneath their gruff, bad boy exterior, they really did want guidance and they did want me to approve of them. If someone doesn”™t want your approval then you can”™t lead them.”
Ӣ How did you deal with breast cancer?
“That was a bummer. It was a very slow-moving cancer. I remember when it was diagnosed I was getting ready to shoot some commercials for Ritz crackers and I thought, ”˜Can I go on the shoot and get the surgery afterward?”™ And they said, ”˜Yes, it”™s very slow-moving; it”™s not life-threatening ”“ now.”™ ”¦ Meanwhile Steve Davis (general manager of J. Walter Thompson who was considering her for their executive creative director) is ”˜dating”™ me. For six months we”™re going out to dinner and I thought if he found out about it, it would change his opinion about my ability to take on this tremendous challenge ”¦ so I had dinner with him right before I went into surgery, then I had the surgery and then ”“ it was very painful for about two weeks ”¦ for two weeks you really don”™t want to get on a plane ”“ so I made an excuse that I had business or something and I didn”™t see him again until that two-week period was over. And then I went to Chicago ”¦ and I finally said, ”˜Are we going to date forever? Are you going to offer me this job, or what?”™ ”¦ Two weeks after that I moved to Chicago.”
