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Three years ago, Christine Walker had a nervous breakdown. Not a real one, thank goodness. She just had to pretend to be ill for a film intended to raise the profile of Nabs.
Indeed, it would be hard to find anybody of a less nervous disposition than the blunt-speaking matriarch variously dubbed the Maggie Thatcher of Media and the First Lady of British Advertising.
In a long career, her nerve and resilience have been constantly tested. Yet the girl who's one of the boys while exploiting the fact that she isn't one - exited at the top with a pile of money and her place in advertising history assured.
Not only was she one of the architects of Zenith Media, the first big media buying operation, but she also launched Walker Media, which became the UK's largest independent media shop.
Passionate and obsessive, she has been an inspiration for women in a testosterone-fuelled business. Yet her achievements extend well beyond being an industry pioneer for her sex.
"Christine has played a unique role in the shaping of our industry as we know it today, often by the sheer power and dynamism of her own personality," Sly Bailey,Trinity Mirror's chief executive, says.
"There are many who could learn from the Christine way of doing things: great relationships driving great results for clients. She's an inspiration."
Any client who has sat drinking, smoking and talking with her into the small hours could not fail to be impressed by her charm, her incredible depth of media knowledge and her abhorrence of blandness.
Walker's work ethic was instilled in her during her first job selling ad space at Haymarket: "It taught me the world didn't owe me a living. My boss, Mike Potter, had the week's targets on a board. It woke me up: you had to hit those targets to pay the rent and have some beer money. I learned never to fear rejection."
She also learned to know the business of the customer she was about to call and the value of relationships. Both accomplishments helped her land her first agency job as a media buyer at Benton & Bowles in 1976.
Her rise through the ranks to become an associate media director meant that she would be a key player when her boss, Ray Morgan, broke away to launch his eponymous media agency in 1985, taking most of his staff and clients with him.
Walker was just 28 and pregnant. However, RMP prospered and,in doing so,set new standards in media planning and buying.
Ironically,given how she would later become known as the "heart and soul" of Zenith Media, she was the only RMP director who opposed the company's sale to Saatchi & Saatchi in 1988 as a precursor to Zenith's establishment. She later agreed so the deal could proceed.
Zenith, a merger of RMP with the media buying operations of three Saatchis group agencies, was a hive of activity and Walker emerged as its queen bee. Her personality and passion is cited as a major reason why the agency won and retained millions of poundsworth of business. All of which only compounded the shock that greeted her resignation in January 1997. "I was shell-shocked," a colleague confessed at the time."It's a real body blow."
Why did she quit? Walker says: "I was fond of Zenith,it's difficult not to be.But the world I was living in was bland and filled with people sitting around waiting for their pensions. That's fine, but it's not for me."
Her exit and her subsequent launch ofWalker Media turned sour when her old ally Derrick Southon, then the chief executive of Zenith Europe,launched a legal action against her to stop her poaching Zenith clients.
The bitter battle was settled before it reached the High Court, but it left a legacy of rancour between Walker and Southon, her former mentor. "I don't blame him for wanting to protect their business, but he wrote an affidavit against me and there was no need to do that," she claims. "I'm not a believer in forgiveness. I won't breathe the same oxygen as him now."
The launch of Walker Media, a joint venture with M&C Saatchi, in 1997 ended months of speculation. Walker had been expected to align herself with WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell, but found the old Saatchis "nothing is impossible" mantra impossible to resist. "Attitudinally, we're the same," she said at the time."We're both street fighters."
Walker Media has undoubtedly thrived by adhering to its core values of client service, strategic thinking and the ability to implement that thinking. Moreover, it remains the only non-network media agency in the UK top ten.
Observers suggest it has had a lot to do with the different but complementary talents of the tough, gogetting Walker and her thoughtful and systematic founding partner, Phil Georgiadis.
He has now assumed leadership of the business after Walker's decision to step down to take time out abroad before returning"to pursue other interests".
With her departure, the industry lost one of its most charismatic personalities. At Zenith, Walker led an operation that redefined the market. With Walker Media, she successfully bucked the trend once again by launching a full-service media agency when planning-only start-ups were the fashion.
What's more, her fanaticism for the business remains undiminished after three decades. "Thirty years on, there is more technology, more middlemen and fewer personalities, but it remains a great industry," she wrote in Campaign last year. "If I were 21 again, I'd follow exactly the same path."
Any client who has sat drinking, smoking and talking with her could not fail to be impressed by her charm, media knowledge and abhorrence of blandness
