• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, October 2, 2012

Love it or leave it. That was the advice offered by former Ogilvy & Mather global CEO Shelly Lazarus to those considering a career in advertising.

“You have to figure out if you really love it. If not, you’ll never be successful,” Lazarus told attendees at an Advertising Week session, billed as her first time on stage at the annual event. “It’s a tough business.”

Lazarus told of her serendipitous introduction to the field years ago when a college friend invited her to attend a meeting of the Advertising Women of New York. “I had never really thought about advertising before, let alone considered it as a career,” she said. However, she found the meeting -- and advertising -- to be “completely fascinating.”

A short time later, she enrolled in business school and the marketing classes she took had her completely hooked. “It never feels like work to me,” she said.

Lazarus, now chairman emeritus at O&M, recalled her early years in the business when she was literally “the only woman in the room in any meeting. It was enormously powerful.” The men would debate for hours what motivated women to buy products. When she was asked for her opinion, she would give it, essentially speaking on “behalf of all women. And there was no one there to oppose me.”

Lazarus asserted that there are still far too few women in the C-suites at ad shops. But noting some progress, there are “so many more than there used to be.”

Part of the issue, Lazarus said, is that women are more reticent about stating “this is what I need to stay…Speak up,” she advised, giving higher-ups a chance to provide proper incentives.

As CEO at O&M, Lazarus spent a good deal of time trying to make her team of 18,000 staffers worldwide feel appreciated and valued. “You can’t communicate too much,” she said, about an agency’s mission and values. “You have to live the words,” she said. “Show up and actually touch people.” For a global CEO, that means hopping on a plane and visiting the China operation every so often, she added. A Webcast just isn’t the same.

On the digital front, the most significant development for marketers is the ability to talk back to consumers in ways that were unimaginable just a short time ago. But the industry still has to learn how to effectively harness digital media, she said. “We have the ability to engage in dialogue and conversations to close the sale. But we haven’t figured out how to take advantage of it.”