Advertising 101

After that day, I had to try more.  Little by little I started to buy wine in the $10-15 price point to start trying new things.  I found so many flavors, aromas and food pairing memories that my obsession grew.  We eventually bought two 100 bottle wine racks from IKEA to taste, collect and nurture our new hobby.

The radio job opened doors for me to learn, grow, move up and start increasing my salary.  After three years I left there as a Manager after the woman who helped me get there had left herself.  She introduced me to a friend at a small ad agency who hired me as a research analyst.  It was a lateral money move, but one that would build the building blocks to my advertising career.  When my new boss left the company, I looked again and my first two bosses, introduced me to boss number 3, another strong woman who really let me develop and spread my wings at a large advertising company for 5 years. 

These were tough years.  I got engaged, bought a house, got married and then 9/11 happened and we were a few blocks from the United Nations.  A few weeks later, the honeymoon had ended and my husband was activated by the United States Marine Corp.  And, on top of all this, I was still commuting into New York City, 3 hours a day and taking care of a dog and home life on my own while holding down a really stressful job. 

Advertising work is hard.  My job was to compile composites of who my clients’ customers were using various proprietary software that I was whiz at and number crunching ratings.  We pitched new business and pitched the ones in review working long hours and weekends.  Every year, we went to the broadcast upfronts where we were introduced the new fall tv shows and after hob-nobbed with the talent.  I met and hung out with so many celebrities, but that one week of fun was not worth the other 51 weeks and I was miserable.  During my last weeks I remember waking up crying like a little girl who didn’t want to go to school that day.

I started to want to take care of me and I started taking wine classes, going to dinners and tastings and eventually I took some serious wine courses for certification.   I immersed myself in whatever I could find to learn, taste and in doing so, found out it was fun!

One of my colleagues at the big ad agency was really following my passion for wine.  She had suggested that I conduct in-home wine tastings.  Who would want to do that?  She did and begged me to do something for her husband’s birthday.  I passed on that as I didn’t want my very first tasting to be on someone else’s big day.  What if I sucked?  He’d always remember THAT birthday.

I changed jobs again going back to the radio side in a not-for-profit marketing gig.  The money was too hard to turn down.  On my first day I remembered why I left the radio job in the first place, but now I was stuck and would have to make the best of it.

During a lunch, I learned from a colleague what a blog was.  You have to remember that during my early career, the internet was just a baby and most people didn’t know much about it.  I had a passion for writing and my colleague had told me about a NJ site and they had many blogs, but not one about wine.  So, I pitched the NJ website to write a blog about wine.  They asked me to send some writing samples.  I did and the rest was history.