Offthebookshelf.com
jerry Pickholz
I was born in New York City and I’m a product of its school system through a BBA in Accounting. I must have listened a bit since I passed the CPA exam on my first attempt.
My career was interrupted by a brief interlude as a Lieutenant in the US Navy, affording me an early opportunity to see other parts of the US and the world, just as the Navy claims in its advertising. Most important, however, I came to appreciate over time the lessons this experience taught me in leadership and HR skills.
My accounting career, as such, was short, ending with a fine, tempting offer to be the controller of a Direct Marketing company, dealing essentially in the creation and production of direct mail. Within ten years, I had become its president and the Company had been acquired by Ogilvy & Mather.
My charge was then to build its major subsidiary, Ogilvy & Mather Direct, into a world-wide presence as its CEO. I worked at that for the next sixteen years. When I left, we had 2,000 employees working in every major market in the world – a total of fifty offices, handling clients such as American Express, AT&T, Microsoft, Intel, Sears, Shell Oil. We broadened the definition of direct marketing to include data management. Then we took the pioneering step (at the time) to aggressively embrace digital communications, sufficiently to be recognized by the trade press as the leading agency in the discipline. Our billings reached $1 billion, a milestone for a direct marketing agency. I was awarded the additional title of Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather (the parent company). Ogilvy & Mather was acquired by WPP. I suspect Sir Martin Sorrell, its founder and CEO, would still provide a favorable reference for me.
During this time I served eleven years as a Director, including a tour as Chairman, of the 5,000 member trade group, The Direct Marketing Association.
In 1992 I was voted the Direct Marketing Man of the Year.
I left Ogilvy under the most amicable conditions, to start a small agency with a colleague and one client. Five years later, we had 60 employees with billings of $60 million. We sold to the Interpublic Group of Companies.
I served for five years as an audit committee chairman of a NYSE company, through the introduction and implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
I serve on the board of a company involved in marketing. I spent a good deal of time on charitable causes (15 years on the board of the American Red Cross of Greater New York).
I live in NYC with my wife since my Navy days. We escape frequently to our place in Bridgehampton NY. We play golf and dote on our five grandchildren.
All Books By This Author:
- A Great Run
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This is a HARDCOVER book, not a paperback. This is also Jerry’s story about being born in 1932, into a family of very modest means, living in Brooklyn during the depths of the Great Depression. His education was with the compliments of the New York City school system from kindergarten through college (CCNY). A three year Naval Officer tour provided him with an eye-opening view of the world beyond the confines of his previous provincial living. With his total sea-going experience gained in a Prospect Park row boat, we find Jerry conning his ship, USS Warrick, through Japan’s infamous Inland Sea, and later, to an anchorage in the dizzying traffic of Tokyo Bay.
Two years after meeting Phyllis at CCNY and less than a year into his the navy tour, at the tender ages of twenty-two and twenty, they marry, and set up a household in the San Francisco Bay area. Jerry alternates between round trips to the Far East and frolicking with Phyllis on the West Coast for the rest of the Navy tour. The return to New York City is disappointingly unremarkable: The reception by family and friends, the first job, and the first apartment.
What then unfolds is an unlikely, circuitous journey of forty-five years, from an ill-advised, entry-level position in public accounting to the upper echelons of advertising agency management, and the answer to the oft-asked question: “How did you get from there to there?”
Switching to a larger accounting firm and ultimately joining their fledgling management consulting group is a water-shed event. The first consulting assignment results in a job offer as a controller. Almost immediately, the positions balloons to include plant management, and then general management.
The company is sold to a conglomerate. Jerry is named president of the company he had been with, and manager of a large but unimpressive segment of the conglomerate. Dissatisfied in time with the conglomerate, his company is repurchased by the former stockholders in partnership with the renowned advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather as the majority owner. The intent of the giant agency is to integrate their acquisition and build a world-wide direct marketing capability. With all the corporate intrigue that may be found in a novel, three major players of the newly combined entity resign. Jerry takes on the role of CEO of the then destabilized Ogilvy Direct. During the next sixteen years, it experiences meteoric global growth, to become the largest direct agency in the world. Digital advertising emerges and finds a home there. Ogilvy is acquired in an unfriendly take-over. Jerry is named Vice-Chairman and member of the Executive Committee of Ogilvy & Mather. He retires shortly afterwards, soon starts a new advertising venture, and participates in the dot-com frenzy.Jerry and Phyllis were married in 1954, and have celebrated their fifty-seventh anniversary. Their son, Keith and daughter, Michelle were raised primarily in Chappaqua, a lovely community in Northern Westchester. Keith went to Dartmouth and NYU for a Masters in Digital Communications, spent seven years with Microsoft and continues in E-Marketing. He is married to Barbara Hagmayer and they have a son, Luca, and a daughter, Luna. Michelle graduated from Vanderbilt, had a short but successful career selling advertising time, married Steven Eickelbeck and they have three teen-aged sons, Alexander, and twins, Austin and Willie. Steven is in real estate development and management.
Phyllis and Jerry are long-time residents of both the upper east side of Manhattan and Bridgehampton. They belong to the Gardiner’s Bay Country Club on Shelter Island and work at playing golf.
- Genres: Biographies
