In this second of three episodes, I’ll be telling you about my early career at the Opéra de Montréal, an important and fundamental step that would eventually lead me to create the NATA PR agency in 2000.
Episode 1 (102) ends with me accepting the paid internship at the Opéra de Montréal. For me, it was a dream job, where I learned the ins and outs of a non-profit like the Montreal opera. For the first few months of the internship, I had to spend four weeks in each of the departments that needed help. I went from accounting, where I learned what a subsidy application is, to ticketing, production, attendance, staging and communications.
Next, I spent a month in the communications department under Marie-Hélène Gay, who was a dynamic young marketing executive. It was in the marketing-communications department, as they were called back then – well before the digital age – that I learned the ropes. It was a light bulb moment for me, when I was finally able to apply the marketing and communications I’d studied. After four exciting weeks in that department, Marie-Hélène was recruited by the prestigious ad agency Cossette for the Quebec office. She was going to leave her Montreal position empty. I jumped at the chance and, since this was more than thirty years ago, I don’t remember how I convinced her to support my application for the position to the ‘big boss’ at the Opera.
She must have seen something in me that, nowadays, I see in some of my employees: talent, passion and commitment. She convinced the ‘big boss’ to give me the job, since I’d already done my training there, during my four-week internship.
What a joy for me! I still remember the amazing feeling that overcame me. And I owe a debt of gratitude to that young woman who had the courage to take another woman under her wing, in an era when ‘girl power’ was not at all the fashion.
I spent four years at the Opéra de Montréal, where I like to say I learned everything – at least in terms of my career now, since public relations are the nexus of all good communications. I also have the advantage of understanding my clients, the marketing directors and their bosses, because I held similar positions with the same responsibilities for a decade before creating my agency NATA PR in 2000.
I can’t recall those thrilling and demanding years without thinking of Jacques Sauvé, who was the right hand of the head of BCP, the agency that has since been absorbed into Publicis Groupe. Mr. Sauvé was an uncommonly intelligent, calm and elegant man, at a time when advertisers were all super-stressed and operated at only one speed, overdrive. Jacques Sauvé was the complete opposite. He was cool as a cucumber and uncommonly kind. He took me under his wing for four years, where together we developed all the ad campaigns for the Opéra de Montréal. I even created the very first public event: l’Opéra dans la rue – opera in the street – and the first club for young adults: Opéra 18-35.
I got the Opera’s first telemarketing campaign off the ground, which meant calling subscribers and prospects to renew their subscription or sell them one. This was totally new at a time when, just a few years earlier, everything was still being done by mail. I loved the years I spent working there.
Coming up in episode 3, I tell you about my professional experiences that led me to found NATA PR. After my four years at the Opera, there are six more that I tell you about in the next episode.
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