Linda Kaplan Thaler and her partner, Robin Koval, are my heroines of the week.
I caught an article by Thaler in this month's O Magazine (check it out, it's worth stashing in your sketchbook), and one in Newsweek. The premise? You can indeed create a successful ad agency and/or career by being a NICE person, as opposed to a total buzzkill (and we all know a few of those). As Kaplan Thaler puts it, "We want to dispel the myth that only those who eat their young get raises."
How wonderful is that? No one ever tells you you'll get far by being nice. Except maybe for Mom and the clergy.
The ladies are coming out soon with a book, "The Power of Nice," and are also working with a psychologist to develop a "Nice Q test" to measure social intelligence.
"It's really sad that being nice seems counterintuitive," says Kaplan
Thaler. "I think people are embarrassed to say they're nice."
Glad you like the Linda's philosophy. It sounds pretty good to me, too.
Too bad she doesn't practice what she preaches. I know three or four people who work/ed for her and she is anything, but nice. She is a very shrewd, successful business woman who knows how to package herself very well.
Creatively, the shop is not great, but it rakes in a lot of money doing very mediocre work. But she has never claimed to be interested in doing great creative. It's all about the bottomline.
Don't believe the hype.
Posted by: gold1show | September 22, 2006 at 12:52 PM