Roberta Garfinkle - senior vice president director of print media at Universal McCann

Brandweek, Dec 6, 1999 by Lisa Granatstein

As Universal McCann's senior vp director of print media, representing Coca-Cola, Nestle and Cosmair L'Oreal, Roberta Garfinkle is as much a household name in the industry as the brands she represents. While three decades worth of print buying easily makes Garfinkle an M.V.P., it's her straight-talking, no-nonsense approach that makes her the voice of the buying community and this year's Mediaweek magazine All-Star.

"There's a litmus test called the Roberta Blessing," explains Mark Stewart, Universal McCann's executive vp North America media director (and fellow 1999 All-Star). "Anyone who has a new concept or new positioning for their publication looks forward to running it past Roberta, and being challenged by Roberta. If they come out unscathed and with a blessing, they know they've got a good thing to roll out."

Whether it's fielding sales calls or reporters' calls, Garfinkle is always happy to serve up some smart analysis. "She is so well respected that she is one of the most quoted people I've ever seen," says Christopher Gagen, media services director for Coca-Cola USA. "She gets almost as much press time as Bill Clinton."

Not to mention face time.

Garfinkle uses a hands-on approach to doling out her $400 million print spending budget. For the past four years, she has invited the print community over for Thesday morning breakfasts to help McCann's planners, and magazine publishers better understand each others' needs. "She is one of the straightest shooters in the business," says Jack Kliger, Hachette Filipacchi Magazines president and ceo, who has known Garfinkle for two decades. "After you leave a meeting with Roberta, you know you've had a meeting."

"She fights hard for her clients," adds Mary Berner, president and ceo of Fairchild Publications, a unit of Advance Publications. "She's not a pushover by any stretch, but she does it in a way that is fair."

Garfinkle's willingness to provide lofty analysis and champion the word of print may stem from her brief career as a school teacher.

Shortly after graduating in the late '60s from the University of Florida with a teaching degree, Garfinkle decided to put the kibosh on that career move. Instead, she packed her bags, left her family in Miami Beach and fled to New York where she could live on her own and start anew.

Garfinkle quickly hooked up with a college friend who got her an interview for a secretarial job at the now defunct advertising agency Chirurg & Cairns--not that she knew what ad agencies were all about. "I had no clue," admits Garfinkle. "The concept that people paid money to run ads struck me as being very odd." Even so, she made an impression, and became the media director's secretary. The rest, as they say, is history.

Garfinkle was quickly promoted to media estimator, which essentially meant calculating the cost of ads in magazines, for Bonne Bell cosmetics, Lenox china and Fleischmann Distilling. From there, Garfinkle moved to the renowned Ted Bates agency, where she worked on print and broadcast accounts, which included Hertz Rent-A-Car. But, she says, print became her first love. "I like the magazine business," she says. "At that point in time, planners had more input into magazine schedules than with broadcast accounts. You got to select titles, you got to figure out what made sense in terms of running a creative message in a magazine. It was the more challenging of the two."

Garfinkle also worked for two more agencies, Geer DuBois and Sacks & Rosen, before joining McCann-Erickson in April 1985 as its first print media director. At the time, McCann needed someone with a strong magazine background to handle the rate and positioning negotiations for Cosmair L'Oreal.

"She's had to be the consummate diplomat in that she doesn't work for any one business but works to represent the interests across all of the divisions," says Pam Alabaster, senior vp marketing director for Lancome who has worked with Garfinkle for the past eight years.

Over the years, Coca-Cola USA was also thrown into her mix of print buying. "Roberta is really cognizant of our objectives and strategies," says Coca-Cola's Gagen. "She understands how we want to connect with consumers in innovative ways to grow our brands."

Also tossed into the mix are the slew of new magazines to contend with each year. "Magazine planning was a very different kind of thing back then," says Garfinkle. "When I started in the business ... there was no real rate negotiation, you met with the publishers or sales reps once a year, you said we'll buy 12 pages in your magazine, they said thank you and they went away." The planning process has since evolved to include extensive research, computer programs and greater demands for accountability to clients. Multiplatform deals are also part of this new publishing world order, and Garfinkle clearly knows how to get her clients tapped in. "She's great when you bring her big ideas," says Peter Bauer, publisher of Time Inc.'s People magazine. For People's 25th anniversary extravaganza last March, Garfinkle was among those instrumental in convincing L'Oreal to become the sole sponsor of the CNN People Profiles biography series, as well as placing multiple pages within the anniversary issue. "Roberta had the f oresight to see how great it was going to be... [L'Oreal] bought it before we were able to show them what it was going to be."