±±¾©Èü³µpk10

Staff are not often downbeat when their boss orders 200 bottles of champagne. But when Starcom chief executive Linda Smith got the bubbly in to celebrate the agency's second big account win in weeks, the atmosphere remained strained.

Smith, less than a year into her job, had just embarked on a somewhat brutal restructure of the agency, which saw traditional media roles axed in favour of a new focus on digital and data planning.

Last month's shake-up resulted in seven redundancies, with Andy Roberts, client managing director and founder of Starcom Motive, the biggest name casualty. It followed a turbulent two years, which had seen other senior figures leave and a barren period for new business.

Yet with the anniversary of her time as chief exec days away, Smith claims the apprehension has turned into a realisation that the agency has to adapt or die. That, combined with EMI and Premier Foods adding £50m to the agency's billings in December, finds her in optimistic but typically forthright mood.

Rollercoaster year

"It's been a rollercoaster year," she says. "The restructure was very difficult. I made the announcement on the Thursday morning and we got confirmation of winning Premier the same day. It was the first big win for a non-related client for probably a couple of years. But the mood before Christmas was quite frankly sombre. When the EMI win came in, I ordered 200 bottles of champagne and we went to the pub.

"Having been made redundant when I was at Capital the first time, I know what it is like," adds Smith, who reorganised directors and their responsibilities just 99 days after replacing Iain Jacob in the role and whose major hiring, former Nylon founder Pru Parkinson, started work as head of strategic planning the day before this interview.

"I'm a really good organiser and I know where I'm weak," states Smith. "The reality of me bringing in a strategic planning director is that's not my background. I'm a sales person. But I do know where we need to be and I'm good at setting goals."

She has made Steve Parker, former out-of-home buying director, managing director of Starcom Digital, despite his lack of experience in the field. She says she picked him because he is "a risk-taker grounded in common sense". "I don't know all the answers for digital yet and I don't think anybody does," she adds, while warning: "If agencies don't get it right, they will be dead."

Having started her career trading blows on the Yorkshire TV sales floor, a low point came with her redundancy at Capital in 1996 when it closed the MSM sales team she led. Headhunted by then MediaVest boss, now Starcom UK Group chairman, Jim Marshall, she served five years as commercial director, before returning to Capital for a second stint under boss David Mansfield.

Despite claiming that both she and Mansfield got on far better than was reported with former GWR boss Ralph Bernard, Smith, who earned £318,000 the previous year - including an £85,000 bonus - departed as commercial director of GCap at the end of 2005, having witnessed another brutal period of change during radio's big merger.

"Ralph was dead set on me staying at GCap," she says. "But I couldn't see what the answers were to some of the issues we were facing."

Taking ownership

She says she took the Starcom job because she wanted to "really take ownership of something" and claims the biggest difference between agency and media owner is that agency staff work harder.

This, she admits, means she has spent too little time recently with her three young children and her husband, a sports marketing executive, but adds: "The reality is that when you are at a senior level you have to make compromises."

Such an appetite for hard work has seen Smith, who lived in Malawi until moving to Clacton-on-Sea aged 10, become one of relatively few women bosses in the industry, certainly on the media agency front, despite suffering from being both an Essex girl and an Arsenal fan. "I can honestly say I've never worn a pair of white stilettos," she claims, "although I have danced around my handbag - probably while drunk."

So what other twists and turns lie ahead? Could they include Starcom pooling its buying power with sister agency ZenithOptimedia, as predicted, despite denials by Jack Klues, chairman of Publicis Groupe Media?

"Gerry (Boyle, managing director of ZenithOptimedia) and I have a good relationship and we're looking at areas we can develop together," she says. "If, in a year's time, we both said to each other we're absolutely missing a trick here, Klues would have to listen to us. We would be crazy not to do something if there was a business case, but it hasn't reached that point yet."

Marshall admits Smith can come across as "aggressive, intimidating and steely", all qualities she will arguably need. But he adds: "Life tends to polarise between people who are fundamentally decent and people who are complete arseholes and she's very definitely one of the former."

CV

2006: Chief executive, Starcom UK Group

2005: Commercial director, GCap Media

2002: Commercial director, Capital Radio Group

1997: Commercial director, MediaVest

1993: Marketing director, MSM Radio Sales

1990: Head of Thames Television International

1984: Media airtime sales, Yorkshire Television.