Journey into strategy (Yellow Door)
Part 1: Yellow Door
There’s been a recent spate of content coming out about the good old days at Conde Nast. From Graydon Carter’s When The Going Was Good and Michael M. Grynbaum’s Empire of the Elite to Anna Wintour’s New Yorker Radio Hour interview following the announcement Chloe Malle to replace her at the helm of American Vogue. It's all so fun to hear about, not least because it’s “fa-shun, darling”, but because the stories are about workplaces and the colleagues that make them and break them. They’re about careers and the journey from youth to maturity. And they’re about how people become themselves – how they invent themselves – through their craft.
And so, in my continued determination to write pieces that AI never could, I welcome you to the first of three articles about my journey into strategy, starting today with Yellow Door (now Portas), followed by Moving Brands next week and ending the following week with Wolff Olins.
The story of how I came to work as PA to Mary Portas and Peter Cross is one of those deeply annoying ones, because – like so many great opportunities – it's a story of luck, good timing and naive bravado. I was in my early 20's and had moved home again following a break-up. I had absolutely no friends in London and very little social life, and so spent a lot of time watching TV and fretting about my future. Mary Queen of Shops was a new BBC show featuring retail expert, Mary Portas, helping turn around floundering independent high street shops. It was that early breed of reality show which was actually about something, rather than about manufactured drama. Of course there was drama, but only because Mary would generally end up banging her head against a wall when the stubborn shop owner refused to heed her advice. But it also managed to be about other things too – Britishness, entrepreneurialism and – most interesting to me – how and why people buy stuff. I was obsessed.
And so, when my Mum gently suggested I might want to stop moping around and get a bloody job, I decided to give Mary a ring. I found the number for her company, Yellowdoor, and called her up. Surprisingly to me, I was not put straight through, but Carinne (still Mary's right hand person) asked what I wanted and, when I said I was looking for a job, told me to hold the line. I waited on hold for a few minutes before Carinne came back and said, "Ok, Mary just fired her PA. Are you in?". And that was that. Luck, good timing and naive bravado. Even my Mum was shocked.
Yellow Door was my first taste of agency life. And a fashion PR agency at that. It was noisy, fast-paced, female-dominated, and spicy as hell. It reminded me of my time at an all-girls school where, without boys around, the girls got focused, worked hard, played harder and cracked jokes that would make their grandfather blush. I sat on the hallowed carpeted section facing Mary and Peter, who each had their own desk. Next to me was their CFO, Georgina – a four-foot-nothing Essex girl with a gym addiction, a deep fake tan and towering pink stiletto heels. Before Yellow Door she'd run the finance team at Mother during its heyday, so she knew a thing or two about operationalising ego. I loved her, not just for her absolutely filthy sense of humour but for her mama bear protection of me as I learned the ropes of being a PA.
Reader, I was a terrible PA. On day one, Mary declared the tea that I delivered with a shaking hand "too weak to crawl out the cup". On day two I was asked to move everything from Mary's paper diary into her newly established iCal which I managed to fuck up so dramatically, its consequences haunted me for months. By day three we were all starting to wonder what the point of me actually was. Fortunately they were barely paying me anything at all, so instead of firing me, they put me to use elsewhere - far far away from anyone's calendars.
And so, over the following months, I walked Mary's new puppy, Walt. I helped sort out the stock room. I archived press clippings. I booked taxis. I looked after focus group attendees. I delivered things to Mary and Peter's houses when they worked from home. And then things started to get a bit more interesting. I helped write campaign copy for their client, Thomas Pink. I assisted Mary when she gave talks and got to see her in action, on stage. And, again thanks to luck, timing and bravado, began ghost-writing Mary's weekly column in the Saturday Telegraph Magazine.
Each Shop! column was essentially a write up of a mystery shopping experience and followed a simple yet exquisite structure. After a pithy intro, every piece then covered the window display, “shoppability”, and overall verdict. With Mary – and her signature auburn bob – now nationally famous, her ability to shop incognito waned. And so I was sent off around the country, visiting shops, writing up a first draft and then sending it over to Mary for her take.
Without realising it, this was the ultimate starting point for a career in brand strategy. Every week, I was on deadline to conduct in-person research, look analytically at a retail offering, write about it in a compelling way, get and respond to feedback, align it for tone of voice, and then submit it to the ‘client’. The ‘client’, after Mary, was the old-school terrifying Druscilla Beyfus – a journalist who has written books on etiquette and modern manners and is mother to none other than Alexandra Shulman, editor-in-chief of Vogue from 1992 - 2017. But more than that, it got me out of my privileged London-based bubble. Once a week I was on a train to towns across the UK and, as well as visiting the shops, I was stopping for lunch in various tea rooms, Wimpy’s, and caffs, listening in to conversations and building a picture of lives outside of my own. I can’t change my privilege, but I can be hyper-aware of it and the understanding that the ‘customer’ is not always going to be ‘me’ has never left.
Eventually – and understandably – Mary and Peter realised they probably did need a PA who would PA, and I was moved to a newly established team within Yellow Door to help manage the launch of Westfield Shopping Centre in Shepherd’s Bush. It was a baptism of fire in the fizzy world of PR, and while the challenge of introducing a £1.7bn shopping centre – and its 275 retailers – to discerning Londoners in the middle of a recession was incredible – I was coming to realise that this particular corner of marketing wasn’t for me. Looking around at the other women in the company, I could see how badly they wanted it and it felt wrong to be taking someone’s spot when I wasn’t loving it. Many of the friends I made there are now leaders in the field and I couldn’t be prouder of them – Sarah Macdonald, Holly Clarke, and Sheema Siddiqi to name a few.
And so, with Westfield launched and my contract up, I got serious about the world I did want to be a part of. Which brought me to the door of Moving Brands and the start of one of the most important chapters in my career.
Kill: Unpaid internships.
Marry: The timeless saying “It’s PR, not ER”.
Snog: Mary’s OG C*nty Little Bob
Did you work in fashion or PR in the 00’s? I want to hear! Leave a comment below or drop me a line.
See you next week for Part Two: Moving Brands in which design enters the frame and I have jet lag for 18 months.