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Starcom’s Strategy Whiz

Apr 11, 2007  •  Post A Comment

When Gail Fujisawa was a buyer early in her career, she had a lot of questions about what she was being asked to do.
She wondered why she was buying spots in some markets and not others. Or why one order was for men 18 to 49 and another was for adults 25 to 54. Or why some flights were four weeks long and others lasted eight weeks.
“The whole planning side of it was much more intriguing to me than the buying side,” said Ms. Fujisawa, now senior VP and media director at Starcom USA. “It was definitely something I wanted to learn more about, the whole development of the strategic plan that had resulted in the buying direction that I was getting.”
These days, she’s in charge of developing brand communications strategies for accounts including America’s Beef Producers, Del Monte, Hallmark, Western Union, Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry, Walgreens and Heinz.
Sometimes that means more than simply picking among TV shows and magazines. For Hallmark, the assignment became looking for ways to revitalize the greeting card business, where sales were down as people increasingly stay in touch using e-mails and cell phones.
Ms. Fujisawa and her team decided Hallmark should provide more support to a new line of cards called Song Cards. One, designed as a congratulations card, plays Smashmouth’s “Rock Star” when opened. Others use tunes from the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, KISS and Santana.
“The client wanted to invigorate the category and get people buying cards more,” she said. “We stepped back and sort of said we need to make sure the cards are relevant and contemporize the brand.”
Sometimes a client can emphasize a minor product in its portfolio to signal the direction in which the brand should be going, she said. For Hallmark, music offered a certain power to connect with consumers on an emotional level.
The media plan supporting that music line was different from the typical set of Hallmark commercial buys that support the holiday keepsake ornaments and the annual plush toy giveaways.
The plan included a lot of entertainment television, including the syndicated show “Entertainment Tonight” and cable channel VH1. The centerpiece of the campaign was an eight-page insert last summer in People, Us and Entertainment Weekly magazines.
“It really is re-energizing the entire category, and we’re seeing some great results,” Ms. Fujisawa said.
Sometimes it’s easier to make unexpected strategic decisions for smaller clients, like Chicago’s Museum of Science & Industry.
“We can work effectively with a very guerrilla budget, as long as we understand who we’re talking to,” she said.
For a submarine exhibit at the museum, manhole covers were decorated with decals that looked like periscopes. And for the current “Body Worlds” exhibit, outdoor advertising showing what’s going on under the human skin seems to be doing the trick.
“The place is jammed. The parking lots are full. Everything is going very, very well,” she said.
Ms. Fujisawa grew up in Connecticut and majored in education and psychology at Simmons College in Boston. She expected to be a guidance counselor, but instead got married and moved to Chicago.
There, she needed a job and found one at ad agency D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles as an estimator, which is what they called assistants to buyers back then. She moved up to buyer after a year and a half, but her curiosity about strategy took her to the planning side.
She was running the milk producers’ “Got Milk?” account when DMB&B decided to fold its Chicago office in 1995. She went with the account to Leo Burnett Media, now Starcom.
A year and a half later, the milk account was consolidated and went into review. She had an offer to move with the account to another agency, but had a conversation with management at Starcom.
“I know I came over because I was the dairy queen, but now that dairy is leaving, do I still have a job?” she said. “I was told that as long as I wanted to stay, I had a job, so I stayed.”
Ms. Fujisawa said for fun she likes to travel with her kids, who are now in grad school and college. Together they’ve been to all 50 states and about 25 countries.
“The great thing about traveling is not just family bonding time. I just think it’s definitely enlightening and puts things in perspective,” she said. “I’m a planner, but no matter how much I plan, you get out there and something happens. You’ve got to be resourceful and roll with the punches.”
Who Knew?: During college, Ms. Fujisawa had a summer job as a census taker, knocking on the doors of people who hadn’t returned their questionnaires to the government.
“Those were the days when we were young and naive and thought we were invulnerable,” she said. “But it was kind of fun and it was a part of understanding about the consumer and what makes them tick—the statistics and trying to make something of it.”

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