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Timmerman to Tie Cool Ads to Cool Media

Jun 6, 2007  •  Post A Comment

Rachel Timmerman first decided she wanted to work for an ad agency when she saw an ad in Rolling Stone magazine.
Ms. Timmerman, creative media strategist at Philadelphia agency Red Tettemer, said the ad was for Mini Cooper autos. In the magazine’s center spread, the staples had been painted yellow—like the stripes down the middle of a highway, with a little Mini slaloming in and out.
“I remember thinking that was the coolest ad I’d ever seen, so I went online and I looked up Mini Cooper, and I looked up ‘agency’ and I found this agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky. And I saw some of the other work they had done for a number of their other clients and I wanted to work there,” she said.
“So I gave them a call, and they said come on down,” said Ms. Timmerman, who had been working at a radio broadcasting company in North Carolina. “I made the trip to Miami and hung out for a day, and three months later they called and asked if I wanted a job.”
Miami-based Crispin is a highly regarded creative agency where, as an associate media planner, Ms. Timmerman was introduced to a nontraditional approach to media. At the agency, the job was about forging connections with consumers. “We did things that weren’t even considered media,” she said. “The ideas came from collective thinking, and then we were charged to get it out there the most appropriate way possible.”
At Crispin she wound up working on the Molson Canadian, Burger King and Mini Cooper accounts before taking that integrated approach to Red Tettemer.
When she got to Red Tettemer, she told Steve Red, agency president and chief creative officer, that she wanted her title to be creative media strategist. “I said I think this is the future of how media planning will interact with agencies, and much to my delight he agreed, and he said, ‘We’re going to let you go in for a year and try your thing.’”
The agency didn’t really have a media department, so Mr. Red asked her to sit with the creative department to use her knowledge of what’s happening in media to help figure out how the agency’s campaigns could be extended across multiple platforms.
At a time when most big media agencies are separate from creative agencies, Ms. Timmerman said, “There’s something to be said for just everyone being under one roof. I love the way that ideas bounce around here and I love being in the creative department and just walking into offices and sitting down. I just think it’s so beneficial when those people are in constant communications with each other and can just continually bring things to light.”
At Red Tettemer Ms. Timmerman also acts as liaison between the creative department and the media agencies employed by some of the agency’s clients.
She’s putting together plans to build a media department at the agency.
“That’s our next step,” she said. “The goal for this agency is that everything is going to be under one roof. We believe that we’re the best service for our clients and ideas and when everything happens in-house, there’s consistency there.”
Ms. Timmerman grew up in Wilmington, N.C., which is where “Dawson’s Creek” was filmed. She wanted to be a news anchor when she attended North Carolina State. When she graduated, she landed a job at Curtis Media Group, which owned a rock station, an adult contemporary station and a news station. She did some work as a disc jockey and worked in the promotions department, doing remotes for clients.
“It was the ultimate just-out-of-college job. All my other friends were working in these fancy corporations and I was wearing jeans and going in and talking on the radio,” she said. I thought I was pretty hot.”
Then she saw that ad in Rolling Stone, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Ms. Timmerman and her boyfriend recently bought a house in Miami, so they’re spending a lot of time on renovations. They also spend time at the dog park with their rambunctious English bulldog. Her boyfriend is also in the ad business.
“He’s an ad geek like I am,” she said. “When we’re not at work doing this, we’re at home talking about it, so we’re pretty boring when it comes to our personal life.”
WHO KNEW: Oliver Hardy, the portly half of the comedy team Laurel & Hardy, is Ms. Timmerman’s great-great-uncle on her father’s side. “My dad actually looks a lot like him,” she said. “I’m going to spend my life trying to avoid ever looking like Oliver Hardy.” She recalls a Laurel & Hardy movie coming on TV and her dad saying she should pay attention because they’re related. Her family is originally from Georgia and “sure enough, he is in the family plot in the cemetery,” she said.

11 Comments

  1. Funny, but I worked with this girl and that is not how she got into advertising at all. She hated her job and just started going to all the interviews she could. Then she just ended up getting an offer and worked at CP+B until she started dating one of the creatives and he helped get her a job at Tetterman. Lies do get people places though – it has taken her from country NC to this – I just don’t suggest anyone to ever work with her.

  2. Mr. Lafayette:
    Considering the current issues involving journalistic credibility you should check your sources.
    I can believe the first post considering the fact that Hardy is not buried in GA. He is buried at Valhalla Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California. Please feel free to verify this at http://www.seeing-stars.com/ImagePages/OliverHardysGravePhoto2.shtml.
    In the future you should really verify information before you publish it.

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