In many respects, Joan Collins has been there since the beginning. The beginning of the “chicken hat,” that is, or the Great Midwest Balloon Rally, which lasted eight years, or Quench Gum, and even the American Birkebeiner cross-country ski race in Cable, Wisconsin.
This year, her business, Joan Collins Publicity, celebrates 50 years, a milestone shared with an impressive field of Dane County-based companies, although few, if any, have been woman-owned and operated for 50 years. But to know Joan is to recognize what stamina, enthusiasm, and passion is.
After two years with a Madison advertising agency, Collins launched her business in 1966 with a $25 desk and 75 copies of her letterhead.
Then she went to work, and she’s still going strong — waking up at the crack of dawn, biking whenever possible to business meetings, and never losing the love of a creative campaign or enterprising idea.
Like Forrest Gump, Collins has had an uncanny ability to be a presence at significant events. Unlike Forrest Gump, her influence is very real.
Reflecting on a résumé
Through the years, she’s inked columns in In Business magazine and in local and national newspapers, landed a story on the Lake Geneva mail boat tour on CBS Sunday Morning after three years of trying, and continues to work her magic with clients like Attic Angel, the Dorf Haus Supper Club, Bachmann Construction, and Cost Cutters, among others.
As a Madison-based freelancer for The Milwaukee Journal, she’d research and type her stories and then dictate them over the phone from a campus phone booth to a worker on the other end. She’d also handle her own photography and bike each roll of film down to the bus station without ever knowing if her shots were acceptable until they appeared in the paper the next day.
She was the first female to have not one but two regular columns in The Capital Times’ sports page — “Ski Scoop” and “Tennis Talk” — reporting on weather conditions, lessons, and news about her favorite past times.
And she was working for clients in the Dells long before it became a year-round waterpark destination.
When Tommy Bartlett of Wisconsin Dells water ski show fame celebrated his 75th birthday, Bartlett’s business partner told Collins “the only thing they wanted to stress that year was the fact that Tommy was 75 years old and still running the business.”
She’ll never forget that day. “I thought, well, most people live to be 75. What’s the big deal?” It was the classic case of a company believing something was newsworthy when it wasn’t, she recalls.
So Collins did what she most often does when she needs new ideas — she got on her bike and dreamed up a good angle.
Bartlett had run the ski show for years but had never been on skis himself, she learned. Eventually, she convinced the elder showman to learn to water ski to celebrate his birthday, and the still photo that resulted from his 11 seconds on water ended up going international.
“The photo [taken by another photographer] was so good that I just couldn’t mail it,” she says. So she hand-delivered it to the local Associated Press office in Madison and the rest was history. Bartlett appeared in newspapers all the way to Japan. “It’s just an example of how you can’t assume that an anniversary or birthday has interest,” she says now. “You have to find the unique angle.”
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Birkie or bust?
She was in the office at Telemark Lodge in northern Wisconsin when the late Tony Wise suggested starting a cross-country ski race. “I thought it would never work,” Collins says. Telemark was a downhill ski area at the time, and cross-country skiing was just getting started here.
“I’ll never forget sitting in his office as he envisioned this race. He was Norwegian and very familiar with a similar race that had been run in Norway since the 1930s. “‘We’ll call it the American Birkebeiner,’ he said. He just rattled the name off like that! I wish I could have recorded that moment.” He promised that people from all over the world would travel to northern Wisconsin to compete in it.
“How do you spell that?” Collins recalls asking, stunned. “I just couldn’t understand a race on cross-country skis! I was thinking it would be like a half-mile long and wondered why I had wasted my time making the trip up north.” Soon after, she and Telemark’s general manager were challenged with getting 100 rooms booked for the premiere event in 1973, which they did.
In fact, the “Birkie,” is a 55-km trail that, in its 43rd year, attracts over 10,000 participants. “We never thought it would work,” Collins laughs. “He proved us wrong.”
Collins, a Wisconsin Rapids native, came to Madison initially to support her mother after her father had passed away at a fairly young age. She attended the University of Missouri journalism school, but finished her degree at UW because she’d landed a great opportunity with a Madison ad agency. Her grades suffered that final year, she admits, but she knew the job was her golden ticket. “Many of my friends were graduating and didn’t know where they’d work. For me, the job came earlier than the degree.”
At her company’s busiest time, Joan Collins Publicity was handling 24 accounts — most in the Dells area. Times were very different then, she explains. “There were no other women [in the industry]. For the first six to eight years, the only women who I met were pouring coffee at the meetings. All of my contacts and meetings were with men, but I was very confident in what I was doing. I had to sit through the dirty jokes for the first several minutes of the meetings,” she admits. “I know I was discriminated against, but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I just wanted to stay focused.”
Then there was the day she was scheduled to attend a meeting scheduled at The Madison Club. Back then, not only did The Madison Club not allow females to be members, she said, the lower level room the meeting was booked in was specifically off-limits to women. “I offered to walk back to the office,” Collins says. “I was just a student anyway, but to his credit, my boss insisted I stay and The Madison Club moved our business meeting up to the second floor, where we were surrounded by bridge players.
“It was great that he was willing to let me stay,” Collins says, “but then I figured, I’d better really be able to contribute something at that meeting!”
Collins went on to contribute, not just there but throughout her career.
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Photo from eBay |
Who else could turn the idea for a goofy, knitted chicken hat into almost an overnight sensation after taking out some ads in major newspapers? The hats —the brainchild of a couple of teachers — ended up in a televised episode of Taxi and culminated with an order for 60,000 black and gold versions destined for sale to Pittsburgh Steelers fans.
And she did it all before electric typewriters, email, and certainly, the Internet. She did it because she loved it, and because she never had trouble coming up with new ideas.
Judicious Joan
Technology has changed, but Joan Collins has not. Her client load is a bit smaller, but she’s still as active as ever. She’s very clear on what she considers the secret of her success, offering this advice to others in the publicity field.
“Know the market, the media, and whom you’re pitching,” she advises. “There are just too many huge email blasts out there. Pinpoint and study the publications. Watch TV and see what they’re doing, what type of people they are interviewing, and what they are interested in. Technology is changing so fast. Everything is just so fragmented.”
Nothing makes her more proud than having a happy client and being successful at receiving coverage for something after working on it for a long time. “These things don’t magically happen,” Collins cautions. Persistence leads to happy clients, she adds, “and who doesn’t like compliments?”
In 2006, to celebrate her company’s 40th anniversary, Collins pledged a total of $40,000 in the form of eight scholarships of $5,000 each to nonprofit organizations for the purpose of championing women’s advancement in entrepreneurship.
Ten years later, she remains as enthusiastic and energized as ever, and slowing down is simply not an option.
“I’ll keep working forever,” she states matter-of-factly. “I absolutely love it. I get up in the morning and have to have a purpose. Every day I have to accomplish something and be of value. I just like to make things happen.
“I would never quit. What would I do? I’d probably start another business, but I don’t know how to do anything else.”
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