Prior to her 1996 Chicago arrival, Sherry Merola had been an in-house producer for Coca-Cola in Atlanta and for Coke’s agency, McCann-Erickson.
She came here to produce for an agency that set up shop to serve Montgomery Ward, a rival to Sears. Merola left before both companies ceased operations and for the last dozen years she’s been one of advertising’s non-stop freelancers.
THE REEL: You just ended a 10-week project management assignment for Hoffman-York. How’d that work out for you?
MEROLA: Very well. Hoffman-York is a small agency but it’s won a lot of business and has grown really fast.
They brought me in to work on the January roll-out of the new name change for their client, Clarion Hospital, which has 20 hospitals throughout the Midwest. The campaign was print-heavy and involved an immense amount of collateral.
I applied every skill set I have: how to maximize a dollar, deal with creatives, account people, clients. I was a good bridge as I spoke all their languages.
My personality functions better when I can get my hands in a number of pies.
THE REEL: What kind of pies were you into?
MEROLA: I established production and process systems for the agency and supervised the flow of work. I interfaced between the creatives and account team. I also helped the staff whenever I saw help was needed.
