Plunging into a male-dominated business in the early 1980s, Joyce Taylor-Bauer – at the time, Joyce Taylor – crafted an all-business image. She chopped her hair, donned glasses she didn't need and answered her phone with a terse, "Taylor."
By the time she had honed her skills as a media buyer and become a radio sales rep in the early 1990s, she'd cemented her reputation as a "no-bullshit" deal negotiator.
"People would meet me and they'd go, 'Oh. I was expecting a tall, dark-haired older person with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth,'" said the petite blonde Taylor-Bauer, 49, sitting in the boardroom of her North Vancouver media buying shop, Taylor Made Media.
While Taylor-Bauer's demeanor has softened as her experience has grown, her strategic abilities continue to drive her success. In the past two years alone, Taylor Made has increased its billings by more than 50% in the midst of an uncertain economy, landing a string of new accounts, including White Spot, Mercedes and the BC Cancer Foundation. During the same time period, the company's staff has also grown by half to 10 employees.
"This boardroom was too small immediately," Taylor-Bauer said wryly, referring to the company's 2007 move into its current location.
But she added with a laugh: "That's an OK problem to have."
Born the eighth of nine children in Windsor, Ontario, Taylor-Bauer got a taste for Vancouver when visiting her older siblings on the West Coast in her teens. To prepare for a move west, she studied business advertising at St. Clair College, where she learned power-dressing tips from Dress for Success and purposely didn't learn to type.
"I didn't want to be a secretary," she quipped.
In 1983, having saved $700 working shifts at a local bingo hall, 20-year-old Taylor-Bauer packed up her Windsor life and headed west to an internship at Vancouver's Baker Lovick Advertising.
In Vancouver, she dove into the media-buying business and over the course of five years climbed the corporate ladder to become media director with Vrlak Robinson Hayhurst.
In 1989, Taylor-Bauer switched from media buying to media selling. Hired to launch a western office for Telemedia Radio Sales, she leveraged her insider knowledge of media buying to increase the company's western business by more than 300% within three years.
"I knew the media buyers, and I knew what they needed."
She then helped merge Telemedia with rep shop MediaGroup West.
David St.Laurent, one of MediaGroup West's owners at the time and now president of Western Media Group Sales Company Inc., remembers hiring Taylor-Bauer – and when he realized what that was going to mean for the company.
Preparing for the launch of MediaGroup West, St.Laurent had planned to fax out press releases to local media buying shops – the firm's prospective clientele.
But Taylor-Bauer pitched a different plan: instead of easily-ignored faxes, MediaGroup West would roll the press releases into scrolls, tie them up with ribbon and small bouquets of spring flowers and have them hand delivered.
"That helped me realize, 'OK, we're raising the standards bar here because it's got to cut through the clutter,'" St.Laurent said. "And that's her strategy in how she buys or executes her media: it's not always 'Can I get it at the cheapest price?' – it's 'What is the most effective way of communicating the message?"
Over her three years at MediaGroup West, Taylor-Bauer secured significant business from media buying agencies and landed major supplier clients such as Mediacom Outdoor Advertising Inc.
In 1995, with two successful company launches under her belt, Taylor-Bauer decided to strike out on her own with Taylor Made Media.
This time she moved back to the media buying side of the equation, helping clients secure TV spots, print advertising and other media space to get their messages across.
"It's way more strategic [than selling]," she explained. "You're handling the whole picture, you're managing the campaign, whereas on the selling side you might just be selling them two radio stations."
Taylor-Bauer ran the business out of her home for 12 years, fighting to achieve work-life balance as a working mom.
"It's tough," she said. "I'd hear the kids cry and I'd want to be there and I'd hear them laugh and I'd want to be there."
But Taylor-Bauer said she was able to create a clear boundary between her family and professional realms, managing to continue building her company despite the challenging economy of the late 1990s and, most recently, the 2008-09 recession.
In fact, she said, the most recent downturn allowed her to attract some key staff as other media shops instituted hiring freezes. Talent, she said, is her company's key asset and an area she focuses on, with a profit-sharing system and other employee -recognition.
"Sometimes I just go and get a bunch of 100 dollar bills on a Friday and just say, 'Go and have a good weekend,'" she said, adding that it's a cost-effective way of recognizing her employees' hard work.
Despite industry upheaval, she said, Taylor Made has gained new momentum over the past couple of years, gaining the clout to handle multimillion-dollar accounts while retaining a boutique feel.
"I think we're in a sweet spot."
Taylor-Bauer attributed some of her success thus far to negotiation skills honed around the family dinner table in Windsor – skills that form the bread and butter of the trade.
And while she may no longer chop off her hair and lower her voice to create a tough persona, it's clear that Taylor-Bauer still loves driving a bargain – and holding her ground.
"We do pre-[media] buy analysis, we do post-buy analysis. So if you said you were going to get [the client] a million viewers and you only got 800,000, well you owe us 200,000," she said. "Some people check, some people don't. We check." •
