Doyenne of advertising – check. Industry veteran – check. Supermom – check. Late hours – check. Sleepless nights – check. Time taken for self – “What’s that?” says Michelle Meyjes, the CEO of MEC Group and CEO of GroupM based in Johannesburg.
GroupM, WPP’s consolidated media investment management operation, has 36% share of all advertisements placed in the South African market. It serves as the parent company to some powerful media agencies such as Maxus, MEC, MediaCom and Mindshare.
Helming an operation of that stature and with an unstoppable career spanning over three decades, Meyjes’ question, then, is valid.
She makes two inferences here. One, that often women, in their relentless pursuit to balance work and life, don’t make enough time for themselves; most of what they do is “at the expense of the self”.
And two, that she is yet to take the sabbatical she had promised herself, 13 years ago.
Ever the unassuming CEO – her 27-year-old daughter Bianca calls her “humble as chips”, Meyjes, by her own admission, is not comfortable giving interviews. But when she speaks, she speaks genuinely and of matters close to her heart.
Not surprisingly, she begins with the state of the education system in South Africa (SA), and consequently, the lack of quality talent.
“I have that dream of giving the same amount of passion and same amount of drive I have given the ad industry, to the education department. I would go in there and start again. To me, that probably is an area we need to fix,” says Meyjes.
The topic leads to her own education. She had dropped out of Rhodes University (in SA) in the second year of her bachelor’s degree.
“I regret it to this day, it was a stupid decision,” she says. “I came from a very humble and disadvantaged family, [but] my mom got funding for me from friends to send me through university. Had I applied myself to it, I would have completed it, but I didn’t.”
Meyjes forayed into the publishing world, starting with Readers’ Digest on the sales side, then moving to Republican Press (now Caxton) where she worked across a number of titles.
“Then I went to the client side. I got into classical marketing, which is really where my heart lay.”
And then it happened. Her First Big Break – Panasonic, where she stayed for over a decade. She was the only female director on the board in the group’s history in SA.
“Panasonic gave me experiences in the marketing field that only a big brand can do today. We were playing in the big field. I worked with exceptionally creative individuals and great leaders. That’s what inspired my career,” says Meyjes.
Those were also the days when ‘Media’ was an in-house department in the creative agencies. Gradually, it started breaking away into specialized standalone agencies. That’s when Meyjes decided to “pack in” her corporate career, and join a business associate who was running one of SA’s first start-up media specialist agencies.
“Interestingly enough, I did it when I was 40 years old. In the corporate world, you have everything at your disposal – legal, financial, every possible function. And now I had become an entrepreneur, and got the biggest shock of my life! You do everything, you collect your own money and you only have each other.”
It was a successful partnership as the duo received offers from big brands. Soon, they sold out 100% to WPP and the business was rebranded Mediaedge, which is today MEC.
“At the time, my [business] partner said she wanted a sabbatical. I said, ‘strange you should say that, because I am tired too’. Building a business is not easy. So I said ‘you go, I will go later’ and came to an agreement with the shareholders that I would take a sabbatical later, which I might add, to this day, I have not taken,” laughs Meyjes.
She carried on, leading MEC. The group witnessed exponential growth. Currently, it is the fourth-largest media agency in SA with 11.6% industry share and billing of $370K. Meyjes has won some crucial awards along the way.
But for the second time during the course of the interview, she asks (for all women): “When you get to a role at the top, do you look back and say, ‘has it been at my expense’?”
“I don’t think women actually know what they want. I just see so many, you can tell they don’t want to be at the workplace, and have no option but to work. It’s circumstantial. Question is: are they going to make the most of it, or go by on just the bare minimum? …You have to work hard, there are no short-cuts. You have to make sacrifices and the biggest sacrifice is your own self. I think if you can get that balance right, that to me is the most critical.”
Meyjes is happy that her only daughter, who she calls an exceptional child, chose to break away from the corporate world, to follow her dreams, traveling the world, yachting and living in Monaco.