Ad exec competes with husband and succeeds — in business and marriage

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Valerie Glenn stole one of her husband’s key clients.

And they’re still married.

Glenn wed her husband, statewide advertising fixture John Glenn, in 1981. At the time, she owned a Reno business that sold advertising space in magazines. John Glenn’s agency, DRGM, was Valerie Glenn’s client; she placed his accounts in publications. But Valerie Glenn longed to return to the creative side of advertising, where she launched her career after graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno.

Rather than bring on Valerie Glenn at DRGM, John Glenn encouraged his wife to join her father’s Reno firm, Phil Rose Advertising. The renamed Rose-Glenn Group promptly went on to compete against DRGM for clients, even luring away a big DRGM account, the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority.

After 18 years of competing for clients, the Glenns decided in 2007 to merge her firm’s Reno office with DRGM’s Las Vegas and Reno operations. Valerie Glenn oversees day-to-day operations of the new business.

Question: Why did you opt for advertising as a career?

Answer: I was predisposed to it because my father was in the business, but I hadn’t really thought about it until my freshman year in college. I took a journalism class and fell in love with it. My professor was such a wonderful mentor and had such an incredible background that he just won me over. I declared my major in journalism at the end of that semester.

Question: When you decided to get back into the creative side in 1989, you weighed working with either your father or your husband. Why did you choose to work with your dad?

Answer: After John and I got married, we didn’t really talk about business. He’s the kind of person who wants to leave it at the office. So John and I agreed that we probably shouldn’t work together. We know each other, and we thought it would probably not be good for our marriage. John suggested that I go work with my dad, because my dad was trying to grow his agency and needed a little youthful enthusiasm.

John and I have different management styles, and we didn’t want to see each other 24 hours a day. John and I are both very independent. We’ve been married 27 years and we love doing things together, but we also like our away time. We couldn’t quite picture spending all day together, let alone evenings and weekends.

Question: You were a direct competitor of your husband’s. How did that work out?

Answer: It worked out great. We knew we were going to compete. In fact, when we first talked about it, he told me it would work only if I were OK with the fact that we would compete for clients. And we did compete all the time. That we never talked business at home became critical then. We had confidentiality issues with clients, and we didn’t want to share information. When I went after a new client, I didn’t tell him. Often, we were on the same pitches, and we would literally pass each other in the hall on the way to making our presentations.

Question: Did you ever have a fight or argument over business?

Answer: Never. We did have one disagreement. The Rose-Glenn Group was looking for a new creative director, and one of the senior copywriters at John’s company applied. We interviewed the copywriter and we really felt he would be a good fit, so we offered him the job. He accepted. When he told John he was coming over to work for us, John called me and said, "Valerie, why didn’t you tell me you were interviewing Joe?"

I said, "John, why would I call you and let you know I was interviewing one of your employees? I didn’t pursue him. He sought the job. And I wouldn’t have called any other agency and let them know I was interviewing him."

He immediately backed off and said, "You’re absolutely right."

That was probably in 1991 or so. It’s the only time we had even the slightest disagreement.

Question: And so in 2007, you decided to merge your businesses and work together after nearly 20 years. Why?

Answer: John had been running his agency since 1975. He was ready to retire, and I still absolutely loved the business. In early October of last year, he said, "I think I’m ready to retire. Why don’t we merge our companies and have you run them?" We announced it in December, and it’s been great.

Question: He’s now working with you on the business development side and as chairman of the company. What’s it like working with him?

Answer: He’s involved in some client relations and new business, which is very valuable and wonderful. It’s interesting how now we do talk about our business. He’s a wonderful adviser to me and a wonderful sounding board for me.

Question: What did your clients think of the merger?

Answer: They’ve been wonderful. There was no client conflict between the two businesses. The clients have been very supportive. Both companies brought depth to the other. Rose-Glenn brought public relations as a discipline to the new company, and we brought Web site design and development and more digital marketing to each other. DRGM brought a lot of gaming, hospitality and hotel-casino expertise to the agency, and Rose-Glenn brought more diverse clients.

Question: What’s your favorite campaign from your agency?

Answer: One that stands out in my mind is the work we’ve done for the Nevada Commission on Tourism. It’s won a lot of awards, and it’s a very unique way of positioning Nevada as a tourism destination. We’ve juxtaposed some of the Nevada icons everybody thinks about, such as showgirls and Elvis Presley, with images of the beautiful, recreational parts of Nevada to entice people to visit our state. I also look back on the campaign we did working with the Nevada state treasurer a couple of years ago to promote college-savings programs for Nevada children. It was a very successful program, and I think we had an opportunity to do some very creative work that got great results for clients.

Question: Where’s The Glenn Group headed from here?

Answer: We are definitely interested in growing the agency. On the gaming and tourism side, we have almost 40 years of experience working with more 50 gaming companies, so we offer a lot of experience, passion and creativity to that industry. We were awarded an account from a new casino client in Michigan a month ago, so we continue to grow that side of our business.

We also have a lot of health care experience in other markets, and we’d like to put that to work here. We have a lot of experience with real estate companies, homebuilders and developers, and while that industry is hurting right now, it will cycle back up. We’re looking to establish relationships with some of those organizations so we can help them ramp back up from a marketing standpoint.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512.