Martha Stewart
Founder and Chairman, Martha Stewart Living, Omnimedia
Arguably the first human brand, Ms. Stewart has dominated the
lifestyle category with everything from TV shows and magazines to
coffee-table tomes and her own collections of kitchen gadgets and
craft supplies. Now, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia is looking to
the next generation of DIY content by transitioning from
traditional TV to a broader video strategy. Ms. Stewart, 71, is
looking beyond the living-room screen to other platforms by
embracing short-form video for smartphones and tablets and
communicating with her loyal viewers through social media.
Madam C.J. Walker
Founder, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Co.
"Whatever I have accomplished in life I have paid for it by much
thought and hard work. If there is any easy way I haven't found
it." Those seemingly simple words from Madam C.J. Walker are a
master class in understatement. Born to former slaves in Delta,
La., orphaned by the age of 7, widowed by the age of 20, Sarah
Breedlove would go on to remarry, change her name and found a
cosmetics empire -- in 1910 -- that would make her the first
self-made female African-American millionaire and the richest
African-American woman in the country at the time of her death in
1919.
That empire was built with direct marketing, promotional
campaigns and sales-force training and conventions that sound a lot
like today's event marketing. And if that 's not enough, she was
also a major philanthropist and a proponent of financial
independence for African-American women. "I want to say to every
woman present," she once said, "don't sit down and wait for the
opportunities to come. … You have to get up and make
them."
Mathilde C. Weil
Founder, M.C. Weil Agency
In 1880, 40 years before women's suffrage, Mathilde C. Weil opened
the M.C. Weil Agency in New York. She was the first woman to
establish a general agency and America's first ad woman.
Ms. Weil emigrated from Germany in the early 1870s. Following
the sudden death of her husband, Ms. Weil took work as a translator
-- she was proficient in English, German, French and Spanish -- and
then as a newspaper and magazine writer. But when Ms. Weil started
buying and selling ad space for a German newspaper, she knew there
was a better living to be made in advertising.
Serving as a liaison among advertisers and the publications,
most of Ms. Weil's billings came from her profitable proprietary
medicine accounts. Other types of accounts were handled by her
partners, Mary Compton and Meta Volkman. Ms. Weil ran her agency,
housed in The New York Times Building, until her death in 1903.