Marketing hall of famer Terry O'Reilly on the influence of his parents and his hometown of Sudbury
65-year-old says growing up in Sudbury 'you had to use your imagination a lot.'
Before he was a leader in the Canadian advertising business and the head of a growing media network, including CBC's Under the Influence, Terry O'Reilly was a kid growing up in Sudbury.
And asked about his recent induction into the Marketing Hall of Fame, he credited his parents for starting him off on the right path.
The 65-year-old says his father was the creative one— directing plays, singing in shows, drawing pictures— while his mother Betty, a nurse, taught him about empathy, which he calls an essential ingredient in marketing.
"You have to put yourself in their shoes and I think I really got that from my mom," O'Reilly said in an interview with CBC Sudbury's Morning North.
"Weren't that many radio signals that bounced into Sudbury," he said.
"We had limited media influence, so what that meant to me was you had to use your imagination a lot."
O'Reilly remembers spending hours writing stories and drawing with his brother, but also credited a film and television class at Sudbury Secondary School for getting him into a university broadcasting program in Toronto.
He says after graduation, he applied to 60 advertising agencies across the country (and received 61 rejection letters) before getting a job at a small radio station in Burlington.
"I fell in love with radio at that job and that really changed the course of my career," O'Reilly said.
"I discovered it was very freeing, because you could be anywhere with some great writing and some sound effects."
He retired from the advertising business in 2012, but still speaks at conferences, and is busy running a stable of podcasts and answering a surprising number of emails from kids aged 8 to 12.
"The problem is is that most advertising is bad," O'Reilly said.
"I really try to celebrate the better work, the better thinking."