"I never got detention. When friends would go out drinking at 16, to a field or whatever, I'd go with them, but I wouldn't drink. I'd be there, but I'd be like, I'm too young to drink, so I won't drink."

The ability to walk the line between those two types of people . . . the straight kids and the rebels . . . was undoubtedly an asset for Blaney as she rose up the ranks of Dublin's advertising world to become managing director at McCann-Erickson Advertising at the age of 32.

It's been four years since her appointment as the chief 'suit' known for encouraging the 'creatives' . . . a fact that has escaped the notice of many journalists who still put her age at 32.

She doesn't mind having the record corrected, however.

For most of that time she has also been the sole female chief exec of a major Dublin agency . . . a distinction she lost recently when Ogilvy named Gervaise Slowey as its managing director. "I got four years out of it, which isn't a bad run, " she says.

Even in a market that is experiencing strong overall growth for advertising . . . forecast to be around 9.4% in 2007 by Carat Ireland . . . competition is more fierce than ever.

Potential clients are more demanding than ever, she says, and the industry seems to lack the confidence to push back where warranted.

Blaney talks about the process of getting new business. It's a thankless task, she says, and one that's a night and weekend job for an agency because it's unpaid work. Though the experience was more than a year ago, she is clearly still unhappy with the process on the National Lottery account. It left McConnells Advertising after a long stint and went into a pitch process that saw 13 advertising agencies on a shortlist.

"My big question at the time was why can't we have a proper shortlist, " she recalls.

"'Every agency on this list is capable of running the business, ' was the response. The Lottery was a massive pitch, but it is a souldestroying process."

The National Lottery business eventually went to Carat Ireland for the media buying and the DDFH&B for the creative work.

Which is not to say that Blaney is herself averse to going the extra mile. She talks about her first breakthrough, working for Dimension advertising after spending six months there on a Fas placement, "stuffing envelopes until midnight".

"I worked on a lot of sales promotions, lots of product sampling. I had a really good idea . . . trying to get the attention of Niall O'Farrell in Blacktie. We were trying to get him to do a debs promotion with [the Unilever deodorant brand] Lynx. Couldn't get him to return calls. After three, four, five phonecalls, I sent him an empty box of Lynx with nothing in it.

And I said if you'd like to hear moref I did three successful debs promotions.

"We gave away Lynx with every debs suit they hired. Completely targeted and got the 18-year-old men, exactly who we wanted to get. One of my first attempts to get people to listen to me."

It was a knack for listening, however, that aided her further rise.

When a person on the client side at Baileys went on maternity leave, Blaney spent six months seconded to the client, learning how the corporate client side of the business operated, taking briefs for the agency and helping her employer win new pieces of business.

She returned to work inside Dimension and worked on other client accounts including AIB. That work proved crucial when McCann-Erickson was looking for young talent to work on the Bank of Ireland business the firm had just secured.

Blaney moved over to McCann-Erickson, where her star began to rise quickly. She worked on the Bank of Ireland business and little else for nearly five years, but the campaigns that were developed helped to stave off a collapse in Bank of Ireland's leading position in the late 1990s against a raft of new entrants.

"At the time the market was all about bank rage. People were fed up with banks, with over overcharging scandals. We said, you've got to do positive things for customers. They were facing competitors with slogans like 'the bank that likes to say yes' . . . cliched ads for consumers but they were working."

The project turned into more of an effort to change the way the bank did business rather than slapping a shiny coat of paint on the bank's image. It was a strategy that she implemented rather than developed but clearly it shaped her thinking about dealing with future clients.

"We needed to get them to think about getting customers happy with the bank. It was extraordinary." Rather than the bank changing its advertising, "they basically changed the bank".

She credits Miriam Hughes, then her client at the bank and now at DDFH&B, with the campaign's success, getting the bank to create tangible changes in the way it did business that would assist its image.

"Some were not popular, like getting three hours' turnaround on a motor loan. There was some resistance . . . 'how can we do that if someone comes in at four o'clock?' . . . that sort of thing."

The most memorable feature of McCann's work with Bank of Ireland during that period, however, was its GAA sponsorship, with its 'Ask not what your county can do for you' tagline.

The campaign, which made as its protagonists enthusiastic county supporters, going over the top and painting sheep with county colours, getting married in a Galway wedding dress, a nun with county-coloured rosary beads . . . "my mother stopped talking to me after that one, " she says . . . is still memorable.

It came out of a pub conversation.

"At the time the cliche sponsorship ad was focused on stars and players. The idea to do something different came out of a conversation with creatives down in the pub."

It wasn't about winning the Sam Maguire, one of the creatives said. "I'm from x county and they'll never win. So it's not about that.

It's about the energy and getting behind it.

Each branch could get behind it with their county colours."

From there her rise became meteoric, going from account manager to account director to client service director and then deputy chairman of the board.

Since taking the top job, Blaney has been extraordinarily candid in challenging her industry to do better work, particularly as the market is squeezed ever tighter for margins and budgets are being spread over more and more media with the advent of more online channels.

The gospel she preaches to clients and competitors is about the centrality of creativity.

"I believe strong creativity sells better than average work. Unless you've loads of media money behind it . . . then you can get success by throwing money at a problem. There are plenty of examples of that over time.

Millward-Brown says if you have a creative idea you can spend less money for the media behind it."

The pressure to "get an ad out the door" rather than press to do the best possible work is constant. To resist "takes a lot of conviction from the agency".

"Advertising does need time. Sometimes it's necessary to go back to the clients . . . clients coming in at three o'clock . . . and say, 'you know that meeting we were meant to present to you?' Sometimes you need more time. It's no good if the client buys a crap ad because he's in a hurry."

The time when the advertising agency life was about shoots in exotic locations and long client lunches was an age before Blaney entered the business, she says. If you're in the business today it has to be because you at some level enjoy the work. The thing that is holding the industry back, she repeats, is a lack of courage, and an industry that knows the value of its own work.

"We need a strong industry body. More discipline, more belief . . . everybody's trying to get their own business off the ground.

"There's a lot a stronger body can achieve. It's a principles thing."

CV

Orlaith Blaney
Job: Managing director, McCann-Erickson
Age: 36
Education: Our Lady's of Templeogue (head girl); degree in social science, UCD; postgraduate diploma in marketing, DIT
Career: 1990 Fas work experience programme led to placement at Dimension. Joined McCannErickson in 1998, worked on Bank of Ireland in various roles
Hobbies: completed Chicago triathlon for third time this year, for the benefit of Unicef; rugby . . .

Heineken is a client, brothers play the game professionally; Brian is a hooker with Leinster, David with Bristol, James did play for Munster but is now player/coach with Terenure McCann-Erickson Turnover (2005): 40.3m Employees: 53 Clients: Heineken, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Failte Ireland, Luas (RPA), Superquinn, Shamrock Foods, L'Oreal, BT, Bacardi