Nina DiSesa, the Chairman of McCann Erickson New York talks about the art of effective advertising, reaching an audience, and the case study of Mastercard.

Question: Who are you?

Nina DiSesa: My name is Nina DiSesa and I am the chairman of McCann Erickson’s New York office. And the New York office is what we like to say the flagship office of McCann Erickson’s global network.

Well, I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and I left Brooklyn when I was 21, 22, lived in the South many several times. Lived in the Midwest twice and now I am living in Manhattan, I think that when you go overseas and people ask you where are you from, if you say the United States, you get one response. If you say Brooklyn you get a totally different response in this kind of cool, it’s a cool place to be from.

Question: Did you know what you wanted to be growing up?

Nina DiSesa: Oh god, no anybody who knew me before I was 30 would be shocked to see where I have evolved to is a business person...

Well on the first half of my life, until I was about 25 or 28 I really didn’t have a focus of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be and who I wanted to be, and I was married.

I thought I was going to have children and the when the marriage dissolved, I thought “oh my, I better have some plan, for the rest of my life,” and that’s when I decided to take whatever writing skills I had and channeled it into advertising and it was probably the best decisions I ever made.

Question: What did you do before advertising?

Nina DiSesa: I was in college. I worked in advertising in my 20s, but not in an advertising agency, I just did whatever I needed to do to make money, waiting from my husband who was an actor, to hit it and maybe decide to have a family. I mean I was coasting I don’t any 20 something year old now who coasts.

I don’t why I thought I could do it then, but I think that was the time, it didn’t really - you where not really expected to have a career when I was growing up and a career make, becoming a teachers is great, so that you would have the summer is off, I mean I was like held up to me is the idea that wasn’t appealing to me.