Gail Miller Bisher – The Road to Westminster

by Lisa Peterson

Second-generation fancier Gail Miller Bisher has been on her own Road to Westminster ever since she was a junior handler showing Bearded Collies with her parents. Combined with her lifelong involvement in the sport, Gail’s professional career in advertising, marketing, and public relations has culminated in her selection as the new face and voice of The Westminster Kennel Club.

Gail knew from the very beginning that public speaking would feature prominently in whatever career path she chose. She recalls from her grade school years, “The only time I got in trouble, year after year, was when my teachers wrote ‘Gail talks too much’ on the bottom of every report card.”

Today, as Westminster’s Director of Communications, she’s nearing the end of the first Road to Westminster series and preparing for her next public speaking role as the on-air broadcast analyst for the 141stAnnual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 13-14, 2017.

Recently I sat down with Gail at her home in Connecticut to talk about her professional career and long history with Westminster. How did you decide to pursue a career in advertising?

Throughout high school I did well in public speaking classes and was a cheerleader which led me to pursue my undergraduate degree in Mass Communications, eventually earning a Masters of Arts in

Communications. While in college I learned how to edit video, a skill that has been helpful throughout my career. My first job was as an in-house video editor at the St. Louis office of a global advertising agency, I had been showing dogs since I was 10 years old, and I think the main reason I got that job was because I listed dog shows as a hobby on my resume. My soon-to-be boss loved his own Miniature Schnauzers and was eager to talk dogs during the interview.

During my undergraduate years I was on track to be a TV broadcast journalist, because I liked speaking and writing and it was a profession where you are being judged on your performance, much like showing dogs. But I found out that my temperament was more suited to advertising than television reporting.

As a broadcast producer, I worked for global brands creating award-winning TV commercials. In brand advertising you are combining art and commerce. You need to create messaging that generates the planned response your clients are seeking. The creative process in this capacity is taking a concept and developing it into a finished product that produces results, not unlike planning a breeding, whelping the litter, training a puppy, and then doing well at your first show. A practical aspect of broadcast production that is still helpful today is my experience managing highly creative people with different personalities and agendas to create a quality, finished product.

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Posted by Alex on Jan 13 2017. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.