My break… Karen Eck
From working with Survivor’s Mark Burnett to assisting Oprah: the TV publicity pro Karen Eck on her big break.
How did you get into the industry?
I was doing a communications degree at Canberra University and my lecturer made an off the cuff remark as we were finishing for the year saying, ‘I have a friend who’s working at the ABC if anyone wants to do an internship’. Amazingly, I was the only person to put up my hand. I jumped at the opportunity and found myself in program sales. I’d been there for three or four days and this woman I did not know stopped me in the hallway and said, ‘who are you and what are you doing here? What did you study?’ I told her and she said, ‘you’re in the wrong department. Come with me’. She took me by the hand, walked me into publicity and said, ‘this is Karen. She needs to do her internship in publicity’. I then stayed at the ABC for five years.
What happened next?
I was head hunted by the Nine Network and offered a job as a senior publicist in their Sydney office. I found the transition from government to commercial exciting. It really rounded out my experience. A lot of people would joke about the boys’ club in the industry and at the network. I loved it. I have three brothers so I had no problem fitting in.
You worked with producer Mark Burnett, creator of Survivor. How did that come about?
My husband is a Navy commander. He surprised me one evening and asked if I would like to move to Washington. I said yes on the one condition that I could work. Within six weeks of arriving in Washington DC, I found myself working and living in Marrakesh for a television event called the Discovery Channel Eco Challenge, a television program produced by Mark Burnett. What’s important in a career is that every phase is a phase and it’s often right for that time of your life. When we came back to Australia, the next phase for us was having a family. I had been offered a couple of high-profile corporate gigs and I turned them down because I was keen on starting my own business.
You started eckfactor 10 years ago and have had some impressive clients including Oprah. Tell us about that.
Eckfactor won the account to run the media relations for Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure. I found Harpo Productions to be so professional and Oprah is one of those people you always remember working with. At one point she was holding my hand and I remember thinking, ‘do I let go of Oprah or does Oprah let go of me?’ She’s incredibly charismatic.
What do you know now that you wish you knew then?
What I would want to know is more about the technology and the platforms that are going to influence how people are communicating down the track.
What advice would you give to someone who is just starting out?
Remember people that help you along the way and that the world is full of small circles. You can’t burn bridges early in your career because you could be sitting in front of someone that you worked with many years earlier. Those early impressions last and sometimes they last a lifetime. The other thing is to trust your gut. That is something I learned from Mark Burnett. He was a master of that. If your gut tells you one thing, and your mind is saying something else, definitely go with your gut. And Oprah has another line to add to that which is ‘if you doubt, don’t’.
Karen Eck is the managing director of eckfactor, a publicity agency.
