Linda Locke, arguably the most famous woman in the Singapore advertising industry, sweeps into the Giorgio Armani boutique at the Hilton Gallery, dressed in all black.

As her three-quarter-length coat swishes dramatically about her imposing 1.75m frame, her John Woo-like entrance - sans doves and guns - makes this reporter think how apt it is that her company is named Godmother Consulting.

'I'm not inclined to leave horses' heads in people's beds,' she responds dryly, referring to the famous scene in the movie The Godfather, when a Mafia don leaves the head of a prized horse in a Hollywood producer's bed after he refuses to do the don a favour.

In truth, she named her company Godmother because she has eight godchildren. But if people do indeed call her The Godmother, with its negative connotations of being controlling and ambitious, it would not be news to Locke.

Within the advertising industry, she has been called some bad names. And she knows it.

'Dragon Lady and worse, probably,' she says with a laugh. 'B****' is another epithet she has had to brush off as she goes about doing what she is paid to do.

Shying away from difficult situations is not her style. Particularly when the advertising business, she says, is a 'highly competitive, high-octane environment with very tough time and cost pressures from demanding clients with their own pressures'.

Surely you do not expect her to reach the apex of such a profession by trying to please everyone. In her 30-year career, she has headed two of the biggest advertising agencies in Singapore, helmed some groundbreaking advertising campaigns and collected numerous awards, including Singapore's first Cannes Gold Lion, the Academy Awards of advertising, in the early 1990s.

'The people who are good at what they do are not afraid of the truth. These are not the ones who call me 'Dragon Lady'. They say I'm tough but fair,' she says. 'The less competent ones use insults to make themselves feel better.'

Has she ever shouted at her staff? Her response: She doubts there is a manager on the planet who has not had to raise his voice at some point or other.

Wouldn't you do it, she asks, if you saw a subordinate steaming open an envelope to check a colleague's salary?

Last month, Locke, 55, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Institute of Advertising Singapore, a professional body for advertising and communications practitioners.

She is the first woman to receive the award since the institute introduced it 10 years ago. Past recipients include Ian Batey, the man behind Singapore Airlines' Singapore Girl, and Jim Aitchison, author of the Sarong Party Girl books.

Locke, who quit as chairman and regional creative director of Leo Burnett last year after 10 years to start Godmother Consulting, is refreshingly frank about the award.

Considered one of the women pioneers in the male-dominated industry, she says: 'I was surprised that it took this long. I don't normally say this but I do feel this was late in coming. I just have a feeling that I would have received it earlier if I had been a man.

'I have rarely encountered sexism in my career. This is about the only time it's crossed my mind.'

A young Linda Locke strikes a pose that is similar to something she might do in adulthood.

Bold moves

Locke was born in Singapore to a British father and a Portuguese-Armenian mother, whose family has deep roots here.

D'Almeida Street in the Central Business District is named after her mother's family and the national flower, the Vanda Miss Joaquim orchid, after her great-great-grandaunt.

When she was eight, her father was posted to Malaysia as regional marketing director of Cold Storage supermarket and the family relocated along with him. At 11, she left for a boarding school in England and her siblings, a younger sister and brother, followed suit a year later.

In 1983, the art and design graduate from Middlesex Polytechnic in England joined the local Saatchi & Saatchi office as creative director after a few years working at other agencies here as art director.

Within a year, she was promoted to chief executive officer to rescue the ailing Saatchi.

Naturally, she was 'absolutely terrified' - she was a creative person by inclination and training with zero business experience. And she had been in the industry for only six years.

'I inherited a business that had business pouring out the door,' Locke recalls. 'We had to fight to bring in business. I made sure that they brought the regional finance director to be based in Singapore so I would have somebody to mentor me in finance. The situation was, in a way, forced on me. I took a chance, thinking, 'If I fail, I fail.' '

She did much better than fail. Playing a dual role as executive creative director and CEO, she grew the company from a $6-million agency to a $100-million firm during her 14-year tenure.

At that time, she was the first and only Singaporean woman to run an international advertising agency here.

What she lacked in formal business education, she made up for in other qualities. She is bold, for one thing.

In 1986, she won a major Government advertising contract to market Singapore, which was in the throes of a recession.

'At that time, there was wholesale panic that all the multinational companies would pull out of Singapore,' she recalls. The Government wanted to place an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal to reassure investors.

'I showed our dummied-up ad to Philip Yeo, then the chairman of the Economic Development Board. Our headline was: 'Who would be mad enough to invest in Singapore in a recession?' And underneath that were all these signatures of global heads of multinationals that were invested in Singapore, saying, 'We are. We are, too. So are we.'

'He flipped out when he saw it and said, 'My minister would never buy this'. And I said, 'If your minister is the man I think he is, he will buy it because he will know we need to be this bold'.

'Later that afternoon, he rang me and said, 'The minister says do it.''

The advertisement was a success.

'They told me that when Mr Lee Hsien Loong went to the United States and walked into the auditorium, there was a standing ovation and the people were all waving copies of the Wall Street Journal.

'I wish I had been there; it would have been the high point of my career. I really feel, in my own little way, I made a significant difference to Singapore.'

Her ex-colleague, Mr Tay Guan Hin, regional executive creative director of advertising agency JWT in South-east Asia, says: 'She always tries to provide a solution that tackles the situation head-on. She worked hard and always tried to find the best in the worst.'

Her good friend, copywriter Rita Haque, adds: 'Linda has a consuming passion for work - she never knew when to stop. She also has a never-say-die attitude and is extremely meticulous.'

Locke with husband Phillips Connor and their son Jackson, who was six years old in this photograph. The boy is now 12.

Mellowed by motherhood

You do not need to have worked with Locke to know that last mentioned quality of hers. Just observe her for a couple of hours. Coming into this interview, she did her homework on this reporter and read his stories.

She chose to be photographed at the Giorgio Armani shop for two reasons: One, she is currently the marketing consultant for Club 21 which brings in the designer brand; and two, she thought it would create a neat background story since she used to wear only Armani in her high-powered businesswoman heyday.

It seems that this former creative director cannot help herself in wanting to art direct this story. 'I'm very detail-oriented,' she admits. 'I try to pre-empt possible scenarios and plan for them ahead of time.'

But she denies that she is a control freak. She knows this amorphous, unpredictable thing called life cannot be art directed. She also knows logic and reason are not everything.

'I'm a very highly intuitive person,' she says.

And how. In 1983, after only seven days of courtship 'spread out over a three- week period', she married Neil French, the famous advertising man known for his provocative campaigns and comments.

The people closest to her thought she was 'barking mad' but she did not care. 'It just felt right intuitively that I was meant to marry this man.'

They divorced in 1992. She wanted children, he did not. She says: 'It would have gone on if I had accepted not having children. That was why I left him. It was not a nasty leaving.'

She adds: 'Ironically, he called me last year to apologise to me. He has adopted a child and he's happier than he's ever been in his life. He said I was right about what having a child would do to him.'

Does she regret the marriage? No, it all worked out for the best. 'I told Neil, 'It's fine. I wouldn't have the child that I have now if I were married to you.''

After five in-vitro fertilisation treatments at the National University Hospital, she conceived her son Jackson with current husband Phillips Connor, a 50-year- old interior designer from the United States, whom she married in 1993.

Today, Jackson is 12 years old. They live in a conservation shophouse on the edge of Chinatown.

'Motherhood did mellow me,' says Locke. 'You can have the worst day in the office, then when you go home and a little body flies into your arms, all of that is forgotten. You can't help but be softened by that. I have learnt to not hurt those who are not so competent.'

She has always loved children. 'When I was struggling to have a baby, my friends and family kept making me godmother to their children because they knew how badly I wanted to have a child.'

After Jackson was born, she wanted another baby and underwent IVF another seven times, all to no avail. But no matter. She is 'madly in love' with Jackson. 'I don't think you discover your humanity until you have a child,' she says.

She is winding down professionally to spend more time with her family. Godmother Consulting is not meant to challenge the big boys in the industry. It is a one-person operation for Locke in semi-retirement mode.

'I used to work seven days a week,' she says. Now it is just four.

'If I were still the CEO of an agency and we're going into the current economic downturn, I'd be looking at books and worrying about the staff we might have to cut. It's a terrible pressure to have to carry that type of load,' she says.

'Right now, to have to be responsible only to myself and my family is an extremely pleasurable experience.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Nov 17, 2008.