Ornery mother always knows best

By IRENE CHAPPLE

Gert Boyle has been a high-profile model since the mid-80s.

Her face is so distinctive she was bailed up in a lift during a brief stay in Auckland recently.

A woman recognised her from seeing Boyle in Paris.

"What a memory!" chuckles Boyle.

"What did I get to deserve that?"

Boyle's face has been plastered over Columbia Sportswear's advertising since 1984, when advertising agency Borders Perrin & Norrander proposed that she should front the company's campaigns.

The suggestion was surprising: Boyle was the company's 60-year-old chairwoman.

The short, sprightly American is now 78, and the campaigns she has fronted, as the ornery Mother Boyle, have collected more than 40 advertising awards.

Boyle credits the campaign's success to being different.

The Mother Boyle campaign, which uses "Gertisms" such as "Before it passes Mother Nature it has to pass Mother Boyle," have positioned her as one tough mother.

Boyle, who took over the company after her husband died in 1970, has built it up with son Tim from near bankruptcy into a global giant, with a market value of more than US$1 billion ($2.1 billion).

With a catchphrase of "Mother knows Best," the campaigns have typically featured Boyle putting Tim through product testing sessions during which she bullies her hectored son.

"People talk to me about the ads all the time," says Boyle.

"There are some people who don't like them and others who love them - who have the same sense of humour."

And, she says, there is the added benefit that, "everywhere I go, I get treated like royalty."