Madgirlnyc on Madison Avenue
Cheryl Horsfall aka Madgirlnyc has a background in advertising and has worked both full-time and freelance in New York City since 1990.
After earning an aptly titled B.S. in Advertising and a useless B.A. in French from the University of Texas at Austin, she was recruited by Saatchi and Saatchi Advertising, New York. There, she cut her teeth on new product development and name generation for General Mills. Working on national accounts, she produced print, radio and television for such clients as Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Helene Curtis, National Crime Prevention Council, Fresh Air Fund and General Mills.
In 1996, Cheryl left Saatchi for Wells, Rich, Greene as a senior writer. At Wells, she took over the Gain Detergent account and traveled the country with The Gain Man, surprising unsuspecting housewives and asking to smell their laundry. She let a Lazy-Boy armchair loose on a ski slope for Pringles, and gave the excuse "Sorry, I'm washing my hair" new meaning for the Clairol Herbal Essences campaign.
After Wells' famous doors closed forever in 1998, she's been working freelance on a range of products from pharmaceuticals to kids' toys, expanding into web content and travel writing, even tackling the left-brain category of financial advertising.
Somewhere in the middle of all this advertising, she managed to find time to write four feature length screenplays. "Denim and Diamonds," co-written with Sherise Dorf made the Top 5 in the Texas Film Institute screenwriting competition. And solo project, "Parlor Tricks," was a Second Rounder in the Austin Film Festival, and a Semi-Finalist in the holy grail of screenwriting competitions, the Nicholl Fellowship for Screenwriting, sponsored by the Academy Awards Foundation.
From 2002 to mid-2004, she took a full-time gig at TBWA/Chiat/Day, New York. There, she developed ads for Nivea, Nextel, Alcon, Ascensia, Absolut and even had the privilege of dressing some of the most influential male creatives in women's clothing and filming them for a kick-off video at the 2004 Advertising Women of New York's "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly Awards."
In November 2004, Cheryl launched Madgirl Advertising, her own independent agency. Offering web content, marketing materials, executive bios, travel destination writing, online advertising, name generation, new product development, and of course traditional advertising -- she is available for writing on a per project and hourly basis. With a wealth of resources and contacts including art directors, graphic designers, editorial, cinematographers, producers and account personnel, Madgirl Advertising can put together a team to fill most every advertising or marketing need. Please e-mail for more details.