When is work more than a job? When is a job more than a career? For me, it is when I go to sleep at night knowing that I directly impacted another woman’s life in a positive way.

In the past when someone asked my husband, “What does your wife do?” he usually responded with, “she sells Pantene.” It made it sound as if I was on some street corner hawking shampoos, conditioners and light detangling mist sprays!

However, in the last year something had changed. I went from being a “shampoo-seller” to a catalyst for change. I owe all of it to the Pantene Beautiful Lengths campaign. Last year we launched Pantene Beautiful Lengths, Pantene’s first cause-related campaign that encourages people to donate their hair to create real-hair wigs for women suffering hair loss from cancer treatment.

As we enter into the second year of this campaign, we recently received some exciting news. Two-time Academy Award-winner, Hilary Swank has committed to “grow the distance” and become our celebrity ambassador for the campaign. This coming fall Hilary will cut and donate her own ponytail and help us to continue to spread the word about the campaign.

I had the opportunity to meet Hilary a few weeks ago in Los Angeles during the filming of the new print Public Service Announcement. While meeting a celebrity of her caliber is always exciting, I was really struck by how down-to-earth she was and how excited she was to be a part of the campaign. She kept saying that being a celebrity is a way for her to raise awareness for causes she feels passionate about. We are so fortunate to have her, she is everything you would want in a celebrity spokesperson: hard-working, friendly, and devoted. Being a pleasure to work with and be around is also an added bonus.

Each of us on the Pantene team is looking forward to another year of success. Our goal is to collect one million inches of hair in the next twelve months. Lofty goal? Yes, but if this campaign has taught me anything it is to expect the unexpected from people, they will continue to surprise you with their generosity and selfless acts of courage.

I have experienced the full range of emotions during this past year on the campaign, and it is a true honor to come to work each day and be a part it. A renowned life coach once said, “Life is too short to spend toiling at a job that pays the bills but doesn’t feed your spirit.” I couldn’t agree more.

Jennifer Celata, Media Relations Manager, DeVries Public Relations

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 11:45 am and is filed under Pantene Beautiful Lengths, Procter & Gamble, Stephanie Sage Smirnov, DeVries Public Relations, Jim Allman, Pantene, Jon Cronin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.