By SARA FISHER

Staff Reporter

Tamsin Bayless appears to be living the California dream.

The director of public relations for ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi in Los Angeles, the 36-year-old Bayless drives a Mazda Miata roadster, has a Golden Retriever named Hannah and likes to spend time on weekends kayaking in the South Bay.

An avid painter, she’s thinking about getting a small weekend retreat maybe somewhere in the canyons, maybe somewhere in the city so she can pursue her art without interruption.

But work, she acknowledges, consumes most of her life. In trying to develop the P.R. department, she has been putting in 10- to 12-hour days and extended workweeks. “It’s an all-consuming job,” Bayless said. “If they need me, I’ll be there. Weekends, nights, whatever is needed.”

Bayless is a member of L.A.’s middle class that under $100,000-income economic bracket that has been shrinking even as the numbers of poor people and the wealthy have been growing.

Bayless says she and her colleagues are working longer and harder to meet the increasing expectations of their clients.

In addition to her duties at the office, she used to attend up to four after-work charity, networking and industry events a week. While the invitations continue to flood in, Bayless has limited herself to an average of two events a week to create more personal time. Working weekends are now the exception rather than the rule.

“I realized that I had to make time for myself,” she said. “You have to consciously work at it if it’s what you believe in.”

As director of public relations, Bayless is charged with raising Saatchi & Saatchi’s public profile such as touting the company’s current ad campaign for Toyota. She spends a substantial amount of time scouting out what’s happening in the company sitting in on meetings and interviewing executives in order to find potential story ideas.

She also oversees Saatchi & Saatchi’s pro bono work, organizing events (like a recent pinewood derby race) that raise money for the advertising firm’s two select charities, the Wellness Foundation and Guide Dogs of America.

A native of England, Bayless moved to Los Angeles about six years ago after a brief stop in Australia. She has lived in Torrance, where she owns a townhouse, since starting at Saatchi & Saatchi five years ago.

Before that, Bayless ran her own interior design firm in London, not too far from where she was born and raised.

“Moving from design to public relations really isn’t the big jump that people think,” she said. “They both come from the same creative roots.”

Finding more time for herself is one of her biggest goals. And though she loves her roadster, she’s thinking about trading it in for a larger vehicle to make more room for Hannah and her two kayaks.

An inveterate traveler, Bayless is determined to take more weekend trips, “depending on the month’s finances.” Still, she knows that her pace at work is likely to soon kick into high gear again. The new worldwide chief executive for Saatchi & Saatchi, Scott Gilbert, is interested in stepping up the company’s public relations efforts.

“We’re busier than ever in P.R. and I know we’re only going to get busier,” she said. “We created the buzz about the company, and the pace is picking up.”

Despite the rapid pace, Bayless says she genuinely enjoys what she does. “I get completely jazzed by working in such a creative atmosphere,” she said. “The charge I get working here makes all the work incredibly worth it.”

Although the strong economy means good times for the advertising and public relations business, Bayless believes it is tempered with a strong sense of economic caution among wage earners.

“Almost everyone people and companies has gone through so many ups and downs in the early ’90s that even though they have more money now, they’re much more careful,” Bayless said. “It’s not like the ’80s, when you rushed out and bought everything you wanted on impulse.”

This caution isn’t impeding the advertising industry: Saatchi & Saatchi billings are up by 7 percent this year over last. Now, however, clients are demanding to see more dramatic results from ad campaigns.

“What I’ve noticed most is that our clients want more bang for their buck, determined to see their advertising money yield greater results,” she said. “Companies used to be content to just have a good ad concept developed. Now clients want to have people talking about them on the streets.”

Bayless harbors no wild fantasies about becoming a multimillionaire later in life. Instead, her dream is to one day leave the rat race, run a quiet B & B; somewhere and paint.

“There is definite burnout in my field, and when that comes I’ll pursue a very different lifestyle,” she said. “But I’m not even close to burnout yet.”