A Graduate Account Executive’s Typical Working Day - Week 4

When working in advertising; although hours of work are typically ‘9 to 5’. Generally the workload of a campaign dictates that people regularly work late. As a Graduate trainee I don't usually get home till 8pm, so the day can be long. As an Account Executive, a typical working day could consist of about 2/3+ meetings a day lasting anything between 15 minutes to 3 hours, chasing and liaising with different departments to traffic work through creative services and monitoring project progress.

I've learnt that creative types work differently to business types, and sometimes work may require a host of changes to elements such as: copy, messaging or imagery - known as amends. So it is important to ensure those changes are done correctly. Day-to-day business tasks involve a lot of financial monitoring to ensure work does not exceed the clients advertising budget and the agency achieves a profit. This involves maintaining, updating and managing cost estimates, financial forecasts, timesheets and financial reconciliations etc.

Communication is key

The job also relies very heavily on communication skills; you are constantly using verbal presentation skills to convey ideas to clients and colleagues over the phone and face-to-face in meetings etc. Written skills are also very important too, because you need to be able to compose emails to clients to clarify objectives or provide updates on project progress.

Proof reading skills are vitally important, so far I have been required to proof read advertising out-put including internal presentations, reports and advertising copy for spelling mistakes, punctuation, grammar and readability. For, work authored by copy writers and others far more senior to me. Therefore, essential to good proof-reading, if you have never done it before is: ‘attention to detail’ because your eyes could be the final pair to view an advertisement before it goes out the door.

Finally, at this stage if I was going to describe what the job of a Marketing Manager is or involves – I would say that it draws on various disciplines such as Project Management, Researching, Strategic Development, Administration, Presenting and Pubic Relations…. So it’s exceptionally difficult to pigeon hole what marketers do to one specific thing. Teamwork is also very important too, I have never worked within a team as dedicated and passionate about what they do before, everyone contributes equally to the teams output.

First Experience Managing a PPC Campaign - Week 3

This week was far more exciting because I was given a small campaign to work on. It was called 'Monthly Saver Pay Per Click' testing.

PPC Testing  
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is defined as paid for advertising, and is usually used to drive increased traffic in a short amount of time to a new or unknown website or page.

An Example of Pay Per Click Advertisements (PPC)

The task involved writing an Executional Brief to communicate some background information about the Monthly Saver product, and how the advertising testing was going to be rolled out. In a nutshell, I had to instruct copy writers to develop copy to test the effectiveness of the following messages:

• (A) the benefit,
• (B) the offer
• (C) a combination of offer and benefit.

Three ads were to be placed online and the most effective message would be used for the live campaign. I than had to create a cost estimate of the work - which is a bill/quote to show the client how much time and work each part of the process will cost and I than, created a timing plan. To help the client gauge how long each stage of the project would take and when it will be completed.

Working on the PPC Testing, was really interesting because it was my first experience of handling a small campaign. One thing I found personally surprising was that last year, I attended a Top Student Summer School at the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM), where I met some Graduate Account Executives from other London advertising agencies who shared their experiences of the being Account Executive. I vividly remember them saying that “after working in their agencies for a year; they were looking forward to starting to write creative briefs”.

Creative Vs Executional Brief  

At the time, this stuck in my mind. Because, after hearing so much information about the digital marketing world at the IDM from various figure heads, departments and agencies, I thought phew at least that’s not going to be something I will have to worry about in my first year - if I ever get a job in advertising. So, when I was asked to write an 'Executional Brief' for the PPC Test. I was a little surprised; as I didn't really have a clue what and Executional brief was, and past experience suggested it was difficult. However, actually doing it without having time to really think about it was really good – because it showed me that by the end of the year I was likely to learn lots quickly.

Shadowing within the Agency

The rest of the week was spent shadowing my ‘buddy’ the Senior Account Manager (SAM) and Account Director (AD) in various meetings with Project Managers, Creatives, Art Directors and Clients to develop a working understanding of the Barclays iInvest Campaign. An integrated marketing campaign that involves off-line e.g. (Posters and Press ads) etc and on-line advertising e.g. (Banner Ads, Landing Pages and Email Advertisements).

So, far shadowing on the iInvest campaign has been really enjoyable as it involves lots of different campaign elements. And, as such I’m witnessing and learning how to manage various elements of the production process and the general issues that occur when account handing for financial services clients. One thing I am discovering first-hand is that financial services clients are less creative and more business orientated, because they are accountable to various stakeholders who view advertising as a ‘means to an end’, therefore, they are more focused on their core business e.g. the bottom-line. So you can’t be to wacky with the creative ideas that you present, usually it pays to present ‘safe’ options first and always have a ‘wacky’ option in you back pocket – just in case.

Date: 21 February 2011

Getting under the Skin of the Brand - Week 2

The first part of my second week was spent continuing to get "under the skin" of the brand by surfing the net looking at news articles, marketing inteligence and websites. That would shed some light on the current PESTEL issues affecting clients business, and also identifiying and discovering ‘Golden Nuggets’ - important insights which are regularly emailed to the client to show the team understands the issues affecting Barclays business and their brand positioning.

After a while getting "under the skin of the brand", did get a bit tedious. But I knew it was important to continue marching on and putting 110% effort into the task, because once things sped up I knew I wouldn’t get the chance again. A thing, I realised at this stage was my marketing degree had not really prepared me as much as I thought it would for working in advertising, in relation to readily understanding the creative and production aspects of brand management.

This was an interesting revelation as for a long time whilst being a student I ofthen questioned why our degree was titled Marketing and Business? And why If I wished, I couldn't do a straight Marketing degree? However, the first two weeks working in advertising demonstrated that to be a good Account Handler (Brand Manager) you need to have an equally good understanding of both 'Marketing' and 'Business'. Because essentially an Account Handler is the middle-man between the client and creatives; and as a result the job invariable involves having one foot in the world of business (Barclays) and the other in the creative world (advertising agency), basically you are the ‘eyes and ears’ of the client within the agency, therefore, you need to understand their mission and objectives in order to deliver a good marketing campaign.

Midway, through the week, things started picking up, and I began learning more about the advertising agency’s processes and procedures. What was really interesting - was that week; it so happened the agency was changing its creative and financial processes – by placing a stronger focus on being more internally integrated as an agency (i.e. all departments working together). In order to reflect it’s commitment to being a fully integrated digital advertising agency to all stakeholders both internal and external. This was communicated by the new agency wide flexible project delivery process of: Imagine, Discover, Craft, Create and Learn in a presentation.

I attended the presentation of the new process to clients and wrote the contact report afterwards which I circulated to all meeting attendees. In terms of procedures, I started to learn about how to financially manage the creative elements of a campaign in relation to developing and updating cost estimates, forecasts and timing plans. These tasks drew heavily on my Excel skills. I also discovered that many of the procedures in place are there to effectively manage and monitor each stage of the production process e.g. studio time, artwork development and copy writing.

I was also given the responsibility of updating the weekly status report which is presented to the client at the Weekly Status meeting; which the team regularly attends at the client's Headquarters in Canary Wharf to update the client face-to-face on the campaign’s progress.

Date: 7th February 2011

First Week in Advertising - Week 1

On my first day... Waiting in reception, my level of nervousness and excitement were equally matched. Mainly because, I had no idea of what to expect. But, when I was greeted a friendly face that I recognised from the recruitment process - I felt much more at ease.

The first thing HR did was lead me into a private office to explain what the graduate scheme would involve, the perks of working at the agency such as the Monday Company breakfast and ‘Sunny Fridays’ – where in the summer everyone gets to go home at 3:30pm and other more formal employee benefits.

I was than taken into a massive open planned office, with brightly colored walls, sofas, plants and artwork everywhere, lead through a sea of desks and introduced to my new team; where there was a large box of chocolates waiting for me and lots of new stationery. Amidst all the meeting and greeting I was introduced to my new ‘buddy’. A Senior Account Manager who took me out for lunch, where we got the chance to briefly get to know each other over some sandwiches and soup. When I returned to the office, I was told that my first job would be to get under the skin of the brand 'Barclays Wealth International' (BWI). At this point, after feeling a bit out of my depth all day - I thought to myself yes!

Finally, I can use some of my university skills and approach this task in a similar way I would if I was preparing to research for an assignment. The days that followed involved researching the BWI website, and reading 2 giant BWI induction files, which taught me about the brand proposition, the offer, their customer segmentation, the target audience and the features and benefits of off-shore and on-shore investment and saving products targeted at high net-worth foreign nationals.

Throughout, the week I had various inductions with key departments across the agency such as Planning, Creative, Project Management, New Business, Client Services, Office Management, Finance and Reception. All the meetings with the above departments contributed to helping me to understand how the agency worked, and also how everyone’s role within the agency worked. The most interesting inductions were the ones with Project Management, Planning and New Business – because I quickly gained an awareness of the many ways in which creativity is embedded and integrated into the agency throughout the lifecycle of a campaign.

Date: 1st February 2011