Reviewing Digital Innovation – Week 7

As part of the graduate scheme. I have been given graduate objectives. Which are a list of tasks I’m appraised on throughout my rotation in different departments throughout the agency. One of the tasks, on the list that I have been doing since I started is ‘Competitor Site Monitoring’; this basically involves regularly reviewing the banner ads of our main competitors within the international financial services market. To monitor innovation and trends. 


Monitoring the Competition
When I initially began conducting competitor site monitoring, I really had no idea what I was looking out for… I mean, what exactly represented an innovative banner ad? How was I supposed to spot trends in banner ad execution? And, what exactly were my findings going to be used for? However, this week I had all my questions answered and, discovered additional things along the way. 

Digital Innovation Presentation
As I had to support the team in preparing information for a digital innovation presentation; which involved working alongside Planning to feedback the digital innovation information I had collected from my weekly competitor monitoring. Than attend a meeting with a host of creative and digital specialists to discuss and share digitally innovative campaigns relevant to the clients brand which could possibly be used to inspire future digital campaigns.

Click the links below to see some of the digitally innovative integrated banner ad campaigns that were identified and presented to the client.

• IKEA ‘Construct your Own Advert’
• Tipp-Ex ‘Hunter Shoots a Bear
• Axe (Lynx) Uses Interactive Google Maps within Creative

Looking back over My Shoulder - March

Ok, so it’s March and my second month working in the agency, the experience so far has been a real eye-opener and very exciting!


Looking back at last month...
I think in the future, I will always remember the start of my career in advertising as a major culture shock. Main reason is, I went from being a care-free marketing student to a Digital Marketing Executive in the space of 2 days.

As on January 28th I submitted my dissertation and on the 1st February I started working. At the time I left university, I had no idea of what my examination results were, because I had literally just sat them. I kept thinking… I could have failed miserably; therefore a large part of my day consisted of logging on to the university website in my downtime, to check if the examination results had been published…. Nail biting stuff I can tell you!

It's Impossible to Know Everything
I felt like I went from being a competent and able marketer at university. Feeling a little lik a "big fish in a small pond" to feeling like a "very small fish in a big pond". Which was quite a humbling and grounding experience. Because, I had to accept and realise that even though I have studied marketing and business for over 10yrs and have always had a life-long passion for the subject and profession. There is still so much about practicing marketing and the advertising industry that I don’t know. And, more surprisingly the people around me don’t know everything either; because, the industry moves so fast and relies on innovation.

I suppose that’s the reason why it is very common for the term 'marketeer' to be used as a blanket term for the role. As when you scratch the surface you realise that many people specialise in specific areas of the profession, for example, it is a Marketing Planners job to analyse marketing insight and come up with over-arching themes or ideas for a campaign - which are known as marketing strategies and an Account Executives role to work in tandem with the client and agency to support the wider team in managing the clients account i.e. brand. So, looking forward into March... armed with a bit more knowledge - i'm really looking forward to discovering what this new month has instore for me!


Date: March 2011