What does Marketing Administratiion Involve?

This week has proved to be surprisingly quite campaign wise, as many of the deadlines which the team has been working towards were successfully achieved last week. Therefore, this week has consisted of carrying out administrative tasks.

Marketing Admin Tasks

Weekly Status Reporting

Another of my objectives which I have mentioned in previous posts has been to ensure the Weekly Status is updated and circulated before and after status meetings, however, this week I had the opportunity to support the Barclays Retail account in updating their Weekly Status and learned that every account does conduct the same processes, but things are done differently. For example, Barclays Retail's weekly status  report is a lot more comprehensive as they manage more Direct Marketing campaigns such press inserts and statements which need to be created with various messaging for different target audiences where as Barclay Wealth campaigns are created with never more than 4 target audiences in mind so it's weekly status report is more concise.

Proof Reading / Update Offline and Digital Guard File

These tasks are done on 'an as and when basis'; usually when a piece of artwork, copy or both leave the studio. I am required to check the artwork against the client’s feedback and brand guidelines for spelling mistakes, grammatical, font or format errors before the work is presented to the client. And, when a campaign is completed I also update the ‘guard file’ which is a portfolio that includes all the clients latest work. Which is presented to various stakeholders throughout the year for a variety of reasons.

Help Team with Financial Admin i.e. Reconciliations Costs, Cost control and Opening Job Numbers

At the start of every week time sheets are submitted to the finance department detailing (with the use of job numbers) how much time has been spent on each campaign that has been worked on that week. Reconciliation is an accounting term and refers to the process of comparing two sets of records (the balances of two accounts) to make sure they are in agreement.

Throughout my time on the Barclays Wealth Account I have been required to support the Senior Account Manager in conducting reconciliations to ensure that the time spent and money leaving account matches the actual money and time spent. In order to ensure that the agency's work doesn't exceed the client's budget and costs are covered to produce the work. Which is done by making sure the balances match at the end of the week. 

I recall my first time doing reconciliations didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped, as being an idoit servant minus the 'Savant' part when it comes to maths; my confidence before I began was low. Therefore, reconciliation time  for the first few weeks proved to be a major learning curve and headache.  As instead of just comparing the time spent; I  thought I needed to add all the figures up and totally made a hash of it.  And, I think when I did this my manager must have thought what is this girl on? But, I’m pleased to say that I have now got a decent handle on it; however the major learning I have taken from that task was... it is vitally important to pay attention to detail especially when dealing with figures, as at the end of the day it's the client’s budget and agency’s revenue that we are dealing with so it's imperative that figuires are always correct. 

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.