adspeak

Why did you choose to be in the discipline you are in?

 

So it’s a long story, but long story short is, originally I was going to be a journalist, then there was a career day at my high school where a copywriter from, Saatchi I believe, came in and I sat through each period, each one of his classes, because I was so captivated by what he did, and I wanted to write but writing for advertising just sounds so intriguing.  So I went on to major in advertising in college.  I was actually on the copywriting track because I was trying to follow his footsteps, but copywriting is a difficult discipline to get into. So my internships ended up being in media.  My first internship was at Harmelin Media in Philadelphia as a media assistant for the BET account, which was kind of a big deal. I got there and I really enjoyed how creative I could be, with not necessarily writing, or with graphic design, but just with placement, and I really enjoyed researching audience behaviors, and trying to figure out how brands appeal to their audiences and you know, really being a part of that.  So after one media internship, led to another media internship, which led me to a media job soon after MAIP.
 

You just kind of fell into it?
 

Yeah, and here I am, exactly.  I always knew advertising, but media kind of fell upon me.

 

Media is always changing, where do you see it going in the next few years, especially since I know that you’ve moved from media into programmatic.  How do you see traditional media fitting into that picture, or changing to fit into that picture?

 

Everything is going to be the same soon.  Traditional media isn’t going to be the traditional media the way we see it now. Everything is forming some sort of digital or programmatic portion to it.  Programmatic has just proven to be more efficient across the board. There’s programmatic TV now, programmatic radio, you know, there’s even billboards that stand alone that change based on digital information you know.  If you haven’t seen that movie Minority Report, there’s going to be…basically what happens is, you’ll walk past an ad and it’ll recognize you, recognize your name, and show you an ad based on what you like to see, based on what’s going on on your phone, or something like that.  So traditional is going to all be digital and programmatic in some capacity soon.  You say, “I’m not in media anymore, I’m in programmatic”, that language is going to change in the next few years, this is all going to be media again.  

 

How do you talk to your clients about those changes, about the newer things like programmatic? How do you find you have to talk to them into trying it, or telling them how awesome it is?

 

I think the proof is in the pudding.  With programmatic, we’re able to do things like pull up the audiences we’ll be targeting, and show them how many impressions, and show them the CPMs. So when you do a direct buy, like say we want to go on New York Times doing direct buy, it would be like an $18 CPM.  But I could say look, we can go be on this same site programmatically, you target the audience and not the actual spot, and we’re bidding in real time, so it’s going to be under like, a $3 CPM.  Once you start to talk about the actual math and the actual efficiencies, then it’s easy to get them on board.  But some more traditional clients, you have to really wean them on.  A lot of them have particular relationships with publications, or you know they’ve always been doing business with particular sites. The one thing is not to push them.  Just kind of take sections of budgets just to prove your performance.  The proof, again, is always in the pudding, even if you just start to segment your budgets and just show, you know, look at this ROI, through this programmatic based through this direct buy, then you know they start to come on board because it’s just without a doubt more efficient.

 

It sounds like you have to educate others, especially when you’re in media because there’s all these new things happening. But how do you educate yourself in these changing environments and how do you keep up to speed?

 

You have to constantly, constantly be a student. That’s why I’m going to be in New York on Wednesday; I’m going to an IAB class about advanced programmatic.  You have to stay in conferences, you have to be in an atmosphere, where their investing in your growth because everything’s always changing.  You have to be a part of organizations; I’m part of the Ad Club of DC, I make sure I stay up on there, I have 5 or 6 e-newsletters that come to my mailbox every morning, that gives me the things I need to know in advertising for the day.  So you just always have to be a student.  Those who are complacent and think they know the landscape, are going to be phased out.  You have to be a student.

 

What are some of the things that excite you about the work or the work that you’re seeing out there right now?

Just the fact that it’s changing.  Again, it’s hard to get bored in this industry because what you know now is just going to be completely different a year from now, or even a month from now. So I like the fact that it’s changing.  I like the fact that we’re moving from calling things traditional to just general media.  One of the things I’m most excited about right now is cross-device advertising and how it’s becoming a standard where it was kind of a big thing at one point.  Cross-device meaning if I’m on my desktop and I’m searching something, it knows that this is my phone, and I’m the same person.  It knows the other computer is my work computer, they know that’s my iPad, so it’s not just retargeting on the particular device you’re on.  They can retarget you across any of the devices because they know who you are.  I love how the algorithm is so smart, and we can know so much that even if me and my husband use the same iPad, they know who I am and they know who he is based on the browsing behavior, and I won’t get retargeted his ESPN stuff, I’ll still get retargeted my DSW shoes. I love how smart we’re becoming, you know it may scare the average consumer because you’re thinking big brother, stuff like that, but you’re getting a lot of these things for free-  apps, website experience- so you might as well see something that’s going to benefit you, and that’s interesting to you.  We’re doing a campaign now where we’re doing a coupon when you abandon a product in a shopping cart.  So that benefits the consumer; you looked at this product, now you’re going to get retargeted ads for 10% off.  I’m excited about how much smarter it’s getting and it’s not just a random banner ad hoping that you pay attention, based on no information.

 

Despite all the exciting things that are happening, and there are a lot, I get really excited about all that stuff, what are some of the tougher parts about working in the industry? And that’s in general, even in the workplace or working with people.

It’s a lot of competition, and because we are so much smarter, the clients expect so much more. They see you have this technology, you can find this right audience in the right place at the right time, you know that whole thing, so they expect better results than they were getting before. So they invest this money, and you have to, you know, perform.  The pressures of performance have gotten a lot higher the smarter that we get and the better technologically we get.  That pressure gets difficult. The industry itself, turnover is high, it’s hard to build rapport within an agency when your team is different because everyone is grabbing at each other. Because they’re not willing to train within, they’re grabbing from other agencies.  The shelf life of being at an agency is like, 2 years now, that’s the norm.  Just that transient, you know constant, different clients, different job, gets difficult sometimes.

 

So I know you have strong feelings about that.  Do you want to expand on that a little more?  Do you think it’s positive or negative, overall?

I say job-hopping, I’m poking fun at it because that’s what people would like to label people in the ad agency, is like “job-hoppers”, because they move around every 2 years.  But it’s really a symptom of agencies not growing as fast as the industry.  A lot of their policies are antiquated, so they train you, they hire you for this one thing, and either they invest in you, they let you go to classes, et cetera, but they don’t pay you up to that skill level that you’ve now acquired.  So now someone else is coming at you, and you have these particular skills and they’re paying you $20,000 higher but they expect you to be loyal and stay at this company when they’re not paying you for these new skills that you’ve acquired.  Or, they don’t invest in you at all, and they stay, let’s say, what we call traditional media right now. So, programmatic is happening, it’s the new efficient thing, you’re staying in a traditional agency and you’re just left, and you’re going to be now antiquated and irrelevant in your career.  So now you have to go somewhere else so you can have a growth opportunity.  I definitely think agencies need to be more invested in their employees, and make sure that they’re growing, but then also that they have to compensate them for their growth because we’re learning things and things are changing exponentially.  I think that instead of having this is kind of like a hierarchy and a ladder- assistant media planner, media planner, media supervisor, and so on and so on- they should be more creative and flexible with creating positions so that their media planner can become a programmatic trading desk manager, or something like that where it’s kind of a different role and not staying on that particular path so that they can pay them appropriately, and grow them appropriately, and potentially they’ll stay.

 

In addition to that kind of fragmentation, there’s also fragmentation going on with clients giving different parts of their budgets too different and even competing agencies.  How do you find a way to work together with those other teams?

I mean, it’s just kind of a necessary evil.  And sometimes it just makes sense.  Like, with everything changing the way it is, certain companies start to get really good at one particular thing.  I know in programmatic, we use other vendors to do our prospecting work a lot of the time because they have more flexibility than we do in our particular system.  Maybe Google doesn’t allow us to, I’m making this up, target children, and they can or you know whatever it may be.  So some things are just necessary like that.  But a lot of companies don’t want to give agencies too much power and they want to keep people on their toes, so you know they’ve segmented out like that.  And also a lot of clients have their budgets broken out in different pieces, so one marketing manager will have a budget for this particular thing, and another marketing manager will have a budget for this particular thing.  So you know with these fragmented budgets, that’s just how the client has it set up.  But you have to be a good team player. Good team players stay on the account and a lot of times win the whole thing.  So you just have to, it’s a necessary evil.

 

Have you seen, or do you think, there’s a set of characteristics that define people in advertising? Like, are there characteristics that keep popping up that you see in people?

 

You have to be flexible.  You definitely can’t just be complacent, you know, kind of just want to come in and do your job.  You have to be passionate.  I don’t think I’ve met anyone who’s been successful in advertising who wasn’t passionate about what they were doing to some degree, or learning.  That’s definitely a trait.  And I think you have to be a free spirit, in the way of just being open.  When you’re in an agency, you’re working with these different departments, and these different departments have these different personalities.  Creatives will come in in t-shirts and shorts, account people come in in a full suit because they have a client meeting, whatever, but you have to learn how to blend with all those personalities, you have to learn to be free and open because you’re not in a corporate environment where everyone’s on the same walk as you.

 

Lastly, what advice would you share with people looking to go into the industry? What’s your one big tip?

My one big tip, kind of summarizes everything that I said.  Be passionate- you have to stay a student.  Never think that there’s a particular height or goal, like, ceiling that you should reach, because every time that you try to get there, something new is happening and you have to learn something completely new.  And I’d also say be patient and pay your dues.  Especially in media.  I know it gets repetitive and tough running those same reports every week, just due every week, but listen in, be attentive, and learn as much and pick up on as much as you can.  And also work beyond your particular pay grade.  If you’re an assistant media planner and you’re supposed to do the report, write the analysis next time. No one’s going to fault you for that.  They may change it, they might give you some tips, but definitely work beyond what your current title is and what your pay grade is.  That will always help you move on.