Last week we headed to Publicis Groupe in White City for a masterclass on all things advertising featuring our friends from ad agency powerhouse Publicis London. We touched on everything from a day in the life of an account manager, to why being a strategist is a bit like being a detective, as well as understanding why TikTok can help you become a better creative, and what it takes to thrive as a producer!
Panel:
🎤 Guergana Stoytcheva, account director
🎤 Prianka Ramlugun, strategist
🎤 Pierre Lavenir, content creative
🎤 Bea Icke, production assistant
🎤 Ella Darlington, head of comms at Creative Access (chair)
Want to know what really goes on behind-the-scenes in advertising? You’re in luck. Here’s the breakdown of the four key parts of an advertising agency…
Account management
Think of the account management team as representing the client within the agency and the agency with the client. They’re responsible for the day-to-day client contact, they help sell in the work to the client and oversee budget, timelines and delivery.
Account director at Publicis London, Guergana, has been working in the advertising agency for three years with a background in travel and tourism (talk about career-switcher inspo!). Here’s what she had to say about working on the accounts team…
It’s all about… People, people, people
The stakeholders when you’re in a role like this are everyone – we’re talking finance, clients, SLT, creative, strategy, and production. It is vital that you are able to build and maintain trust with both the clients and everyone at the agency.
- Understand the client’s business challenges and personal goals (you’re their champion and they become yours)
- The agency team need to know they can depend on you: if they have a different strategy idea to what the client wants, your team needs to know you’ll have their back.
- You’re not just the yes person for the client! You’re there to help them see the vision.
Skills you need to be an account manager:
- Good communication skills
- Empathy
- The ability to read between the lines
- Detail oriented
- Presenting skills
Final tip for aspiring account managers?
If you have zero experience in the field but want to get in, Guergana’s been there. Her advice for getting in without the industry experience is…
“Be honest and highlight your transferable skills – the things that make the best account management people are rarely taught, everything technical can be learnt”
Strategy
Our very own Creative Access alumni Prianka started off as an account & strategy intern at Publicis London and three years later, she is now a strategist at the agency. She said she always wanted to do everything and admitted to ‘applying for every positive action scheme that Creative Access had’ when she finished uni. But realised, after finding the internship, that advertising and the creative element wasn’t just something she’d like but it was a space where she could actually use the skills she had: her research abilities from her history degree and her ability to chat to people from her Saturday job.
Brands come to strategist with business problem; it’s the strategist’s job to find the gap in the market and think about the people to help solve this problem.
Understand your audience and how to talk to them
- Immerse yourself in news; polls and surveys; you’ll use market research platforms like Mintel (which Prianka calls a strategist’s best friend); you’ll analyse other products on market; and good news for those immersed in internet culture, you’ll constantly be researching on platforms like TikTok and Reddit – “if you’re going to talk to people, speak their language”, Prianka says
- You’ll have to research how the client can stand out in a crowded space. Some good examples are products and campaigns like Liquid Death, Heinz and CeraVe’s Michael Cera ads
- Working closely with the creative team, you’ll distill all your research into one line to help them bring the vision to life
Here’s how strategy comes to life:
Garnier came to Publicis London with the launch of a new Vitamin C daily UV. Prianka and the team of strategists found out that 9/10 brits admit to never wearing spy on their face. They realised that the SPF category is constantly talking about sun and, unfortunately, Britain isn’t the sunniest of climates. So, their strategy to help Garnier stand out in the market was to make SPF an everyday habit for British people: ‘phone, keys, wallet.. SPF’. The campaign hinged upon the idea of wearing every single day versus every SUNNY day.
Skills you need to be a strategist:
- Be like a detective: find the insights
- Be like an architect: curate a plan of what story you want to tell and what you want them to feel
- Be like a presenter: zoom out and tell everyone the one thing you want to create based on all your research
Final tip for aspiring strategists?
Strategy is all about storytelling. She told the audience: “Remember in your applications that you’re talking to strategists so present your career journey and story for them to showcase your storytelling skills!”
Creative
The creative team are the ideas people. They use imagination to produce the work, turning a product into memorable ideas, campaigns and activations.
Pierre was working in marketing before he started as a content creative at Publicis London. One day he saw a beautiful Gucci x North Face ad with Francis Bourgeois that stopped him in his tracks. He felt inspired and wanted to work on bigger campaigns. He joined Publicis a year later on accounts team and then made the switch into the creative team.
What’s it like being an advertising creative?
- The creative teams focus a lot on the concept
- You’ll work lots with strategists, account team and producers, as well as ‘the makers’: designer, video editors, film directors, photographers
- It’s a really varied role! Pierre says from his own experience, “one day you might work on an idea for LFW and the next you’re doing social content for Renault and the next you’re working on OOH campaigns”
- On that, a recent campaign for Thayer’s skincare, Publicis London honed in on a Gen Z audience who love their phones but can find them overwhelming and launched a campaign called: “Tone it down”. The campaign was a play on the fact the product is a toner and the team even got the Bimini to wear a life-size version of the bottle’s red lid at London Fashion Week.
- The best part of the job for Pierre? “Sometimes you come up with really crazy ideas and sometimes they really do happen!”
Skills you need to be a creative in advertising:
- You’ve got to be a conceptual thinker!
- A trend lover with your finger on the pulse. Pierre says, “I watch TikToks to get inspired – that’s part of my job and I get paid for it!”
- You need to be able to build trust with your client to help sell in the more ‘crazy’ ideas and prove to them you have the knowledge it will succeed
Final tip for aspiring advertising creatives?
Pierre says your portfolio is most important thing as a creative, it shows your taste and what you’re all about so get building it! He also recommends competitions and awards such as the D&AD New Blood Awards to get some practice working on campaigns, and you might even win!
Production
Production assistant Bea always knew she wanted to do something creative and cites the Coca Cola Christmas adverts as her biggest source of inspiration to enter the advertising world.
The production team brings it all together. They’re there for the whole ride that is a campaign: Before, during and after the shoot.
What does the life–cycle of a campaign look like for production?
Before an advertising shoot/campaign…
You’ll be working within the agency, as well as exterrnally with casting, locations, art department and wardrobe and – vitally – making sure everything is within budget!
During an advertising shoot/campaign…
You’ll be there on shoot, making sure everyone is sticking to storyboard and that everyone is happy
Post-advertising shoot/campaign…
You’ll work with post-production, this includes sorting out titles and working with legal too to ensure that everything meets the brief and fulfils any legal requirements, as well as working on all the final touches with experts such as colourists
What skills do you need to be an advertising producer?
- Organisation is KEY! There are so many moving parts, there’s lots of meetings with different people and emails to keep on top of
- And on that note, it helps if you’re a people person with good communication skills and you’ll be meeting people with all sorts of different jobs and approaches
- Good time management skills
- Project management skills
Final tip for aspiring producers?
Bea says that in production you’re the middleman. “Sometimes it is a really tight window and managing everyone’s expectation can be difficult… You’ve got to learn how to do this.”
Thanks so much to the wonderful panel at Publicis London for shedding light on how everything works behind-the-scenes at an advertising agency – we definitely left feeling inspired!
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