What led you to a career in media? 

I would say that I am both creative and numerical, so once I completed my economics degree, I decided to focus on the latter. I secured a job at Arcadia HQ in merchandising and, whilst it did have some creative aspects, it was heavily analytical in the sales forecasting element. After doing this role for a while, I realised that it wasn’t a passion of mine. I flew off to Australia for two years and when I returned, I decided to career change and go into media.

I always had a spark for marketing and advertising and after doing a deep dive into the world of media, I realised that it was very analytical which suited me down to a T. Having come back from sunny Australia and landing home to a global pandemic and the country in lockdown, the job hunt began, I spotted an MI job advert, applied Thursday, had two interviews in quick succession, had a job offer on the Monday and here we are!

What does a typical day look like for you? 

The nature of my role means that no two days are the same. There are of course certain tasks that are done each and every day, but usually my days are varied across the running of campaigns and also strategy prospecting. My daily focus is divided between looking into current activity and looking ahead to decide what the next best steps will be for our clients.

What is your proudest and most memorable moment at MI?

Firstly, I feel like I did take to media like a duck to water. I  put this down to the fact that I had a team member who would always be available to offer me guidance and support. This combined with my own efforts meant I was promoted after just six months at MI.

In terms of client and campaign success, 2021 was the year that MSF had invested into its Christmas press campaign. I planned & managed the whole process and, after a lot of negotiation, I managed to wrangle some great deals to ensure that MSF’s money went that much further. This hard work paid off as we were able to deliver a 125% increase in ROI with triple the investment from MSF’s previous Christmas campaign.

Following the campaign, we were invited to MSF’s all agency presentation. While I was still quite new to MI and the industry, I was able to stand up and speak about how we worked with MSF and what we achieved, and I think it’s fair to say they were very happy.

What advice would you give to someone looking to enter the world of media? 

What I would say to someone wanting to get into the industry is to figure out what aspect you are actually interested in. Marketing and advertising is so vast and there are so many elements to it: creative, strategy, media – the list goes on. So, do your research, suss out the industry and figure out what you want your chosen niche to be. That is sometimes the hardest part, once you have established that you can then grab hold of any opportunities that will lead you down the path best suited to you.

What mistake have you learnt the most from?  

Not checking my work! Over time I have now become super vigilant, as I have learnt from my ‘not reading emails before sending’ mistakes. Oh also, don’t p*ss off finance, get on their good side (I’m still working on that). That will be a work in progress process for 2024!

Do you have a dream client or an ad campaign you particularly love? 

Anywhere that will give some good freebies! No, in all seriousness, there are so many dream clients and great campaigns of 2023.

Looking back at 2023, the Barbie campaign that sparked a worldwide buzz would have been insane to work on. Not only was it clever, but it really took over the advertising space, it was everywhere – you couldn’t escape it!

Off the back of Christmas, working on a John Lewis Christmas campaign would also be such fun, but I think a campaign that I really rated this year was BrewDog’s anti Qatar World Cup activity which included experiential along with super witty OOH.

Who’s your role model and why? 

Most people say celebs, right? But I am actually going to say my Dad. He started his own advertising agency 30 years ago and it’s still going strong to this day, maybe that is where the interest in media stemmed from?! Now that I work for an agency myself, I can fully relate and appreciate how difficult and challenging running the show must be.