Emily Hudson, International Marketing Manager at PPI Beauty, said: “As market leaders, we are committed to bringing innovation to our consumers in line with upcoming trends, focused on the beauty obsessed and relevant conversations within that community. We have a huge digital following of five million+ and we are still growing through social channels, specifically Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. At Real Techniques, we continue to pride ourselves on bringing prestige quality, award –winning and innovative tools to the mass market, to help beauty lovers get the most out of their make-up. This is the beauty of our brand! We are confident that this concept will come through in the campaign, and look forward to seeing the results.” 

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.

The year ahead for brands 

Whilst it’s fair to say that the market has faced tough times lately, the panellists challenged us to consider how unpredictability can keep us all on our toes.  If we surround ourselves with brilliant people, it will make facing challenges just that bit easier.  

So what challenges might 2024 pose?  

2023 witnessed some big brand campaigns that took over the advertising space. You only have to think pink before one comes to mind,  Toby Horry, global marketing director, TUI highlighted how so many clients want their very own big Barbie brand moment, but reminded us that it is crucial for brands to establish a bedrock of sustained marketing along with those firework moments. Brands also need to determine whether their product is strong enough to execute a Barbie approach as it requires a lot of thought and a huge level of creativity. Marketers need to tap back into effective creativity, bad creative simply won’t work. With user generated content on the rise, Nishma Patell Robb, president, WACL reminds the more risk averse marketeers that taking risks is a must if we want to cut through the noise and stand out. Ultimately, those brands that pay close attention to their consumers’ behaviours will be the brands that come out on top and win.  

Creativity continued to be a theme throughout the event, with Zoe Eagle, co chief, Accenture Song UK highlighting the importance of making people really care about brands. There is no set approach to increasing brand relevancy, creativity can be used in so many different ways, as Ryan Fisher, president, Wieden+Kennedy London, pointed out, there is no cookie cutter creativity method. We must be nimble and brave. 

The year ahead for creativity  

Lynsey Atkin, executive creative director, Channel 4 reminded us of the vast amount of media space that is available to us to tell different stories., By being cultural sponges and consuming more ‘stuff’, we can better understand the opportunities. Atkins’ fellow panellists agreed that it goes beyond simply following trends, it’s about doing what is right for the brand. Whilst we live through these turbulent times, we need to stray away from creatively playing it safe. It’s time we got comfortable with being uncomfortable. As Atkin so rightly put it, we need to display hope and optimism by showing swagger through our big brands. 

The year ahead for media  

Despite there being a shift in commerce, and accessible edutainment, Kris Boger, general manager, TikTok, warned us not be too hasty and avoid rushing into novelties. Doing so can put brands at risk of creating missteps.  With brands and clients always wanting to do the new next best thing it’s important to test and learn before rushing into the ‘next big thing’. 

For this project to help us track the carbon emissions of our internal operations we used a variety of tools and data points to work out our overall output. Business Climate Challenge  helped us measure energy emissions, we worked with Microsoft for the server and web data and staff travel (commuting and business travel) was measured and calculated internally based on the emissions from the longest commute made twice a week by everyone for a year. The travel element is an over-estimation so we’re effectively offsetting more carbon than that which has been produced by our travel. 

Driving better ESG outcomes as an agency is a core part of our strategy, with identifying our own impact being a key pillar in our objectives. Alongside our commitment to reduce our emissions, we are pushing forward with an ESG strategy across our business, our clients and our people. We are getting stuck into projects that focus on working sustainably with current clients as well as new clients that we bring into the business. We are also currently engaging with a number of knowledgeable and reputable industry leaders in this space on some exciting content coming very soon.  

What led you to a career in media? 

To be honest, I completely fell into it! I left university wanting to go into teaching but that didn’t play out (which I am very glad about now!). Instead, I found myself doing a three-month data entry job at PlayStation which saw me move to London and fast forward four years, I was still there. At the end of the job, and before I left to go travelling, the role introduced me to different parts of marketing which I really enjoyed and gave me something to look into when I got back.

Luckily, I found MI Media! I’ve enjoyed the variety of clients I’ve had over the years, each with their own unique challenges. Diving into the profiling of target audiences, understanding their behaviours and working out media solutions with unique nuggets of wisdom (it does happen!) that we can run with is hugely rewarding. Beyond that, I think we’re in a pretty relaxed industry where you get to work with a great mix of sociable people… who doesn’t want that? I never wanted to be suited and booted. It’s great as I can wear silly clothes and loud socks! (Craig has an array of very loud socks).

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

When I joined MI, we were so small and being an Account Executive just starting out, I was probably exposed to more things than I would have been had I been at a big network agency where roles are a lot more defined. For me that worked wonders in for my development, I just wanted to take in as much as possible

What I would say to those wanting to get into media is to go to every meeting you can and take in as much as possible. I would go to high profile meetings and not ask questions in the meeting itself, as most of the time topics discussed would go straight over my head, but afterwards I would pull my manager aside and ask all the questions I wanted. In short, do as much as you possibly can and just ask when you don’t know something.

There is a reluctance early on in people’s careers where people want to be spoon fed tasks as they may feel slightly scared. Just f**king do it! You will figure stuff out for yourself. I am a big advocate of sink or swim, people mostly swim. So, go and sit with someone senior, listen to their ideas & how they speak and eventually you will work it all out.

What mistake have you learnt the most from?  

I remember being junior and sending a client a plan which had the cost of print at a tenth of what it should have been. I tried to rectify this by casually sending him an updated plan without drawing attention to it and got an absolute rollicking. I think looking round at my senior colleagues who seemed completely infallible, I just wanting to impress. As I’ve learnt, everyone makes mistakes and it’s better to own up to it quickly to sort it out rather than not own up. Clients are generally very reasonable people, and everyone eventually laughs about the silly mistakes they’ve made. 

What’s your favourite ad campaign you’ve worked on?

There’s a couple that stand out. UNISON in recent years has been campaigning for better pay and conditions for public sector workers with bigger brand campaigns. But probably my favourite campaigns are those I’ve worked on with MSF given the emergency response nature of them. From getting a COVID campaign live within 10 days after lockdown started, to a campaign that ran earlier this year to raise income to send medical assistance out to Turkey and Syria after the earthquake hit. These campaigns always leave me feeling proud to have helped such a brilliant organisation.

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

Without a doubt Guinness. The ad campaigns always look absolutely amazing – who can forget the horses coming out of the sea? Plus, I reckon if I worked for them, they’d give me a load of Guinness merch… including socks!

Who’s your role model and why? 

*Craig panicking, looking stage left, then stage right*  

Can I say Dr Seuss? Yeah, I will go with Dr Suess as he encourages the most grown up of grown-ups to retain a sense of childlike wonder. “I like nonsense It wakes up the brain cells” – Dr Seuss