What I wish I knew when I started my career in advertising
And a longlist of how I stay tapped in to the advertising zeitgeist
I’m regularly invited to speak to interns (usually interns from diverse backgrounds) at my current workplace. It starts off with me explaining what I do on a day to day, my role as the co-lead of EMBRACE (an Employee Action Group advocating for People of Colour), and usually ends up with me going into full-on uncle mode, giving advice left, right and centre.
When I first started out, I didn't care at all about turning up to all-agency calls, and hearing what leaders were saying about revenue/profit etc, or reading the trade press, or checking out earnings calls/stock prices - I was just trying to collect my monthly paycheck and go home! My whole thinking on that has completely shifted for a number of reasons.
Understanding how the business makes money and how they're doing in the wider marketplace is essential to your job for a number of reasons, not only just to be able to see what's coming down the pipeline, but the more you understand the business you work for, the better value you're able to drive, and potentially/hopefully the more secure your role is when the business you're working for faces turbulent times.
So I’m going to do a series on what I wish I’d known before I joined the advertising industry.
Thing 1: Understand the industry. First, the industry that you work in, and then the industry of your client. I’ll focus on the advertising industry first.
I currently work at Publicis (Digitas specifically). We compete with five other big so-called “holding companies” (the rest of the Big Six - Dentsu, Havas, WPP, Omnicom, and IPG - here’s a nice succinct article about it). Omnicom have just announced that they’re merging with IPG (a $31 billion merger). which would make it the biggest holding group.
It’s fast-paced and constantly changing. New buzzwords and trends are cropping up all the time, and there’s a lot to keep on top of. Staying ahead of the curve is crucial to ensure that you’re best placed for success.
Your value to whatever your company is will be highest when you’re focused on driving outcomes for your agency & your client - but in order to do that, you need to know the lay of the land. How do you do this?
You need to ensure that you’re reading about the industry regularly and listening to/reading about the great thinkers in the space. I’m talking from a UK context, but here’s a longlist of some of what I keep on top of (feel free to zone into the publications/podcasts/people that you enjoy & I’ll keep returning to/updating this list):
Ad Industry Publications
Campaign -
https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/
The Drum -
AdWeek -
DigiDay -
Marketing Week -
https://www.marketingweek.com/
The Media Leader -
https://uk.themedialeader.com/
Emarketer -
https://www.emarketer.com/articles
WARC -
Ad Industry Podcasts
The Media Leader Podcast -
The MadTech Podcast -
Campaign podcast -
Media Freak Podcast -
The Digital Marketing Podcast -
Marketing Week -
The Drum Network Podcast -
Strategy, Branding and Marketing Podcasts
The Whole Marketer podcast -
Let’s talk branding -
Data and Tech Podcasts
Marketing Over Coffee -
Marketecture: Get Smart. Fast. -
The Analytics Power Hour -
The AI Daily Brief -
Next Big Thing -
People to follow on LinkedIn (and people to know)
Les Binet (advertising effectiveness) -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/les-binet-9bb7453/
https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/the-long-and-the-short-of-it-balancing-short-and-long-term-marketing-strategies - The Long and Short of It talks about the balance between brand building and performance marketing.
Rory Sutherland -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rorysutherland/
An interesting interview with Steven Bartlett on DOAC -
Zoe Scaman (strategy guru) -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/zoescaman/
https://substack.com/@zoescaman/posts
Mark Ritson -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/markritson/
Amy Kean -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycharlottekean/
Sir John Hegarty -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sir-john-hegarty-a1310a92/
Marcos Angelides -
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcosangelides/
I will probably come back to this Substack, update and redo again and again. But I wanted to get it out there as a first pass - let me know which podcasts, publications and people you tap in with!