JUNIOR LEVEL
Name: Jonny Buknall
Role: Account manager at advertising agency Isobel
Specialisms: Problem solving, multi-tasking
Salary: £30,000+ ben
“In the 18 months I’ve been here I’ve worked on some interesting accounts including Weightwatchers foods, where we’re doing a national campaign, and Pizza Express, which was particularly exciting because they hadn’t done any advertising for decades.
“I see myself as a problem solver and love working across marketing and advertising. I find it a really creative process and enjoy the variety of working with three clients at any one time. One day I might be working on strategy and planning for an advertising campaign for Kettle, and the next day I’ll be dotting the ‘i’s and crossing the ‘t’s on a Weightwatchers campaign that’s much further down the line. Then there’s all the ad hoc requests from the client, who might pick up the phone and say they need a one-off recruitment ad. It’s rewarding, flexible and wonderfully unpredictable. You feel anything is possible. I love seeing the finished product too. At the moment, I get a real buzz from seeing Weightwatchers ads everywhere.
“Before I came here, I worked at M&C Saatchi, which I joined after doing a degree in sociology, new media and advertising. It took me about six months to get the job – I tried several different agencies and kept nearly getting jobs, so it was a huge relief when I passed the interview with M&C Saatchi and started four days later. That was a big agency, with 350 people and I got great exposure to big brands. Three years later, moving to Isobel, which has a core staff of 20, felt like a logical step – it too has good clients and creative briefs and, because the company is smaller, there’s less hierarchy. We’re very close-knit.
“If a headline is blown out or if the client decides they’re not going to run with us, it feels like bigger and worse news at a smaller company. But on the plus side, when you get an ad campaign signed off, everyone is elated. There’s definitely a huge emotional tie to each campaign here.
“I earn £30,000 plus healthcare benefits and, in another six months, I’ll get a pension and performance-related bonus. Looking further into the future, I’d love to set up an agency of a similar size to Isobel, but that’s a long way off.”
MID LEVEL
Name: Amy White
Role: Account manager at integrated and online marketing agency, Grasshopper
Specialisms: Client liaison
Salary: £40,000+ ben
“Initially I wanted to go into PR, but when I did some work experience I realised it wasn’t as glamorous as I’d thought. I was studying communications at degree level at that stage, after which I did a masters in advertising and marketing. Since then, I’ve worked for eight years almost exclusively on the agency side of marketing – which suits me perfectly because I like the variety of clients. I also enjoy liaising with the creative team and I think agencies are probably a lot more fun.
“I’ve been at Grasshopper for just over four months and my role involves looking after three clients – Goretex, British American Tobacco and LG. At the moment I’m working solely on Goretex, but often I have to juggle all three. My key duties include making sure the clients’ expectations are being met, that things are running on time and to budget, and that the guys internally are doing everything they should. It’s more of an overseeing role than a doing role, with quite a lot of delegating involved. But I get stuck in when I have to.
“Prior to Grasshopper, I worked at another agency – TMW – where I spent almost three years on the Unilever account. I enjoyed it but felt ready for a change and wanted to move to a smaller agency. There were 250 people at TMW; here there are 17. In a smaller agency, you get to know everyone well and there’s less red tape. Before TMW, I freelanced.
“I earn £40,000 a year and get health benefits and a performance-related bonus. Other pros of the job include working with people and getting really stuck into the creative side of marketing campaigns. No two days are the same, which is exciting.
“There are downsides. Sometimes there are difficult clients and sometimes the creatives get offended that the client doesn’t like what they’ve done. Then there are the long hours. But the pros outweigh the cons.
“In the future, I would like to become client services director and perhaps one day start up my own agency.”
TOP LEVEL
Name: Juliet Strachan
Role: Senior partner, independent research agency HPI Research and joint head of the quantitative division
Specialisms: Advertising and brand tracking, market assessment, new product/service development
Salary: £100,000+
“I moved into marketing in 1980. I had intended to go into marine zoology, but moved to London for a breather after my A levels and wound up working for a market research company, where I was asked to do work around trends in parenting and children. It really appealed to me and I stayed there for seven years, joining HPI in 1988.
“In 1992, I left and went to Hall and Partners to move up the ladder and get some independence from where I’d grown up as a researcher.
“But in 1995 – having progressed very quickly and after having two children – I moved back to HPI where I am now one of four senior partners.
“My principal role involves running the quantitative division, which now accounts for close to 60 per cent of the business. When I joined HPI, there was just one person working on quantitative, so it’s been nice to be part of the growth.
I’ve worked on some very interesting accounts, currently doing lots with the NSPCC. On the commercial side, I do a good deal of work in the mobile phones area, where I’ve won a number of awards. In 2003, for example, I won an award for my work with Nokia in South America, where an understanding of the market and the opportunities for operators to move into the mass market (as opposed to the top end) was important. In 2005, I won another award for the development of Nokia’s Simply Phone, highlighting the fact that there was a group of disenchanted older people who had been left behind in the march for evermore sophisticated phones.
“The pros of my work include talking to the boards of organisations such as Tetley, Thorntons, Jobsite and Majestic Wine about their research needs. I also really enjoy being in charge of green issues for HIP. Meanwhile, the downsides include the fact that, increasingly, much of my time is devoted to running the company and the management duties that come with that. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it – it’s just a challenge getting the balance right between this and time spent on project and consultancy work.
“I earn a six-figure salary starting with one, but we don’t get extra benefits. As for my future, I see it very much with HPI. I love the company and the idea of continuing to steer it forward.”
Much of my time is devoted to management duties
INTERIM
Name: Paul New
Role: Interim marketer
Specialisms: Consumer goods, problem solving and troubleshooting
Salary: £1,000+ per day
“The popular perception of interim work is people doing full-time jobs off payroll for a particular period of time, for example when someone’s on maternity leave or the organisation wants to implement a particular project. At the other end of the spectrum is what people call consultancy work. My experience – and everyone’s is different – is that there is no firm line between the two, with the vast majority of my work being on short-term projects for multiple clients. In the 12 years that I’ve been off payroll, I’ve only ever worked exclusively for one company once. Usually I work for two, sometimes three and very occasionally four.
“Having done an economics degree, I joined Unilever as a sales and marketing trainee and spent nine years there, the last three of which I was European brand manager. My next in-house role was with United Biscuits, where I was marketing director for four years. On my 34th birthday in 1996, I said goodbye to corporate life on payroll. Ever since, I’ve worked for myself, specialising in consumer goods, mostly with heavily branded organisations. The vast majority of my work is self‑sourced, although the agency Ashton Penney is very useful for me.
“I love the diversity of my work. I work for anyone from account directors to operations directors and for organisations with a couple of million to a couple of billion in turnover – and everything in between.
My duties vary greatly. With Pyrex, my role was to work with the board of directors on generating their own five‑year plan, whereas in other companies I’ll work with the chief executive to actually construct a five‑year plan. With Mecca Bingo, my work is different again, in that it’s about finding solutions to problems. Then there’s the variety in terms of corporate cultures, and the fact that I always learn something new from every project, which makes me a better marketer than I was before.
“Downsides include the feast or famine aspect. Sometimes I work weekends and evenings for months on end, whereas in 2003 I had just 10 days’ paid work in the first six months of the year.
My day rate is negotiable, but generally is a four-figure sum. In terms of the future, my ambition has always been to be in a position to retire by the age of 50. Whether I will actually retire then or not is another issue.”
I learn from every project, which makes me a better marketer than I was before
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