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Love, Ducks, Pancakes, Sex, Drugs and a Cup of Tea

It’s almost impossible to use a simpler heading to describe my first few weeks at Love Creative. No amount of preparation could have anticipated the “organised chaos” that is working in an agency – especially a really good one.

Week one and my project had the green light, in fact it had 3 green lights as the MD, Chris, told me that I was going to be dipping into almost everything that the agency has wanted to do for a long time, but never really got round to it. A day of making pancakes for all my colleagues was followed by a reality cheque: I had eleven weeks to leave my mark on this company and not just float in and out unnoticed.  A social media audit, research and insights, a trip down to London for a Glug event and I’m not even half-way through.

From my very first week I was invited to sit in on brainstorming sessions and got to see first-hand how an idea is born, under loads of pressure to be the best in the industry. I could see how that idea is transformed into a concept, backed up by market insights; and one day soon it will be one of those great advertising campaigns that get all my friends talking (and buying).

I’m not sure if all agencies work in the same way as Love, but I find the decentralised structure a great benefit to creativity and good communication. Formal channels are blurred and the team morale is awesome. With a really feminine Spotify playlist on, as Ed and I work in a part of the office dominated by a dozen or so ladies, sometimes I wish I had my headphones on. However the atmosphere is otherwise fantastic and it’s really hard to be the first one to go at 5:30 when I look around and the office is just as busy as it was at 9 in the morning.

I guess one thing that makes an agency different from client-side marketing departments is the diversity of working for different awesome brands like Umbro, Nike and PlayStation at the same time, making sure we don’t go “native”, working on the same brand, in the same way, and failing to see the bigger picture.

Six weeks to go and it now becomes all about results and justifying my time spent with this agency that I have grown to LOVE.

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It All Begins…

My poor neglected blog, I am sorry for leaving you for so long. I know nothing will make up for it like a few regular posts in the next few days.

So I have started my first placement at Love Creative and it is proving to be a fantastic although very busy experience.
Some of my Manchester Masters colleagues are complaining that they do not have enough work to do, and yet here I am, 4 projects, and a few more if I manage to get the first few done.
Despite the elegant chaos that is the work within an agency, I find the informal communication lines and collaboration between people of various functions quite a wonderful way for a business to work. The fact that it does work so well here is a mental note for me and any entrepreneur who might be tempted to start a business using some traditional organisational structure.
The buzz all around me is Social Media and I was not surprised to find out that one of my main projects would be related, and suddenly I’m off to after-work workshops, tweeting with industry leaders and reading case studies of successful use of SM within organisations (e.g. BT and IBM). Tomorrow, Chris and I will hopefully create a so-called “Task Force” which will assist me on this project.
Anyway, better get back to work.