9:15 am: Arrive in office; few people around but all are beginning to filter in slowly but surely. Exhausted still from late night before! Grab a cinnamon role and coffee and settle down at my desk for the first barrage of client and internal emails I know awaits me. Check my phone for messages even though most people call me straight on my mobile. Check the newspapers quickly for the ads of my clients and their competitors even though I will be receiving full clippings for all campaigns later in the day.
10:00 am: Progress meeting at a client’s office. They have briefed the agency on a brand brochure for a new initiative and I take a first draft with me with3 different layout proposals as the brief was not too precise and left a lot of room for creativity. They are happy with one layout but still not happy with the script for the brochure which our copywriter wrote from scratch with minimal guidelines. I suggest a meeting between the client marketing team and our copywriter as we have been at an impasse with the copy for a while now and no detailed brief has been forthcoming from the client. Detailed briefs are so helpful – I wish clients would realize that! Anyways the cappuccino at the client office is great.
11:15 am: Back at office. Major advertisement campaign being presented at3 pm to my other client and I sit with the creative team as they finalize the boards and materials. We are presenting three different options for the creative along with brochures, e-mailers, online banners, promotional items and a brief TVC and radio spot storyboard. The presentation with the rationale for the campaigns is ready but needs to be tweaked to fully incorporate the new creatives which we are now ready to do. Since this is our third attempt at cracking the creative we will not give a lengthy presentation just launch straight into the creative proposals.
12:00 am: Back to the desk. Do some frantic copy and pasting so the presentation incorporates the new creative proposals. No analytical work and market research required this time round as we have been through that process with them already and agreed on objectives, brand promise, USPs etc. Save everything onto a disk for the client, brand the disk with their logo and print out enough hardcopies of the presentation for the client team.
1:00 pm: No time for lunch. Quick sandwich at copywriter’s desk while I brief him on the morning feedback from the client regarding the brochure and inform him about the suggested meeting. He is frustrated that there are no clear brand guidelines or briefs from the client. I promise to collect all the collateral and past brochures I can from the client to help him.
1:30 am: I go back to my desk and send our copywriter some more links about the client’s organisation and products from their website to help with the brochure. I also start making calls and sending emails and researching websites to collect the maximum amount of collateral and information from the competition as that is also very important and helpful.
3:00 pm: At client office for the creative presentation. Client is very happy with one of the executions, looks like we finally have an advertising campaign for them! They are particularly excited about the television storyboard and want to move ahead quickly. We agree on next steps.
5:00 pm: Back at office. Arrange for my major client’s ad clippings from all the day’s papers and journals to be filed and sent to them. They are in the middle of a massive ad campaign and we maintain files for them with all their ad clippings on a daily basis.
5:15 pm: Brief just came in for promotional items for the Dubai Shopping Festival. Luckily this client is very organized and they are giving us enough lead time; often we get these types of briefs the day before! I immediately inform my boss and approach they creative team then start doing some research on a holistic approach for the client for the shopping festival and holiday season.
5:30 pm: Client called. An ad which was supposed to appear on a website hasn’t been seen all day and they are wondering why. I call the web portal to find an explanation. Client is also upset because one of their Outdoors advertisements is also looking on the shabby side and they are wondering if they chose the right location and are paying the right price. They want us to re-look at their Outdoors advertising strategy and see if it needs an update.
5:45 pm: Meet with vendor to choose stands for clients brochures – we need an entirely new approach to presenting their branded point-of-sales materials. Also discuss with the vendor a gift idea for another client, we have brainstormed extensively with them what gifts they want to give out as party of a special promotion, and boiled it down to one very good and appropriate idea which I now need to source and price, working closely with the creative team to brand it.
6:15 pm: Meeting with another vendor for the gift. I like to know what’s on offer with the best vendors and get alternative quotes so we can always give our clients the best products at the best prices.
6:45 pm: Quick meeting with media team to finalize media plans for my client’s Shopping Festival campaigns. I put the pressure on as these need to be presented to the client tomorrow and I still haven’t seen them.
7:30 pm: Head home.
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