subject: Marketing Manager Seeking Position Part 3 BMA [print this page] In part one of my story I talked about how my network wasn't working well for me after 9/11. Well, in Las Vegas, your network is your best hope for finding a job. It is more of a "who you know, not what you know" town. I'm sure that is a fall back from the good old mobster days.
I want to get a bit into what I was capable of providing at this point in my career. When I was hired on at BlueMoon Advertising I was very capable of running a complex and very busy schedule for clients. Which was great for my newest client, a residential builder who based each weeks advertising on the sales numbers from the week before.
This may sound crazy to anyone in marketing cause the hope is to have a marketing plan that was establish months earlier. But when you are dealing with a client that has immediate needs for particular parts of their business, you need to be ready to pull the trigger at a moments notice.
My work at Merica had prepared me for this exact work load. I was used to taking sales numbers and translating those into an action plan for the next sales cycle. Granted at Merica the sales cycle was one month and now at BMA it was less than one week.
Nikki Liesse was my main client contact and I couldn't believe how smart and on the ball she was. I quickly became her go to person at the agency and we worked together to meet marketing goals and be sure that all materials were up to date and accurate.
I became a master of floor plans, local area maps, and sales office design and production. Some of my fondest memories are being out in the field with Nikki taking about where displays would go, measuring walls, windows and plotting out a blueprint. After all, I am not an engineer and the blueprints looked more like a child's drawing. But, in the end, the numbers were correct and the sales offices always looked great. Especially after the corporate standards were approved.
For those of you who don't know what that means: Think Pepsi or Allstate, you always see the same design, colors, logo, trademarks, etc in everything they do.
Those corporate standards were developed by our team at BMA along with Nikki's team, Allison Brearley, Brooke Polk, and Carissa Marquez. The marketing message was "We're there for you". It isn't as fresh and new now, but then it was great. I'm sure I feel emotionally attached to it because I worked so hard to insure its success.
The concept was that this builder had all the services a buyer needed to purchase a home and the products in place to keep that home in tip top shape for years to come. We hired models to use for the branding and they worked out wonderfully. We had billboards, print ads, direct mail, brochures, and an especially wonderful TV spot.
The creative team came up with the concept for the TV spot and with our vendors, Goodwyn Production Group, the film production company, and the sound production company Mind Theatre Audio we created an amazing commercial. To see a portion of what we did go to the Goodwyn website and on the main page is a video montage. Use the timeline scroll to watch what we did from 1:50 to 2:00 or you can watch all of Norm Nusbaum's work!
And a special thank you to Norm, the man behind the camera! He allowed me to sit and participate in every aspect of making that spot from filming to editing. I have been lucky to have this man become a dear friend. So much so, that when he came to my wedding, he shot it for me on his special HD camera! Amazing talent and an amazing man!
Anyway, we also did multiple radio spots using a branded music track, thanks to Mike Lattimore at Mind Theatre. I unfortunately don't have an MP3 of the spot or access to it. Mike and I worked together many times after this because I could always trust him to do great work.
Working at BlueMoon was hard and very rewarding because the agency was so small, I got to learn it all. At a larger agency I would have been kicked out of the production studio and told to get back to my desk. When Frank was out or after he eventually left the agency, I knew enough to help with traffic of jobs. He taught me about paper choices, production timelines, and how to keep the creative team on schedule. And so did the rest of the team and eventually Hugh Roper took over traffic, production and was still doing design work.
I haven't mentioned yet the design team but have to say that Nuria Sanchez and Hugh Roper were a shining example of easy to work with, open minded creative types. Always being on such a tight schedule each week, I was always able to go and ask them to turn something around very quickly, sometimes in hours, and never be yelled at! You all would be surprised how testy creatives can be when it comes to doing something in a ridiculous time frame.
The thing about being on such tight deadlines is that not only did I have to keep my agency team on time and budget, but I also had to manage Nikki and her team. It was my job to be sure she knew what was due and when and if they didn't meet the deadline, what it would do to the overall timeline and cost. One thing I did that they all responded to was in my weekly status reports. If they were late on something I needed or almost out of time, I would call out those items by adding blinking lights.
Yes, you can have blinking lights around copy points in MS Word and I used it to my advantage. It not only called out to them what I needed but also to Nikki so she could help them complete the project or change her expectations appropriately.
Now, after about 6 months, not only was I on this account but I also was managing the account service team (1-2 people). I was responsible for making sure they were on time and on budget with their clients, and were following agency SOP that I had set up when I first started at the agency. A lesson I learned the hard way, you can not have a working SOP if you do not have management to back you up.
I have to say that this was the stepping off point for me. My knowledge of the inner workings of a small ad agency, my experience managing teams and vendors as well as setting expectations with clients was developed here at BMA. This I am thankful for because it helped me in my transition to my next position with ease.
