All posts tagged account planning

Hey Google: Give Me Back My Cookies

Tech giants Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have all made plans to replace cookies. This stems from a desire for the giants to have more control over the $120 billion dollar digital advertising industry. Now, I’ve long disliked cookies (except for the gooey kind that my mother makes), so normally I’d cheer for anything that leads to their demise. However, this move reduces competition in the digital advertising space and makes me nervous about the ever-diminishing ability for consumers to control their privacy on the internet.

You see, normally I delete cookies every month or so. On one hand, I like that I don’t have to log onto Amazon every time I fire up Firefox. On the other hand, I also don’t like retargeting ads stalking me after I do competitive research or troll the internet. It’s refreshing to wipe my cookies every once in a while–to wipe the slate clean.

If Google and the ilk replace cookies, I am concerned that I will no longer have the option to make myself relatively anonymous anymore. I know nothing in this world is free and the price of ‘free’ services like Facebook are my information, but I should still have some control. It’s frightening that my information could fall solely into the hands of few tech companies. If these companies cut out the more than a thousand competitors, they will have created an oligopoly on my information, and who knows how invasive they could become?

As an aspiring ad maven, I should be at peace with tracking data. The reality is that I’m not. I understand the need for accurate information to maximize advertising effectiveness and consumer insights. I just wonder at what point we have a moral obligation to draw the line. And as of right now, I might not love cookies, but at least I know how they taste.

Learn how to opt out of targeted Google+ ads

It’s Time to Think Unconventionally

As much as a cultural hit as it is, Mad Men is not really a show about advertising; it’s a drama with the window dressing of advertising–the pretense of it. And if we only subscribe to a Mad Men mentality, we miss out on much in the world of marketing and advertising.

Take Jack Morton, a brand experience agency, for example. They fall more on the marketing side of things; you probably won’t see TV ads or YouTube pre-roll ads from them. Yet they’re fulfilling an exciting marketing need. They’re the agency that brands go to when they want to launch big. Jack Morton is associated with some big names: They’re the ones that launched the Born This Way Foundation and they’re the ones that are currently working with Subway to cross-promote The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

Attending Jack Morton’s Brand Camp and my experiences planning at PJA Advertising + Marketing has led me to realize that I was approaching the world of marketing from too narrow of a perspective. I’m constantly reminded that working on a big name client, at a big name B2C advertising agency and making expensive campaigns should be my ultimate goal.

Now, I wouldn’t mind working on a big, established client at an established agency, but it excites me equally thinking about what I could build from little to nothing. I’ve never been one to want to start at the finish line. I’ve always wanted to start at the beginning so that I can proudly say I ran the whole race.

The thing that attracts me the most to advertising is that it’s a field where you can learn a little about everything and get paid for it. And I want to soak in the world.

Check out Jack Morton’s upbeat agency reel:

Lessons Learned from Two Measly Weeks in Advertising

I’m smart and experienced. Just look at my glasses and my money.

I’m beyond a greenhorn when it comes to the advertising industry. I have absolutely no experience in the industry. Okay, so technically I was a copywriter last semester in BU Ad Lab. I also helped speed write and edit a book on advertising in three hours.

But I’ve never spent any significant time in an agency. Sure, I’ve had the privilege of going inside great agencies like Hill Holliday, Allen & Gerritsen, McGarryBowen, and OMD. But that’s not the same as working and spending time in an agency.

That’s all changed though. I finally got to spend time this summer as an account planning intern at PJA Advertising + Marketing in Cambridge, MA. PJA is an award-winning, primarily B2B-focused agency.

Here’s some observations from my two weeks on the job and my two completed semesters of grad school:

1. Leave Your Suit in the Closet

The Mad Men days of buttoning up are done for. As a more liberal field, advertising has moved away from strict dress codes. Even an agency like PJA, which works in some conservative fields, is mostly jeans and a button down. There’s beer and wine in the fridge too.

2. Get Out of the Closet

I spent all 4 years of my undergraduate career fighting for LGBT rights on a mostly closeted campus. In advertising, I don’t feel like I have anything to fight for. If I tell someone I am gay, it’s basically the equivalent of me telling them I have a thumb. No one cares. It’s an accepting environment where you are free to be you.

3. Put your Phone on Silent

The ad professionals I talk to aren’t kidding: advertising is a 24/7 job. It can be quite hard to balance work and play. If you want a job where you can completely separate the two, then advertising is not for you. You have to really love this industry. I’m the type that gets excited about ad placements, so I think I’m in a good place.

4. I’m Fluent in Spanish and Advertising

Advertising people in general use buzzwords that the average person would never know or use. They speak of things like touch points, native advertising, noise, and brand ethos. It’s interesting that an industry built on effective use of communication would use terms that would make the everyday person scratch their head.

5. Ad People are Wicked Smaht

They aren’t rocket scientists, but advertising people tend towards incredible intelligence. I’ve had the honor of meeting people in this business that are so smart and hardworking that it’s frightening. I’ve met scary-smart people like Edward Boches, CIO of Mullen, and Melissa Schulz, SVP, Global Group Account Director at Publicis Kaplan Thaler. The people at PJA have years of experience and are scary-smart in their own right.

6. Where are all the Black People?

It has been all over the news: for the first time minorities make up the majority of babies and toddlers. The minority is now the majority. Advertising doesn’t really reflect this. This might be because most people in advertising have a bachelor’s degree and many minorities lack access to affordable education.

Kasey Fechtor, Brand Planner, on the Anatomy of Strategy

Type breaking into advertising in Google and it will return about 460 million results. That’s more than five times the results that pop-up when you type breaking into acting. It’s definitely tough out there for an ad maven in the making. But don’t give up before you get started. Read what Kasey Fechtor (@kfechtor) has to say about the field first. She’s got some advice that will help you get to ad land.

Kasey is a brand planner at PJA advertising+marketing in Cambridge, MA. She graduated from Columbia with a BA in Creative Writing and started her career at Arnold Worldwide. Photographic evidence suggests that she owns at least one silly mustache.

How did you end up in the advertising/marketing industry?

I got an early start in advertising when I was two; my dad was/is a creative director, and I did a voiceover reciting “This Little Piggy” for an anti-litter campaign in Cleveland (it won a Telly award, and my dad ordered a trophy for me). As a kid, I always loved getting to spend a day at the agency (what kid wouldn’t like a pinball machine, free food, and a big set of fancy markers?), and I was always proud to see his ads on tv. My senior year of high school I interned at an agency, where I took a stab at some copywriting and reverse-engineered some creative briefs. My intern advisor there gave me a copy of “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This,” and that book followed me to college and remains on my bookshelf here in Boston.

What drew you to strategy?

I studied creative writing in college, and I thought I wanted to be a copywriter. But what I loved most about writing was getting into my characters’ heads, and I would purposefully pick characters who I knew nothing about so that I could learn about someone new. A professor once said that the key to a great story is really understanding your character and that, if you ever got stuck, you should go back to the character; he almost always had the answer. Change “story” to “ad” and “character” to “consumer,” and that’s brand planning.

What advice would you give someone trying to break into the advertising field who does not necessarily have a lot of experience?

My advice is to go and seek out advice from as many people as you can. If you know someone in advertising, or if you know someone who knows someone in advertising, chances are they’ll be happy to sit down and talk to you. Advertising is this pay-it-forward industry — almost everyone has been helped by someone else at some point, and that makes everyone more willing to help others.

What are some characteristics of a good strategic planner?

The best planners are curious, observant, and insightful. They have a good balance of right and left brain — the “creative” and the “strategy” of “creative strategy.” In terms of background and education though, a good planner can come from anywhere. I’ve met a great planner who went to Miami Ad School and another who started her career in zoology.

What do you do on your typical day? Is there a typical day?

There is no typical day in advertising, because it’s all client-driven. But depending on the day, you may find me writing a brief, researching competitors, interviewing a consumer or analyst, reading up on my clients’ industries, designing a survey, or going to a conference. Oh, and doing my time sheets. They don’t tell you about time sheets in school.

2 Comments

by jonathandecosta on April 4, 2013 • Aside • Permalink

Posted in advertising, big ideas

Tagged account planning, Advertising, brand planning, breaking into advertising, pja, strategy

Posted by jonathandecosta on April 4, 2013

https://adsthatdontsuck.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/kasey-fechtor-on-the-anatomy-of-strategy/

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All posts tagged account planning

Hey Google: Give Me Back My Cookies

It’s Time to Think Unconventionally

Lessons Learned from Two Measly Weeks in Advertising

Kasey Fechtor, Brand Planner, on the Anatomy of Strategy

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