Employment & 40s

It turns out that I am now gainfully employed, complete with full benefits, a 401k, and a salary. Most of you know about this recent positive development in my life, but I've yet to really explain to anyone what exactly I actually do. I wrote this post at the end of my first week, but was hesitant to post for reasons explained to all of you in person.

So, let me tell you a bit about my new employer before I start. The company I'm working for is a privately owned advertising agency with its offices in Minneapolis (Advertising, you say? In Minneapolis? Go to New York!). The private ownership is a positive thing - we aren't accountable to some giant multinational holding company, so we have less bureaucracy, more creativity, and a much more comfortable work environment. One of the things that the agency prides itself on is community - everybody in the office gets to know everyone else, there's all sorts of parties, sports teams, happy hours, etc. They make it a really fun place to work. We're also on the rise.

So what exactly do I do? Well let me start by explaining what media does. In a nutshell, media takes the creative produced by, well, "the creatives" and figures out what exactly we should do with it based on the target audience demographics suggested by the account strategists. Media figures out what types of media to buy, where to buy it, how much to buy, etc so that we can place ads for our clients. It's sort of like creating the battle plan, where the creative material serves as your soldiers and the strategy info is your intelligence. At a non-traditional agency like mine, this requires a lot of creativity and brainstorming. Nothing is off limits. I was in a few brainstorms this week and it's really a pretty cool process. We also hear plenty of pitches from sales reps from different media companies.
From a hierarchical standpoint, I am at the bottom. There's a lot of more "administrative" stuff that I have to learn to do, along with just the general art/science of the whole discipline before I can even begin to think about moving up. This stuff includes media plan flow charts, media buy authorizations, learning the billing software, etc. It's a lot of "support", but that's how you learn. I'm enjoying it.

So, that's pretty much my job.

In other news, some of us experienced an epic weekend. Watching you guys swim at conference was pretty sweet - I enjoyed all the races, seeing everyone, etc. 40s last night was ridiculous. I still have a headache despite taking a two hour nap earlier. All I can say is that the cobra struck and I still feel the venom. I need the antidote. I'll let someone else give a more comprehensive post on the weekend's festivities.