Ad Agency work

AS WELL AS providing a consultancy service to my own clients, I also work freelance in-house in agencies either as cover, an extra pair of hands during busy periods or for pitches. I really enjoy this as a) it gives me bursts of social interaction that I don’t get so much working on my own and b) I get to work on some really big brands. I also get to see what all the different ad agencies are like in Dublin, I’ve worked in most of them at this stage – on social strategy, campaign execution, community management as well as developing their own social media platforms.

I find it very helpful being involved in the whole process with the initial briefing and comms planning, as well as the creative development stage, helping the creatives socialise the concept.

A recent campaign I worked on with Boys and Girls was with 48 – a very youth-focused mobile network. Looking at the budget, objectives and creative platform we recommended using Snapchat to get the message across to the target audience. 84% of Irish 15-18 year olds are using this channel. It’s a good fit for 48 as their tone of voice and brand guidelines allow them to be a bit irreverent and have some craic with their audience. We got great results – fantastic engagement and response rates and we got some really lovely consumer generated content as a result.

Campaign management is also a crucial part of the process and getting the opportunity to work with the Rothco team on the Meteor Christmas 2015 campaign was a really exciting and full-on experience. The campaign “won” Christmas for the phone brand as the TV ad character Nicholas St Wenceslas took on a life of his own on social supported by a finely executed PR campaign. This was agency team-work at its finest, and we produced a proactive, engaging and interactive campaign across multiple social media channels that gave Meteor phenomenal sales results.

Another campaign I spearheaded was the social media campaign for Barry’s Driving School. I worked with the team at Irish International and the EBS client on an extremely well-executed and engaging social media brand campaign. Like Nicholas St Wenceslas, Barry had an extremely robust social media footprint and was active across all the major social media channels.

I’ve also worked with the team at McCannBlue. I got to work on Ulster Bank, Meteor (a blast from the past), Jameson’s award-winning graduate recruitment programme The Vital Ingredient, safefood’s Childhood Obesity campaign #LetsSayNo as well as numerous pitches. I also was delighted to be asked to do a couple of training sessions for their in-house weekly training.

One of my first agency gigs as a social media consultant was with Edelman Dublin, mainly overseeing the Mars social media strategy and content.  It was a great opportunity to work with large-scale brands such as Uncle Ben’s, Pedigree Chum, Whiskas and Dolmio.  They have great activations, such as Pedigree Adoption Drive,  Whiskas Big Cat Little Cat and Ben’s Beginners. These campaigns work very hard to drive sales and also increase brand saliency scores, so agreeing KPI’s and demonstrating ROI are an important part of the social media strategy. It was also interesting to return to the world of confectionery too (they have freezers full of ice-creams everywhere in the Mars offices…) working with fantastic, iconic brands such as M&M’s, Galaxy and Maltesers.  Galaxy, in particular has a very active social media presence with really clever and resonant campaigns like Style Exchange and #FromGalaxywithLove. The Edelman tools are also very impressive and the digital culture of the network was inspiring and really educational.

I’ve also worked in TBWA\Dublin, Vocal, Red Dog, Publicis Dublin and Epsilon.