A Day in the Life

Just a few months ago, I was unemployed, penniless, and had NO idea how to move into the advertising industry. I had tried cold-calling, emailing, networking. I was down and out, until a friend recommended I start writing a blog.

I was feeling a bit sly that day, so I named my blog “How to Not Get a Job in Advertising.” After that, I just kinda threw it together and let the cards fall where they may. I wrote a few posts, critiqued a few ads, and felt better.

The first few days, my mom and my girlfriend were my only readers. But I had so many ideas built up, I just wrote and wrote and wrote. And luckily, it became a habit. I’m still writing, despite the fact that I’m now employed, (relatively) well off, and have a pretty good boot in the door of the advertising industry. But now that I’ve climbed a bit of the ladder, I want to look back and help everyone and anyone that I can. So far, that has been by providing my input and perspective on our exciting industry.

The way I look at it, if someone is thinking about going into the advertising industry, hopefully my thoughts will give them a bit of an idea of what it’s like starting out. And I’m very excited for how this will evolve as I become more and more involved in the advertising world.

I want to start talking a bit more about what my work life is like, since I could never find a blog that spoke to me like that. I read tons of ad blogs, only a few of which are on my blogroll. I would be happy to suggest blogs to anyone who would like some extra reading.

I’m also working on a project to bring my friends’ work lives to you through this blog. I want to give everyone a chance to see what life is like all over the advertising industry. And I can’t take all the credit for this, since I was truly inspired by a discussion over on ihaveanidea. I definitely recommend checking out the discussion and adding input, as I have.

So let me be the first to start sharing “A Day in the Life”

I wake up at seven. I don’t have to be at work until around 9:30, but I like to drink my coffee out on our balcony. So after some Eggo Waffles, coffee, and a shower, I head off for the Path.

So what do I do at work? Each morning I always start with email and organizing when I come into the office. Many times people from the team will email me first thing in the morning, telling me what kind of work they will need help with during the day. I like to get a to-do list going first thing. Sometimes the clients will email us after I leave the office and you definitely want to catch up on that!

After a morning team meeting, we have client status call. We run over what we need from the client, they let us know what they need from us. And then, before you know it, I’m walking the streets of New York for lunch.

Sometimes there is a lot of work to be done after lunch, sometimes I get to kick back and surf the web for a while. I check out Digg (which I also check first thing in the morning), Lifehacker, and Scary Ideas, although there are sooo many more. If I’m really inspired, I post here on HTNGAJA. Many of my links go over on Scary Basement.

I do many other things, approving pdfs, routing job bags through the agency, and working on other projects with members of my team. As a really young member, I try to learn new things and support the team. Today I arranged to have cars pick up visiting clients from the airport and set up a breakfast and lunch meeting with them. To me, you never know exactly what you will be working on when you arrive in the office. And that can be so exciting.

And yeah, sometimes working as a young ad exec is about making copies, or shredding old work. But it hasn’t been, in my experience, running to get coffee or picking up dry cleaning. The other members of the team make me feel valued and important. If you are somewhere they don’t – you should leave!

Around six I clean off my desk, pop my headphones on, and head out of the office. I’m always exhausted, but I am really excited to see what tomorrow is going to be like.

So that was a day in the life for me. It wasn’t incredibly detailed I know, but hopefully next week I will be able to get into some more details.

I hope you guys found this valuable. If you did, let me know. If you didn’t, let me know. Also, feel free to email me a description of your day, or post it as a comment here. I would really like to keep this discussion going. And on another side note, thanks so much everyone for reading. Today I broke 1,000 unique visits from my short stay here at WordPress. So thanks everybody, I’ll see you at 2,000!