The Life and Times of a Mad Hatter…in an Ad Agency!
Life in a small ad agency can be fast-paced, stressful, and frustrating – among other things, but it’s also very rewarding, exciting, fun, and so much more. Mostly, it requires that team members wear a lot of hats. What do hats have to do with an ad agency? Let me explain.
At The BLÜ Group when we say hats we mean responsibilities. When I started at BLÜ three years ago little did I know how many hats I would wear: Graphic designer, web designer, programmer/coder, photographer, proofer, receptionist, e-marketing developer, secretary, writer, and social media advisor. It’s a good thing I like hats…and doing a lot of different things. This is especially important when it comes to creating great work, sometimes with very little to work with from a budget and direction standpoint. It would be much easier to just do what was easiest and for many, the way that it has always been done, but that’s not the way we do things at our agency.
We take the time to step back from our work, put on a different hat and look at what we are doing. Be it a postcard design, conference report, or how we run our meetings. In a small ad agency you need to be able to wear different hats. You need to be able to look at a postcard as a designer – the colors need to work well together, the images need to work with the flow of the copy, and the copy needs to break right and make sense. Then take off your designer hat and put on your proofer hat. Go through the copy and make sure the spelling is correct, spacing is the same, and everything is consistent. Then take off your proofer hat and put on your client hat. Sure it may be a highly creative postcard, but does it make sense from the client’s perspective and more importantly, their target audience’s perspective. Finally, take off your client hat, put your designer hat back on and make the necessary revisions.
It’s all about paying attention to what you are doing, taking pride in your work, and making that work better. The mantra at BLÜ is “How can it be better?” That goes for everything we do. Wear all your hats – make sure the design is the best it can be, be proud of what you have created, and do it 100% – don’t do it half ass. Your work is the reflection of you and ultimately the ad agency. Is it a good reflection? If not, make it better. You never know who will see your work or where they will see it. Make sure it’s the best it can be.