A Day in the Life: Account Manager

There is no true “typical day” for an account manager at an advertising agency. Some days you may head into the office without a single meeting on your calendar and with a long to-do list of items that you expect to have time to complete when *WHAM* the unexpected comes up and your original to-do list goes out the window. Other days your calendar can be bombarded with back to back meetings which can make it difficult to activate on the updates that come from those meetings. Thankfully those wild days don’t happen too often. What follows below is what an “average” day looks like as an account manager here at JP Marketing.

6:30 am: Wake up, do a quick yoga workout to wake up my bodyand get moving. Next, I check my phone for emails and Slacks that may have come in late the night before. Then I get ready for the day.

7:30 am: Head to the office while listening to my favorite morning podcasts: Robinhood’s Snacks Daily for business news and NPR’s Up First to get caught up on everyday news (turns out there are perks to having a bit of a commute).

7:55 am: Arrive at the office, make some coffee and get the day going! JP just bought an electric kettle for the coffee bar and I am loving it for pour-overs. Fresh coffee > K Cups everyday!

8:00 am: I sit down and review my remaining action items from yesterday and make a list of priorities for the day ahead. It may be old school but I like to use post-its for my top priority items. I keep my daily post-it note on my laptop so I can look at my top priorities throughout the day to keep me on task and motivated (plus nothing feels better than being able to cross off an item with red pen once you’ve taken care of it!). After making my top priority list I look at my Google Calendar, which is usually riddled with reminders, updates and meetings. From that, I make a secondary digital to-do list.

8:15 am: Sift through emails and project updates from Mavenlink (our project management software) and send off my first round of emails for the day updating clients and JP team members on projects as needed.

9:00 am: Meet with Pablo, one of our web developers, to review the final round of design revisions for a client website and make sure we’re all set to schedule our final website training for the client once their site has been launched.

10:00 am: Lead an internal weekly check-in meeting with five other team members to ensure we are moving existing projects along and preparing for our quarterly check-in happening in a couple weeks.

10:30 am: Open new Mavenlink projects that were discussed during our check-in. Because we are preparing for our upcoming quarterly check-in, we need to develop creative content to cohesively work with our pitch of the Q4 marketing strategy.

11:00 am: Attend my first client meeting of the day. This one is a conference call to review the list of taglines we presented to the client. They have narrowed down to their two favorites and our goal for the meeting is to discuss next steps once a tagline is officially selected.

11:30 am: After the client meeting is over, I post project updates to Mavenlink and tag our production manager and other team members who are working on the project to provide them with an update. Next, I send off a conference report of the meeting to the client for their reference to what was discussed as well as our game plan for the next steps.

Noon: Lunch time! We have a full oven, gas stove, multiple microwaves and a full sized fridge here at our JP office so lunches can get pretty lively. That being said… some days lunch happens at my desk; the emails come in so quickly that sometimes it’s nice to just work on through.

12:30 pm: Continue to review and respond to incoming client requests and project updates.

1:30 pm: Begin prep for my second client meeting for the day. This is one of the larger client accounts I manage. This account has many ongoing projects. Because of this we meet with the client bi-weekly to ensure everyone is up to date and expectations are being met. To prep for the meeting, I review the agenda and set my mind on what it is I plan to accomplish during the meeting. I like to bring tangible items for the group to review so I print out new ads, next month’s social media calendar and a flyer our creative team developed for the client’s final review.

2:00 pm: Before I head to my client meeting, I sit down with our production manager to discuss the budget needed for an upcoming project. A client has requested a hand-illustrated poster to promote an upcoming community event. However, before we move forward with design, I need to prepare an estimate for the client to approve. My goal with this meeting is to find out how many hours a designer would need to provide two alts for the client to choose from for this custom poster.

3:00 pm: Sit in my last client meeting for the day.

4:30pm: I’m back in the office from my last client meeting. Time to buckle down and knock out some action items before I leave for the gym.

5:00 pm: Five o’clock already! I update my to-do list and respond to another round of client emails. My goal is to set myself up for a smooth morning tomorrow.

5:30 pm: Head to MetalMark (Fresno’s local climbing gym). Today is a cardio day. I am not a big fan of cardio but it’s a must, especially during hiking season… or skiing season… so pretty much all year for me haha.

7:00 pm: Stop by the grocery store to grab some things for dinner. I’m thinking a big dinner salad with a little bit of everything? Lately my favorite has been lettuce, tomato, corn, avocado, green onion, bacon, chicken and quinoa!

8:30 pm: Time to reeelax! I recently bought a 1,000 piece puzzle so I love to throw on a true crime podcast (lately it’s been Crime Junkie or MFM) and unwind for the day. My second go to is The Office… because dry humor is my favorite!

10:00 pm: I break out my ukulele. I haven’t always been good about practicing my instruments consistently so I’ve set a goal to play for at least 10 minutes everyday. It’s not much but sometimes that’s all I have the energy for while other days I’ll stay up for an extra hour in order to practice a new song. Next, I get ready for bed and I’m ready to repeat the cycle tomorrow!

DONELLE SIROIS, Account Manager