Role: Senior Account Director and New Business Development
Company: Genesis Advertising
Track Record:
TRACK RECORD
Dawn works for Genesis Advertising — one of Northern Ireland’s leading full service advertising and design agencies. Since joining Genesis in 2006, Dawn has worked on many high profile accounts including Invest NI, SPAR, Irish Distillers, First Trust Bank and Dale Farm.
In April 2013, Dawn was promoted to the Senior Management Team and is now senior account director and New Business Development.
Dawn has been responsible for many major projects including Invest NI’s global campaign to generate awareness of Northern Ireland as a smart place to do business, Irish Distiller’s redesign of packaging of global brands such as Powers, Midleton Single Pot Still whiskey portfolio and West Coast Cooler, and the creation and implementation of campaigns for SPAR UK’s six regional marketing centres.
7am
I’d love to say that I rise at 5.30am and go for a 10-mile run, but honesty prevents me! At 7am my alarm goes off and my day begins.
Sometimes it can be much earlier if I have a red eye flight to visit a client in the UK or am getting the
8am
Enterprise train to Dublin. But my morning usually begins by checking my emails, feeding my two cats, then getting myself ready for work.
8.15am
I leave the house and make my way to work. I don’t live too far away, but there is always rush hour traffic to negotiate.
9am
I arrive at my desk, check my emails and look at my schedule for the day. I’m one of those people who loves lists.
They help me prioritise and keep on top of things so it may be no surprise that early on I check my list for the day.
Every week I write a plan detailing all the milestones I need to achieve for the week, including meetings scheduled and preparation needed.
One thing you learn in advertising is that things change very rapidly and to always be prepared for a regular curve ball.
9.30am
I get ready for my first meeting — run through the agenda, checking the information I need to cover, the questions I need answered and the decisions I need made, so I can leave the meeting with clear actions to take the project forward.
10am
Usually the first meeting of the day with one of my clients. Typically I have a lot of meetings throughout the week and my job involves travelling to see clients at their offices.
I enjoy getting out and about, every day is different. I am a very social person. I like meeting new people.
12pm
Meeting finishes, now it’s back to my desk to write up the minutes and get the contact report out to the client with clear actions, roles and responsibilities, to ensure the project moves forward to plan.
The media plan presented to the client the previous week has been signed off, so it’s time to confirm with the media director that she can proceed with booking.
1pm
Grab a quick sandwich at my desk then it is onto the next meeting. I am living proof that not all people in advertising have long, glamorous lunches!
1.30pm
I have a creative progress meeting with the creative director, her team and the head of strategy to review new concepts for a new TV campaign.
All Genesis’s creative ideas are developed as a direct response to research and strategy. We review the creative brief together and then the creative team takes us through ideas. We review the ideas, scrutinise them and refine.
3pm
I attend a management meeting with the senior management team to talk about current issues and the strategic direction of the company.
I update the team on developments in new business as part of my role is to develop that for the agency through networking and developing Genesis’ marketing collateral.
4.30pm
I check-in with my team on the status of client projects, send any artwork amendments through to client for approval and make some phone calls.
5pm
The agency is officially closed and phones become quiet, so I take this time to write the studio brief for a new packaging design project.
This is also a great time for me to think through a project, gather my own thoughts and ideas about a campaign and provide the studio with the foundation to develop creative concepts.
I also rewrite my ‘to do’ list for the next day and have everything ready to brief the studio the next morning.
6.30pm
I leave the office, arrive home, feed my two lovely cats Blue and Coco (who I sometimes call my furry children!) have some dinner and then my advertising ‘hat’ is replaced with my musical one.
It’s a quick turnaround as I am a member of Fortwilliam Musical Society and I am playing the lead in its 2014 production of Thoroughly Modern Millie.
I started singing when I was 10 and am currently working towards my LCM Diploma in Classical Singing. Of course there are some evenings when a night in sounds very appealing but being part of a musical society has been a life-enriching experience.
We are a very diverse group of personalities, ages and interests but singing and performing has a wonderful way of bringing people together.
10pm
I arrive home, get ready for bed, watch TV for half an hour then crawl into bed at 11pm.