Alright, let's do this. What's up everyone? Today I want to break down the most common roles at an ad agency.
I'll explain what each role does and what kind of person would thrive in that role so that you might have a better understanding of where you want to go. go in your career. And a little disclaimer, every agency is different. Roles change and adapt based on the agency's needs and size. The way I describe a role in this video might not be the exact experience you have had or will have, but they should...
generally be the case across the industry. First, let's get into the creative department. I'm a copywriter so we'll start there.
To be super clear, it's copywriter not copywriter. You'd be surprised how many people think I'm a lawyer when I tell them what I do. As a copywriter, you are the voice of the brand.
You'll establish the tone of the clients messaging and then you'll write a bunch of stuff in that tone. Commercials, billboards, taglines, website copy, pretty much anything with words. You would also have a big hand in campaign concepting. So you'll partner with an art director and together you'll brainstorm and come up with creative solutions to the client's problems.
You may like being a copywriter if you're creative, like telling stories, can adapt to any situation since you'll be writing for a bunch of different brands who all have different tones of voice, and of course if you love writing. Although I hated writing for most of my life and now I love being a copywriter, so... Who knows on that one? Also in the creative department is the art director.
As an art director, you're on the visual side of things. You'll work with your copywriter partner to come up with a big idea, and then you'll establish the look and feel, the style, the layout of the ads, the color scheme, pretty much any visual way of bringing something to life. You're constructing the big picture. You'll be curating visual references, sometimes designing, going on photo shoots, creating presentations, working through video production. To be a great art director you should be creative, duh, a problem solver, and artistic, seeing as how art is in the name.
You don't have to be the greatest designer in the world, but it is very helpful to have some good design jobs, especially at smaller agencies where you may function as both art director and designer. Next up in the creative department is the graphic designer. This role is similar to an art director in many ways, but the focus is essentially flipped.
An art director might dabble in design, but is much heavier on the conceptual big picture. A designer does do conceptual thinking, but is much more focused on the visual executions that fall under that big picture. One example is the Coke bottles with people's names on them.
The concept of personalizing those bottles was probably brainstormed by a copywriter art director team. And then the art director explained their vision to the designer, who then actually created the label and illustrations on it and picked the font and all of that jazz. As a designer, you might work on logos, typography, website design, package design, anime...
Animation, illustration. Some designers specialize in one or a few of those things, and some like to do it all. And like I said earlier, the line between art director and designer can get blurry depending on where you work.
Alright, moving on from the creative department, let's talk about strategists, also known as planners. This role is responsible for providing the context the creatives need to do their work. A strategist learns about the consumer, the industry, culture, things going on in the world, and digs out little nuggets of truth and tension.
Those nuggets then go into the brief that the creatives use to build their ideas around. The strategists tee it up so the creatives can knock it out of the park. I am not a sports person at all, so if that metaphor didn't make sense, I sincerely apologize.
In this role, you'll be reading a lot, doing a lot of research, conducting focus groups, interviews, and then analyzing all of that research to find patterns in those little nuggets. You might make a great strategist if you're super curious, intuitive, creative, and are really good at Puzzles or finding patterns in things. Next up is account service.
The account person is the connection between the agency and the client. They handle most of the communication between those two and manage the relationship on both sides to make sure everyone's happy. And that is not an easy task.
In account... You'll be talking a lot on status calls to keep the client updated with the agency team to kick them off on projects Discussing timelines and budgets you'll be on the phone all the time constantly emailing So if it's not obvious already to succeed in this role, you should really be a people person. Or at least someone who can fake being a people person.
Effective communication is key in the account department. You should be very detail-oriented and organized, a strong negotiator, and generally positive since your goal is to keep everyone happy. Now let's talk about project managers. They are the taskmasters.
As keepers of the timeline and schedule, they make sure projects are moving forward. They communicate with all the different departments to keep everyone on the same page and get status updates on the projects. They do quality control on a lot of the work.
They check it against the budget, the scope of work, and any specific client requirements like brand guidelines or legal requirements. This role is perfect for the type A's of the world. You need to be super organized, great at timing, ...management and adaptable.
And some of the best PMs I've ever worked with are all cool, calm, and collected. When a timeline gets totally uprooted, it can cause chaos and panic. But when the PM is just so calm and patient, it's like, it's totally fine, we got this, it's...
control, it changes the vibe. So being able to work well under pressure and stay calm and keep everyone else calm is a huge plus for this role. Next up is the media team. This team actually consists of a few different roles like planners, buyers, or analysts, but it does seem like most of the time, Most people that work in this department tend to do all of those things at some point in their career. So the creatives make an ad.
The media team decides where to put that ad. They create a media plan based on what they know about the target audience to make sure that that ad is seen by the right people at the right time. Whether that's on...
the radio, on TV, on a billboard. They'll work with vendors to purchase ad placements, deliver the work to those vendors, and keep track of performance and optimize as needed. Great media people are organized.
They're analytical but also creative because you got to find interesting ways of showing ads and finding interesting places for them to be. And being good with numbers and Excel is definitely a plus. Media teams handle a lot of the client's money.
We're talking millions sometimes. So, knowing enough math to not screw that up is very helpful. And the last role I'll mention is a producer. Producers help get the creative work, well, produced.
So the creative team writes a commercial. The producer will find a film crew to shoot it. They'll scout locations.
They'll cast talent. They'll negotiate usage rights. They'll find editors to put the commercial together once it's shot.
It's a lot of communication and coordination. This person should be very patient and work well under pressure because production is almost never... never smooth sailing. They should be super organized because they're coordinating a lot of different moving parts and people. They should be comfortable with being on the go a lot.
Producers are constantly traveling and working outside of the office. And a huge plus is if you're a people person. Producers have to do a lot of mediating and negotiating, so if people like you, they're much more likely to work with you. The positions I just went over are some of the most popular, but most certainly just the tip of the iceberg.
The agency world is so deep and there are so many roles that I didn't mention because we'd been here for probably two hours if I did. But hopefully this helped guide you to a role or a department that interests you and really fits who you are. If you have questions about any of these roles or some that I didn't touch on, please just let me know in the comments. I'm happy to help. Thanks so much for watching!