Reflective essay

Agency in Review

One half of the year long agency class is coming to an end. The agency class was set up to allow advertising and public relations students an opportunity to get a feel of the agency work style. The agency was set up in a hierarchal fashion. The agency has professors that represent the partners or bosses of the agency. The professors made the final decision on what went into production and what concepts died. The directors are in charge of making sure that the teams and departments that make up the agency are moving in a progressive way. The directors are also responsible for making sure that the creative is getting signed off on time to g to production. The associates make up our research and creative associates. They are the most crucial part of the agency. The associates help with gathering the immense amount of information and research available for their team leaders and directors. Associates also make up our creative pool. The creative people are responsible for making the ideas and concepts that help the rest of the agency communicate to the general public.
We have lots of great brands and companies to work with. Because we are a one year long class, this allows us the opportunity to put more time into the campaigns we decide to implement. Our professors have done a great job on getting companies to take a chance on us to work with their company and implement an advertising campaign to boost their awareness or sales. The professors also did a great job on getting us signed up for many different national competitions.
The directors have a tough job with balancing the needs and wants of the professors and the associates and creative. The directors have done a great job of communicating with one another on what the agency needs to grow internally. The directing team has also done a phenomenal job at working with all the accounts and not just one specific account.
The associates and creative have been the fuel that makes he agency go. Their work on posters and web banner advertisements are what makes the agency move forward. The management track students have done so much research and support for their team leaders that some campaigns wouldn’t have even been attempted with out our research team having the ability to gather lots of information and truncate the information for the directors to use in the meetings with the individual account teams.
Adversely, the professors have their room for improvement too. Before I go on I should say that this is my opinion and not that of any other student in the agency. The professors singled out one account team each and really focused on them. This created a problem with some students that were not a part of an account team that the professors worked with. The three professors have very good individual skills that match what we would see in an actual agency. This will be brought up for future discussion among the director’s team and professors. Also creating a more communication friendly agency has been a little rocky from the start.
The directors have had a hard time being the buffer between the bosses and associates. The directors have taken steps to rectify the problem but the facts remain the same, the issue is still on the table. The directors also have done a sub par job on making sure the different account teams understand what is needed from them and by what date it is needed. All the work must be signed off on and it is up to the directors to make sure that the creative is signed off in a timely manner.
The creative and management associates combined to help pump out the very first campaign of the agency. While talking with the creative I learned of the shortcomings of the associates and creative teams. The final work was disliked and not up to the standards of the creative team but was still put into production. The creative team did great work but they didn’t see it that way and when the platforms started to run they made their feelings known. The management associates need to understand that when they get to and agency; they will be doing research the whole time until the get a promotion from the bottom level, and that can take time. The moaning and groining about how they thought it would be different will not change when they graduate and get agency jobs and they find themselves doing the same thing there as they did here.
The most impressive people to me in the agency have been the professionalism of the public relations students. Anything asked of them has been done and to seemingly the best of their ability. The public relation students get the job done and take great pride in what they are assigned to do, and not what they want to do. As the agency grows and student’s leave and new students come workflow will get smoother. For the very first semester of the agency, I feel we have started building a good foundation for the future classes. The students after us will have much better companies and brands to work with and the bosses will understand the importance of a whole class involvement at all times. The director’s team will understand their job roles and extent of their power in order to help the different facets of the agency grow and succeed. The associates and creative will realize the actual amount of time they have to produce something and hopefully get all their creative juices onto the mock-up before the last day so that way the agency is known as a great creative avenue for companies to pursue.
Ultimately it will take a group effort for the agency to have a successful year. This doesn’t matter if it is the hundredth anniversary or the inaugural year. Next semester will endure their own setbacks but at that time the nucleolus will be in place to better smooth out the wrinkles. I have said the “good” and “bad” of the agency. I really like the class and think that we are going in the right direction. Please look for some of our implementations on many different media platforms and in many different areas both locally and hopefully nationally next semester. I would like to thank the professors, directors team, creative, and associates for all their hard work and feel grateful that I can be apart of the inaugural year of this great program.