What Do You Do For a Living?

When I meet new people, the question always comes up, "What do you do for a living?" It's like in college when you first meet someone and you always ask, "what's your major?" I guess it is just human nature for us to just be curious about what other people do. 

I think I've answered this question 100 different ways and each time I'm not sure people get it. The typical response when you say you work in Advertising or at an Advertising Agency is that you "must" make the TV commercials. Well, nope, I buy the space for the commercials to run. Huh? I guess people don't realize there is more to advertising then creative. 

I've been trying to think what is the best way to describe what my colleagues at McCulloch + Company and I do and I've simplified it to this:

"We are media planners and buyers and we plan and purchase the media channels to deliver our clients' message to help them grow their business."

Still not getting it? 

Let me try to break it down this way:

• For a client's message to be seen or heard by consumers, be that on TV, Radio, Online, etc, someone must purchase the space on each of the selected mediums 
• The selection (planning) of what media channels to purchase has to be determined by someone
• Someone has to plan what media channels should be purchased based on research, available creative, budget parameters, target audience and numerous other factors
• Once a plan is approved by the client, someone then negotiates pricing (saving client money and stretching their marketing budget) with each of the media channel vendors to secure placement for the creative to run

That SOMEONE is US: Media Planners and Buyers

While we are not the creative ones making the ads, we are the creative ones that develop and implement media plans. Our skills lie in the development and execution; securing the best placement for our client, while also making their marketing dollars go further to deliver a successful campaign. We cultivate those vendor relationships as well resulting in added value and first-to-marketnew ideas for our clients, not to mention saved time. While we may not have a shiny new TV commercial to show you, we've got color flowcharts that will blow your mind. 

At the end of the day, we love what we do and are always looking for new clients and partners to help, because we are good at what we do.

A client's success is our success.