It has been almost a year to the day since my career with the media team in Javelin started.
In many ways it feels like I have been here for years, yet everyday still feels fresh with new challenges and opportunities to learn as the media landscape continues to evolve, much like myself. Therefore, it feels appropriate to reflect on my first year working with Javelin in my advertising role to see how my career has progressed.
After 4 fun-filled years studying Marketing in TU Dublin (Formerly DIT), I found myself at a crossroads. When researching the different potential positions available in the marketing landscape there were several traditional marketing roles that appealed to me, however I craved something that exposed me to a more creative environment. Thankfully this is when I came across Javelin and their approach to advertising. As Javelin are a full-service agency, I benefit from exposure to all components of a campaign from start to finish involving creative, media and digital and can appreciate how they all work in harmony to help drive results. I’ve always loved the idea of advertising, whether that is classic old adverts or one just simply visually appealing, so I was delighted to join the media team and commence learning how these campaigns get brought into reality.
Since then, I have engaged with many different aspects of media. Being brought through the whole process of a campaign from start to finish is an exciting experience, and it has been incredible to learn the level of detail that media planners and buyers can go into to target their desired audience. I am lucky to work in a media team where we all have exposure to every element of these campaigns daily from planning, buying, monitoring and every other process. Ultimately, I feel this has greatly helped me progress in my career and definitely heightened my knowledge and confidence in all aspects of media.
The nerves of starting my new role faded as quickly as they began thanks to the entire agency team, who helped me settle in with ease by patiently assisting me with any difficulty I had, which I am very grateful for. Day to day life in the agency has been a treat, with no two days being the same it keeps you on your toes and creates a great environment for growth. Each day I have the lovely experience of working with clients, media suppliers and members of the many teams in Javelin which has helped build strong relationships. Every day we have the pleasure of working across a broad range of clients which has helped expose me to different industries providing a diversified experience.
A culmination of my experience so far in Javelin led me to a fantastic opportunity as recently Maria O’Hanrahan & I helped out at the IAPI led programme called Business in the Community. This was part of IAPI’s ‘World of Work’ initiative which took place in Holy Child Community School, Sallynoggin. This involved speaking to second year students about our industry, our experience of getting to this point and possible routes to be considered once finishing school.
As this is a DEIS school the program has found that it is important to begin working with the students at a younger age. This is to convey careers to students they may not have known about early on so that they can work towards them, as they have found that if the students are left to learn about careers in their final year they will have already settled on a different route or left school early.
Overall, it was an extremely rewarding experience, and we were both delighted we could share our enthusiasm for our careers at Javelin with these students. There has been a write up on our day out on IAPI’s website which also gives more information on the program, if you’re interested you can find it at the link below along with a few photos of our visit.
Rob, Media team at Javelin