So JB, how long have you been at TKF and what is your role?
I’ve been working at TKF since April 2021 so am coming up on my first year with the agency. I’m an Investment Executive working within the AV Team, managing our clients’ TV spend to optimize the efficiency of their TV campaigns.
Tell us about your typical workday as an AV Investment Executive?
My morning starts by updating the current month’s schedules for each client which allows us to see any changes in spend across every station where we plan to be on air. Given the tight TV market that we’ve found ourselves in over the past few months, this means we’re frequently seeing significant changes day-to-day so a large chunk of each workday is spent liaising with the many sales houses and asking them to making necessary changes to each laydown. These can be large requests when working across multiple clients so it keeps our job easy to be nice with them and maintain our good relationship – which often means nattering for a good few minutes!
From there, we have to make sure we’re keeping our clients up-to-date on the expected performance of their TV spots. This is usually through a weekly report where we collate all response data (calls, texts, online traffic, donations, etc.) – many of our clients are charities, so they mostly want to see how many donations they’ll get off the back of each spot!
At the same time, we can’t just focus on the current month on air – we’ve always got to be planning ahead to approve the next month and then secure budgets for the month after that! It’s a lot of spinning plates for the AV Team but it’s always exciting and hands-on.
What’s one of your favourite parts of your role?
At the end of each month, we reconcile our spend with the sales houses – we cost up the value of each spot that went to air and check that the sales house agrees on the total spend. Often their figures won’t immediately align with ours which means we’ve got to investigate all potential causes that might cause the discrepancy. We check everything on our end to make sure it’s correct (price, expected spend, universe, spot count, etc.) and then go through the sale houses data to spot anything out-of-place. It can be quite tedious but it’s always incredibly satisfying finding the incorrect piece of data and solving the “puzzle”!
When you joined TKF we were mainly working from home, how did you find starting at the agency in this way?
This was the second new role I’ve started remotely so I was used to training with a new team over video calls but of course it does come with its own challenges – I can probably count the number of times I’ve met my manager face-to-face on one hand and it’s been almost a year! Nevertheless training was made much easier having Frankie as my guide, as she was always a positive, chatty, friendly face at the start of each morning and was a great teacher so I’d like to think I picked up everything fairly quickly. In fact since then, we’ve had a new Assistant join the team who I’ve been helping to train over Teams – circle of life!
What’s one of your biggest tips for hybrid working?
Hybrid working has been quite a dream for me (pandemic-fear aside) as I’m fortunate enough to live with my girlfriend in a flat just big enough for us both to have our own space to work – which means not only do I have a dedicated area to focus on my tasks, but that I get to have my morning coffee breaks with my best friend every day! Maintaining a neat area for your work is incredibly vital – I can be quite particular at times, but I do think “messy space, messy mind” carries a lot of truth!
What’s your favourite way to unwind after a busy day?
I’ve recently gotten quite into poker – playing online mostly, but a few friends from uni play too so we sometimes host games at the weekend. If anyone at TKF would be up for a regular NL Texas Hold’Em game, I’d be happy to help set that up – I’m really not very good so I’m basically offering away free money!
Do you have a hidden talent?
I write and release my own music – I haven’t had much time to lately, but if you search my name on Spotify (Jonathan Blake) you’ll find a few albums and EPs I’ve released over the past few years.