Melissa Fields is an account director at ilk Agency, an integrated marketing agency based in Leeds.
With staff based across Leeds, Manchester and London, the Leeds agency recently marked its 25th year in business.
Following a stint as a member of cabin crew at Emirates, Fields joined the agency back in 2016 initially as a creative account executive before rising through the ranks to her current role in 2021.
Here, she shares a recent week in her life earlier this year…
Monday
It’s the start of my first full week after returning from a two month travelling sabbatical, and it’s looking busy! So I’m ready to get stuck in. It’s also the first Monday of the month, which means ilk treats us all to a North Star coffee (white choccy mocha for me…basic but delicious!). We start the day with a big agency-wide catch up, going through top priorities, big projects and upcoming new business opportunities. Then as usual on a Monday, I catch up with my team to run through capacities and ensure everyone is set for the week ahead.
Monday lunchtimes are reserved for exercise and one of our ilk perks is a weekly PT session so there’s a group of us who will head outside for that. The sun was shining today for a change so it was nice to get out and get moving!
We’ve got a new business pitch tomorrow (straight in at the deep end after my travels!) so I spend my afternoon getting prepped for that, making sure the doc has had a thorough check and do a final pitch run through with the team.
Our working hours changed a couple of months ago but as I’ve been away I’ve not fully felt the benefits. But today I’ve really noticed that finishing that little bit earlier really does add to your day, the lighter evenings definitely help too!
Tuesday
The pitch today is in the morning which is always my preferred time so you can come in fresh and ready to go. It all went really well and the client team were lovely so fingers crossed on that one. This would be a new creative client but with lots of scope to expand into other services and it’s a company who are fairly local to Leeds so we’d love the opportunity to work with them.
We’ve had an exciting new brief from a client on the social side, too, who needs some creative and production support. So I caught up with the team after lunch on the requirements for this and we pulled together some ideas along with ballpark timings and costs.
Wednesday
I started my Wednesday morning with a HIIT class at North Studio. Although the early alarms are sometimes difficult to set, it always makes me feel 10 times better afterwards. Today’s also a working from home day so after my class I get a few jobs done around the house ahead of starting work at 9am. I love being in the office with everyone but I do also love my days at home.
We’ve had another new business enquiry that’s come in and we’re scheduled to discuss the brief with the client tomorrow so some of my morning is spent preparing for this and generating questions with the team.
Wednesdays are all about mid-week check-ins too, I’ve got 1-2-1s scheduled throughout the day to see how everyone is, what they’re up to and making sure we’re on track with everything that was planned for that week. We’re looking to implement a new project management software at ilk so we have some discovery calls this afternoon. It feels like quite a daunting task to switch the whole agency over to something new but we’re hoping to see increased productivity and ease for the teams which will ultimately be a real positive for the business!
Thursday
I always start my Thursday mornings with studio planner admin, making sure the allocation of all jobs and time is correct and set for the following week, sourcing any external support if required. The rest of my morning is spent going through our internal ‘Client ilk’ evaluation ahead of this being presented to our board next week. We treat ourselves in the same way we do clients to hold ourselves accountable for our own brand and it’s always nice to see the results paying off!
I had a bit of a different lunch today, our client and operations director who’s currently on maternity leave came in to see us with her new arrival so it was lovely to catch up with her and get some cuddles too! My afternoon started on a call with one of our longest standing creative clients about a big project on the horizon. There are lots of moving parts but it’s a really great opportunity for their business and how they work with their customers so it’s brilliant to be involved and we’re excited to get started.
The final meeting of the day was our new business prospect who’d been in touch this week. It was great to chat through the brief and be able to interrogate that with them to ensure our response is properly tailored to their objectives and how we can help to achieve them. We need to get working on our proposal so post-call I get relevant meetings booked in and ensure the team are all up to speed.
Friday
I’m actually working from London today as we’re down to visit friends for the weekend. This is what I love about our hybrid working approach; it gives us so much more flexibility to be able to choose where we work on our home days. The first Friday of every month always starts with team and client time reports for the previous month. As a business, it’s so important that we’re monitoring time spent vs time quoted and reviewing how billable our team and accounts are. Yes, it’s an admin job that some don’t enjoy but there’s something that I find strangely satisfying about it!
We kicked off the afternoon with a brainstorm for one of our fully integrated clients. They touch every service in the agency so it’s always good when we get together to discuss ideas as we can approach things from so many different angles. We got some really nice outputs for BAU activity and campaigns that we’re looking to build into our Q4 plans.
Fridays always finish with ‘The week that was’, a full agency get together where everyone gives a highlight from the week. It could be a project they enjoyed, a new business win or calling out someone who’s helped/supported them this week so it’s always a nice way to round off the week. Then it’s straight to the pub in sunny London to kick start the weekend!
