Shauna Madden is Social & Paid Media Director at ilk Agency.
Based in Leeds, Madden initially joined the integrated agency in 2018 as PR Account Manager before rising through the ranks to her current role.
Here, she shares a recent week in her life.
Monday
Monday starts with travel down the M62 into the ilk offices – usually with a podcast to keep me company if traffic isn’t the best. We have hybrid working at ilk, with some days in the week in the office and some at home, but I typically enjoy a Monday in the office as it’s a chance to get everything in order for the week ahead.
We start with a cup of tea, obviously!, and then we have our whole-agency meeting which covers the bigger projects and things happening for the whole business. I go right from this into our weekly meeting. In this, we catch up as a comms function to go through anything happening for our clients that week. We’ll cover key priorities and anything that’s trending or reactive that we want to jump on. I then have a number of specific account catch ups with key clients, including some that we are onboarding after recent new business wins, before getting stuck into my emails for a while.
The afternoon is spent feeding into and reviewing strategy documents, and campaign plans, for some of our core clients.
Tuesday
Tuesday started in an unplanned way. As often happens with our industry, particularly when we work across so many clients in so many industries as a business, an item in the news agenda or the pop culture sphere can change how our plans for the day go if we want to jump on something.
Today, it was a reactive TikTok idea that we worked across our social media function to get designed, signed off and live as quickly as possible.
Since the start of 2023, we’ve been working with our processes to ensure that we’re able to get reactive content through the social team and studio as quickly as possible, so it’s always good when this pays off.
The rest of the day was spent catching up with the team on account priorities and next steps, preparing for a pitch taking place on Wednesday morning, and presenting a quarterly evaluation back to a client to discuss successes, key learnings and next steps for the upcoming quarter…
…All while repeatedly refreshing TikTok to see the post gaining traction, including some nice interaction from a few celebrities like Greg James and Aitch.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning was an integrated pitch, held at the ilk offices. With key team members in the room, we ran through our response to their brief, our relevant work, and then talked them through some campaign ideas that we were all really excited about as a team. It was especially exciting because one had a print remit, so we created some collateral to leave with them – when you work in social media, you don’t often get something physical to hand out so it was quite novel.
After lunch with some of the team, the afternoon was spent getting everything in order for a new client that we’ve just signed with. They’re in the consumer space, and launching a series of new products in retailers across the UK, so lots of bold activations are in the works. We’re aligning with them on their global strategy, and in charge of the execution here in the UK, so we’ve been meeting their global team and getting to find out all about their day-to-day work too.
We spent the day reviewing a series of briefs – and a huge part of it is working with them on a new ambassador partnership, so sourcing leads and speaking with our talent partners to find some suitable options within the client’s budget and audience demographics was a key task.
We’ve got the ball rolling with a few of them now, so definitely a space to watch!
Thursday
On Thursday, it was time to travel down to Birmingham to have a quarterly review with one of the agency’s integrated clients.
It saw people from our creative account management, design, strategy, copy and social functions meeting up at our client’s offices to run through some ideas for new product launches, as well as reviewing always-on activity and getting all of our priorities in place for 2024. These meetings are always a real highlight, as you leave them full of ideas and signed off processes that you can start to deliver.
Afterwards, we went out with the client and enjoyed a nice dinner, as well as getting competitive with some axe throwing and darts. A stay overnight in Birmingham meant watching game shows on TV before falling asleep, ready to start the journey home on Friday morning!
Friday
On Friday, we travelled back home and the first thing I did was cuddle my dog – because priorities are important.
I then dove into my inbox, making sure that any loose ends were tied up before the end of the day, as well as speaking to one of my account managers who is heading on a holiday for a week to make sure she’s fully handed over.
We then had two very exciting calls – one to receive a brief for new business in a sector which we have a lot of experience in, and one to speak with an ambassador from Wednesday’s outreach. Definitely a lovely way to spend a Friday!
We finish every Friday with a whole agency call, where we talk about our key highlights of the week around the whole business, and give any shout-outs to team members that have helped us, or had any big successes in that week. Then, it’s time to log-off and time to head out for dinner with friends, which is a nice end to the week!
