Lydia Hinchliff joined Journey Further as Senior Performance Strategist in November 2021.
Journey Further is a performance marketing agency with offices in Leeds, Manchester and London and was listed at number 13 in the most recent Top 50 Digital Agencies ranking.
Hinchliff has a wealth of experience across the agency world, prior to joining Journey Further she has worked in various high-ranking roles at companies including MediaCom.
We found out how a recent week in her life went.
Monday
I started my week working on a market domination brief, answering the question, ‘how do we go from number four in the market to number one?’. It’s a great brief to work on. This project will cover all elements of our department’s expertise from understanding the audience with our data & insights team, developing to positioning of the brand to achieve cut through in market, the pricing & promotional strategy and media mix.
Next up is a presentation to a client on our proposal for a customer segmentation project, which gets a verbal nod. In simple terms, bringing together their 1st party data and 3rd party data to design an audience strategy; which customer segments they should be focusing on, what do we need to say to those customers and where do we need to tell the brand’s story to reach them.
I was pleased with this result as it will drive their whole strategy, prioritising our efforts on the segments most likely to give the client growth which is important anytime, but especially at a time of media inflation and consumer headwinds.
In the afternoon, I am workshopping a new process with our Growth team. Our agency ambition and capability has evolved greatly over the last six months and the type of pitches we are being shortlisted for tend to be businesses that want to scale quickly, with more integrated approaches through the line. So far we have been incredibly successful in these pitches but as always, we pause and reflect on how we can improve – it’s a really important part of our mantra.
Tuesday
I need to do both the school pick up and drop off, so it’s a little less serene than Monday morning – my son’s toast was buttered wrong and as he was putting his shoes on, he told me that they hurt because they were too small. Thankfully, Journey Further is a truly flexible workplace, meaning, as I don’t have a meeting until later in the morning, I have time to wrestle them to Asda for a pair of shoes.
I met with a growth consultant that works with one of our clients. It was a positive meeting and we had great synergy, with their suggestions aligning with our existing audience and media strategy that ensures we meet the sales targets today, but are continually building the pipeline for next month’s targets. This ensures our media approach doesn’t overlook the ‘messy middle’, nurturing the investment from awareness.
This alignment allows us to get moving quickly on kicking off the joint project of understanding our clients cohorts so we can put a strategy together centred on driving relevance by cohort through the customer journey.
Wednesday
Today is a day of two halves. My morning is spent with uninterrupted deep work, getting under the skin of the athleisure market and preparing the foundations for strategic planning following a recent pitch win. It’s an exciting market as it is still buoyant, following the WFH boom that COVID sparked. As with any growing market, media spend is high from pure plays and established titans, such as Nike etc.
Added to that, retail brands are pivoting their products to where the opportunity is in athleisure, meaning achieving SOV is challenging for businesses wanting to scale. I need to understand where there is white space, in terms of audience and media so we can drive the unfair share of voice needed to scale. To do this, we are looking for white space we can dominate either in audiences ignored by others or in media under utilised.
The afternoon is focused on speaking with the channel teams about a new client I will be working with in the coming weeks. My role is to make sure everyone has a strong understanding of the market and opportunities so we can ensure all investment is integrated, laddering up to delivering a holistic objective.
I need to dash off earlier than usual today. I have an open afternoon at school where my six-year-old is presenting her work…I forgot to put on the waterproof mascara! I am so grateful I chose a business that no matter what, I wouldn’t be asked to miss these moments.
Thursday
I headed into the office today with the rest of the Strategy team, which is always an enjoyable day of bouncing ideas around and having a bit of a giggle. The morning is spent taking our new client through our strategic roadmap of how we are going to take them from harvesting demand from the market to creating demand for them; and how that comes to life in channel. It’s also a great chance for them to meet the wider team, as our work will cover every aspect of Journey Further’s offering.
Fuelled by croissants and coffee, it’s then into our ‘work together’ session that the strategy team does every Thursday. This week, Grace from our Influencer team brought the stimulus, and we debated the role and measurement of influencer marketing. The hour flew by, as it always does!
Friday
This morning started off with some great news, two more new hires have accepted offers to join the strategy team. They were great candidates in very different ways; I think our most powerful asset is the diversity of thought we have as a team. We all come from completely different backgrounds and bring very different experiences to the table. It means despite being quite a senior team, we still have so much to learn from each other. Come join us!
No meetings today, so I decided to do a split day. I got started nice and early, so I could have a couple of hours in the garden enjoying the sunshine at lunch before wrapping things up, scheduling my work for next week and then joining our weekly all agency Learn Together. This week, Caitlin gave a brilliant talk on stress management and how we can look after one another as part of our Mental Health Awareness week initiative.
