Having worked in PR agency land and in a dedicated Social Media role ‘client-side’ I have experienced the range of nuances and sensitivities that are only found out when you’ve got your sleeves rolled up and getting your hands dirty.
Working in-house answered many questions that arose in my agency roles:
- I learned why the client sometimes took an age to respond to what appeared to be a simple yes/no question … it’s not that we weren’t a priority, rather it had to get a yes/no from a range of people throughout the company.
- Bringing four or five people to meetings, each from a different team or department isn’t so extravagant when they operate according to their own motivations and goals.
- Often the marketing or communications team an agency pitches to has to then pitch their own version of events internally …. and it might not always come across in the original format or intention. So make it easy to re-tell your pitch so it comes out the way it’s supposed to.
- Sometimes it’s not the most creative idea that gets picked up, it’s the most creative on a level where the senior team or board will ‘get’ why they’re investing in the activity … and then you can bring in the big creative guns.
Time in both camps has brought a true empathy and understanding for what my clients go through and what other agencies I work with experience with their clients. I’ve found this to benefit the way I work with others be it a company, organisation, or another PR or digital agency because we innately ‘get’ what’s going on in the immediate situation and also behind-the-scenes.
We’d love to hear from anyone else who has worked on both sides: what have you learned?
*cool image I found representing the general dress code for both camps found here