What Happens Within (The Agency)

Flume’s way of working, how do we differ? At Flume, we believe in teaching others and helping people grow. We often get interns coming to us, and each one of them are always fascinated by the different jobs the agency has. Each individual is an expert in his/her field yet gets given the opportunity to step out of their original role.   When interns come to Flume, they have studied and thought they knew what field they wanted to be in, yet once they arrive, they are not so sure anymore. I have worked in a big agency in my first job and I can safely say that not all systems are the same.   How does it work, and where do we start?   It all starts with a brief, whether it is a written brief, a verbal brief or a Whatsapp brief, you have to start somewhere.   Contact number one: Account managers. And no, we don’t work in finance. Now that we got that out of the way… The account manager’s role is to be the main contact between the client and the agency. The account manager has to dissect the brief and make sure it has all the information needed to be able to brief the creatives. An account manager needs to understand the creative requirements and should be able to advise the client on best practice for their brand. An account manager should have a good eye for detail and being a people’s person doesn’t hurt either. At Flume a few of our account managers are strategists, they make sure the project has a purpose and goes down the right funnel amongst many other brilliant ideas.   Which brings me to contacts number two: The creatives These are the brains behind all the most amazing ideas and beautiful creative work. The designers (and/or art directors) and copywriter teams up to come up with a concept that will carry the campaign. It all starts with an idea, there are no bad ideas, one thought can spark another one that turns into brilliance.   Once the idea is approved the crafting begins and once that is approved it is the turn of the media buyers to take place.   What do they really do? They sit at a desk with multiple screens and look at a lot of numbers, but really, they are the reason behind the fact that your ads are seen by the right people on the relevant platforms. The media buyers will put media strategy and media schedules together for our clients, with predicted impressions, Cost Per Click etc. They can build audiences and target exactly who your brand wants to target, report on each campaign and amend from the learning, monthly. If something is not working (we are not reaching our preferred targets and objectives), they are most likely able to tell us why and make sure we change it for best results.   This makes it sound like our job is done here right? Think again, our community managers are right behind the media buyers, answering all queries that customers might have. They have to learn the tone of voice in which to respond for all different brands, they make sure the customers are looked after and report back if there are any problems or queries that need attending to by the brand itself. Good community management is imperative when your brand is on any social media platform.   We also have other special skills in-house, such as developers who can create the most intricate and beautiful websites, the cleverest bots, send all your emails and SMS. We also have animators who create the most amazing videos and animations.   What we really believe makes Flume so great to work with however, is that we have replaced the traffic managers with the account managers which means that tasks go straight from the client to the creatives making the process a whole lot faster. The media buyers are next to the creatives so that if anything doesn’t work the message is quickly relayed and fixed.   Our agency is full of people with weird job titles but we all make it matter.