Like other media agencies we handle all the money behind the advertising you see, from posters to magazines, from ads on the radio to sports on television.
I am based in the Advanced Techniques Group (ATG) consultancy unit, which advises our clients on how much to budget and when and where they should spend their budgets in order to make the most of their marketing investment.
I joined the ATG unit nearly two years ago. My academic background is a postgraduate degree in mathematical economics. My first real job was with the Danish office of a marketing and brand research agency. I worked there as a student during my last two years at university, and upon finishing my final exams I moved to the UK to start a job I had been offered at the European HQ in Leamington Spa. After half a year there I decided to move down to London. By pure coincidence, I found a job with the company’s sister agency. In my job I use my knowledge of statistics, micro/macroeconomics, and advertising/marketing.
Many companies subscribe to vast amounts of data to better understand their own business. The ATG helps our clients to utilise all this information through the application of econometric modelling. Econometrics is concerned with explaining and quantifying relationships between real-life data. We can, for example, build models that explain how sensitive the client’s sales are to changes in price, advertising levels, distribution, competitor activity, weather, the British economy, and so on.
Modelling projects are time-consuming, and they can last up to several months, depending on the scope of the analysis. The job involves a lot of data-crunching and economic analysis, and so skills with numbers are obviously a prerequisite, but just as importantly one must be good at communicating results in a trustworthy way. I’ve been here for nearly two years and I can honestly say that the work gets more interesting every day!
Tom – Media Analyst