When I eagerly accepted a job with Design the Planet to serve as a Project Manager, I wasn’t 100% positive of what would be expected of me, or what exactly to anticipate from my new position. My education and previous occupations have each given me the opportunity to take part in the art of communication via several different platforms (advertising, marketing, print media, public relations, and broadcast), and although I knew that my new job would be heavily writing-oriented, I didn’t know which one of these areas would be incorporated the most during my days. In the short time that I have spent with the company thus far, I have found that communication in all of its forms is definitely at the heart of what my job is all about, and it is necessary for me to call upon all of those unique skills and experiences throughout my day-to-day Design the Planet activities.
The wonderful, exhilarating, and sometimes challenging thing about working at a marketing and branding firm is that you are dealing with numerous different projects a day, each of which is in totally different stages of development and progression. As someone who oversees accounts, this means that you are constantly switching gears, meeting one prospective client about potentially creating or revamping their website, then putting the finishing touches on the content for a brochure that is about to go out, then proofing an advertisement for any grammatical or spelling errors, then telephoning another client to check in about a printing order, and so on and so forth. In order to do this job to the best of my ability, I have quickly learned that organization, efficiency, and constant communication are the three key factors in ensuring that I have a successful and productive workday.
During the time that I’ve spent these past few weeks observing and “soaking it all in,” I’ve also learned a great deal about the immense amount of detail and planning that goes into building a company’s brand. There is so much more involved in cultivating a company’s image and public perception than a mere logo or website, and it has been surprising and exceedingly informative to witness and take part in this extensive creative process. Accompanying Adrienne (the founder and Creative Chief of Design the Planet) as she goes about her daily business has allowed me invaluable insight into projects at their initial stages, when they’re being finessed and finalized, and the millions of checkpoints in between. As a result of this method, I already feel as though I have attained more knowledge about branding, design, and corporate communication in just two weeks than I did during the year I worked as an advertising account executive or the semester I spent as an intern in the Marketing and Communications Department of a Fortune 100 company.
I knew based upon the nature of the job and the friendly, positive, and fun-loving attitudes of my creative co-workers that working at Design the Planet would be a blast, but what I didn’t know was how mentally stimulating and freeing it would be to have the opportunity to tackle accounts in such different fields and stages of development. It truly does give you a feeling of energy and genuine enthusiasm to be directly involved with clients of all industries that have such varying goals and intended outcomes, and my job at DTP is already exceeding my hopes and expectations in ways that I wasn’t even aware that it could. Also, we hold office-wide robot-wars, and a masseuse comes in once a month. What more could a girl want? ☺
