08. Aurélie Chalaye, Acct Manager for Ogilvy

Account manager for Ogilvy, Aurélie Chalaye has over 8 years experience advising the client and the campaign financial budget.

What is your job’s role in advertising? I am chief orchestrator between all the ad agency departments: creative, commercial, production, art buying, etc.I have to understand the clients needs and problems, business potential, and help the client solve their communication problems and reach goals determined at the beginning of the year. With long-term clients, we generally have a big brief for the year with an annual objective, then we have micro-briefs for smaller projects.

What’s an advertising campaign you’ve worked on?

What’s a misconception people have about advertising? Theres often a big misunderstand about the budget and time needed for advertising campaigns, especially on web. Because its digital, it’s easy to assume it’s inexpensive and fast to launch, or at least that it’s less expensive than television and print. But that is often not the case.

Secondly, people rightly want to make sure they get what they paid for and they may even want to take an active role in the development of their advertising campaign. But it’s a mistake to think that anyone can do advertising, and clients must learn to trust the agency more.

Sometimes one project can accomplish multiple objectives, but it can’t accomplish everything: increase sales, have better communication, be present on all social media platforms… and on a small budget.

What’s an important lesson you’ve learned? You need to be very pedagogical and explain the different steps involved in the advertising process: why you need 3 people on an advertising campaign instead of just one person, for example. You have to be very good with people and presentations, knowing when to smile, when to stress points, pause, etc.

Learn to manage stress and other people’s stress because it’s a major part of your job to calm down and reassure the client, as well as your team-members. Internally you need to be able to motivate people and absorb their stess. You need to be very strong and tough and respected, but do it in a very diplomatic and kind way.

Where do you go to for inspiration? It depends on what the campaign is selling. if the target audience are mainly iphone users, then I search for penetration rates and statistics to base my argument off of to make the pitch more relevant and credible.

I use Youtube to see if there are videos about similar objectives and messages for a project I’m working on. I also check out competitors websites. When researching, one website sends you to another, and another…

I have a small advertising budget, any advice? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is most important in the beginning – to be found quickly and to be the first website on the search page. Also invest in social medias. That’s the most efficient way to be known without a lot of money.

For small companies, it’s better to focus on and be really efficient in 2-4 main social platforms (relevant to your demographic)  than have 9 different profiles and not have enough time to make them of good quality (inactive).

Finally, you can’t keep your eye on every conversation on every social platform., so you’re taking the risk that people will criticize you without you knowing immediately. Running a social media platform is a full time job in itself, and even community managers aren’t available 24/7.