Monday
For the first time for several months, the day begins in darkness and with a distinctly autumnal mist shrouding the Sussex Downs. It does make it that little bit more difficult to roll out of bed. By the time I've reached my phone downstairs (we have a technology ban above the ground floor) I'm starting to get excited about the prospect of the week ahead.
Since receiving the amazing , I've been trying to pay more attention to work-life balance – for myself and everyone else in the agency. This includes a self-imposed rule of sending no emails before 8:30am to help everyone else to have a more relaxed start to the day. This can be very challenging, so I get on the train, store up a long list of drafts, and unleash them all the moment the big hand strikes the six.
The day is a carousel of energising quickfire meetings. These range from planning joint initiatives with the brilliant Nick Bailey from our sister agency Isobar, to a mentoring session with one of Carat's brightest and best, to a stimulating conversation with the whip-smart people at Facebook around current levels of planner and client engagement with the platform.
It's amazing that Facebook is only 10 years old, it seems to have been through nine lives already and it's clearly still maturing at an incredible rate.
Tuesday
Today it's off to Croydon for the latest leg of the never-ending tour of client top-to-top meetings. It's an incredible privilege of agency life that we get to flit between endless varying areas of the economy and company cultures, and I never get tired of understanding different product categories from the mouths of some of the UK's best marketers.
Today is all about insurance, and once again, discussing the uneven effects of convergence across the economy. Personally I struggle to understand the mindset of someone who would buy insurance over the phone, but 20% or more of the UK population disagree with me, and they aren't going away.
Once back in the office I spend some time with Matt Landeman, our head of client services over a very civilized Italian coffee (because the Regent's Place café is closed for refurbishment.) Increasingly, Carat is an international hub for our clients and we are thinking through the capabilities and culture we need to build to sustain this successfully in the future.
Wednesday
Agency days are so often a blend of the incredibly long term and the incredibly short term. On the one hand, today we sketch our growth plan for Carat in 2015 and beyond, including our new product pipeline and our plans to get the best out of our relationships with the other Dentsu Aegis specialisms.
Twenty minutes later, we are surrounded by pieces of paper on all sides, relentlessly culling slides in preparation for the next day's new-business meeting. This is what agency life is all about – dealing in extremely different timeframes all at the same time – and I think this reflects what life is like for our clients and for the consumers we engage with. It's dynamic, it's taxing, but above all it is extremely stimulating.
In the gaps in between future gazing and dealing with the here and the now, I get to check in with Bruce and Dara from Twitter. It's great to be able to work with them on innovating the way brands use the platform and delivering business value for our clients, but there is still clearly a lot more that can be done. As ever, it's a pleasure thinking it through with them.
Thursday
It's good to get some decent people time today – a mentoring session, a couple of catch-ups with my leadership team and some interviews with some really bright planners that I'd love to get to come and work at Carat.
On the same day we get to confirm two new apprenticeships through our relationship with the Prince's Trust, and it's great to feel the diversity of talent within and coming into the industry.
We also worked on the next iteration of our days – where we invite GCSE students from local schools to come in and get a taste of media ( a couple of their views on media). Some big plans afoot about how we can make this bigger and better.
Friday
I'm a long-term extreme commuter, so sometimes I manage to work from home on Fridays. After the long, intense days of media it's pretty much essential in order to ensure there is time to take stock, think more deeply and make plans for the future.
I set aside an hour to catch up with some of the projects from Labs I'd been involved with during my time working with the MIT Media Lab in Boston. Immediately, my imagination is sparked and I start thinking of ways to use digital data to better understand people's motivations and make marketing more useful to them, and how we could start doing it right now in Carat.
A perfect way to end the week, and a perfect way to prepare for the week following – grounded in the now, but with an eye on the future.
Age: 35
Favourite media: Spotify on my Sonos
My biggest inspiration: Walking by the sea
Dream job: Detective novelist
Not a lot of people know this about me...but I play a mean blues
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