Al Mottram - Business Development Manager, JC Decaux
I Spent 4 years at Teesside university doing a BA in Business Studies and graduated in 2001 with a 2.2 wanting to enter into Marketing - that was the part of the course I enjoyed the most. I always had an interest in advertising, so I met up with a friend of my cousins who ran a PR agency who was going to give me a bit of insight into marketing and London working, and by chance an MD of a Media recruitment consultancy was in her office as well. After chatting to her she offered her help to get me a job in the media sales world. She described the industry and it sounded like a real work hard play hard industry, which sounded to me like a lot of fun. Three weeks later and I had an interview at Viacom Outdoor (one of the world's largest outdoor advertising companies) for a Sales Coordinator (Sales Assistant). Prior to this chance meeting, I knew nothing about media sales except from the MD and when I started doing prep work for the interview.
After starting at Viacom Outdoor, I found the people I worked with and the whole ethos of the job and industry interesting and fun. I worked hard and was promoted after a year to an Account Executive which involved selling to a small outdoor specialist (outdoor ad agency). Roughly a year on from that I was moved across to a much larger specialist to increase my knowledge of the industry. After a time, I moved to one of Viacom's competitors, JCDecaux, and am now dealing with a couple of large advertising agencies.
My job now entails building and maintaining relationships with people at advertising agencies; pitching and presenting ideas and solutions to these people to answer their clients needs; and growing the spend across my portfolio to hit targets.
The best part about my job are the people I work with and the people I represent. The environment and culture is very much work hard play hard. Though you can get pressured, you also get rewarded well.
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