We also tend to meet with a lot of vendors. If a vendor is coming into the office, we’ll meet with them for thirty or forty minutes to talk through what they offer and if what they offer is something we could see being useful for our client and their campaigns, we will probably RFP them down the line.

​

So everything is kind of building up to this point where we’re going to RFP them at some point. We will typically take a lot of vendor meetings when there is a little bit of down time. When we’re planning and have decks to do and stuff like that, we typically don’t meet with vendors. But if we’re planning for something, that day we’ll be reviewing proposals and asking questions to the vendors to dig deep into what they actually do. There’s a lot of back and forth and emails that come through. There are a ton of phone calls with the clients every day.

​

That’s also part of our day to day as well – to field all the questions that come from the client, any requests that come from the client. Not all media teams are client facing but we are definitely client facing and do a lot of stuff with the client in order to get what needs to be done for them. It’s a lot of back and forth, excel sheets, etc.

​

​

HK: Why are you in advertising?

​

KP: When I was in college, I had totally intended on becoming a doctor at some point. I used to be a bio/pre-mad major. That never really happened, and so I really hated it. I didn’t like sitting there learning about microorganisms. So I took an advertising class and basically just fell in love with it.

​

And one day, they said a media application was going out for anybody who was interested in media and I did an interview, and a video interview as well, so it was pretty intense. That’s how I got in the media track at college and all of a sudden media was just a huge thing and I loved it and so interested. I loved working with clients and being creative and analytical as well. It’s just cool to work on different clients too. It’s always interesting and exciting.

​

​

HK: How did you get to your present position?

​

KP: When I was first looking for a job out of college, I was offered three positions. One in Austin, one in Dallas, and one in San Francisco. I figured why not get outside of Texas for a change, and get out of what I know and move to a completely different city. So that’s what I did -- I just said yes to the offer in SF and two weeks later I was out here. I moved really, really fast. I was at that agency for three years and one day Eleven contacted me about a media planner position at their agency and at first I was just putting it off to the side and not really intending to move forward with it, but I ended up getting let go of Butler (the first agency) which was kind of a bummer.

One of our clients decided to move their business elsewhere so a part of that is a lot of people get let go who were working on that scene. It was sad but a week later I was hired at another job so I went to Eleven and worked on Dignity Health and Union Bank. At Butler, I worked on Columbia and Sorel and Coconut Zico Water.

​

Then another email came from Jess who emailed me to recruit me and come to Swirl. And I had no intentions of leaving Eleven, so I didn’t think I would actually accept the position. So when they offered me the position, I said sure let’s do it. So I left Eleven and came here. The way I got most of my jobs is through recruitment and just head hunting which is what our HR person does.

​

​

HK: What has been your most difficult experience in this industry to date? How was it resolved?

​

KP: I mean there’s a lot of difficult situations that you get put in. sometimes it’s a mistake that you made. One of the biggest mistakes that I still remember to this day is when I was working on Columbia – we were working on a self-serve platform for a DSP (Demand Side Platform) and it was the first time I ever ran it. People say “oh, you can just set it and forget it and not have to worry about it.” But you do have to do maintenance on it.

​

I set it and forget it and didn’t look at it until two or three days until the campaign ended, and we ended up under delivering by $30,000. So the client just has all this extra money that’s going to go away. My boss’s boss had to get involved because that’s a big deal, that’s $30,000 that we don’t get back. I learned my lesson that you have to maintain all of your campaigns. I’m still learning that lesson right now. But that was probably my biggest obstacle I had to overcome. I had to overcome going to the client and saying “we made a really big mistake.”

​

And honestly you’re honest about it, they will understand that you’re really swamped, but just don’t let it happen again. I learned from then on that you have to maintain and make sure you deliver. Don’t let your campaigns just sit there and marinate.

 

 

HK: What has been your most gratifying experience?

 

KP: I have to go back to Sorel. Sorel is actually owned by Columbia. So we had the same client for both Columbia and Sorel. There was one time where my boss let me take the entire Sorel campaign and make it my own – I got to play with $4 million essentially and plan out this entire campaign. It was all about fashion and being young and “into the now.” So I planned it and launched it and it went amazing. We have an ROI that was 120% over what it was the year before, so that was really gratifying. And it was just me that was running the whole thing, so that was very gratifying.

 

 

HK: What do you think is a common misconception about this industry?

​

KP: That we party all the time and drink all the time and we sit at our desk and contemplate a lot of things. Yes, we do have parties, yes we drink at work and stuff, but you can probably tell that we also work hard too. We’re here until 1:00 in the morning working on presentations and stuff.

 

There’s a lot of work that goes into putting out a great plan and I just don’t think a lot of people know about that. They watch Mad Men on TV and think “this is what you do all day!” but we do work hard. It’s the whole work hard play hard mentality, and it’s actually very true about this industry.

 

 

HK: What are some changes you would like to see made internally to this industry?

 

KP: I would say, there are a lot of processes that can be trimmed down. Just the timing of things and whatnot can be pretty bad. I just wish clients would trust us more and listen a little more. A lot of times they think that they know it and we get back to them with something completely different from what they had expected; they get very defensive sometimes. I would just like to see processes trimmed down. They can be really long. Sometimes people put a process out for something that doesn’t necessarily need a process.

 

 

HK: Who would you encourage to join this industry?

 

KP: I would probably say someone who is really analytical (just for media specifically) and doesn’t mind working in numbers but also someone who is really outgoing as well. You do have to meet a lot of clients, salespeople, and so someone who’s really willing to talk to people is important. Ideally, someone who is analytical, creative, and a people person would be a great fit for this agency.

 

 

HK: What are some things that have influenced the industry since you started?

 

KP: Millennials. I mean, the changing landscape of having laptops to the advent of cellphones and the improvement of quality of cell phones has changed the behavior of people significantly. From a few years ago to now, mobile phone usage has really changed the way we think about advertising. Because now everybody is saying “mobile first, mobile first” whereas just a few years ago everyone was saying “desktop first.” Now everything is about mobile and getting people to share on mobile and use mobile apps. CA just did a mobile app with CNN so it’s changing the way we look at how to plan media.

 

 

HK: What key piece of advice would you have given yourself when you first started?

 

KP: I would say work hard. Hard work does show; a lot of people don’t think that’s the case. And also never burn bridges. Especially in advertising, you never know when that’s going to come back and bite you. You can see all the people that just got hired are people that I have worked with at my previous agency. When you’re working with a group of people, make sure as you’re leaving that you don’t burn that bridge because it will definitely come back to bite you.

​

It’s such a small world here. I know salespeople that have moved from company to company and they take their contacts with them and say “hey you might remember me from Pandora, I would love to talk to you about your clients” and things like that. I was asking my friend if he knew this certain person and whether he’d be a good fit for our agency, and he told me not to hire that person because they’re not very good at their job and wouldn’t be a good fit. So make sure you’re just putting your best foot forward all the time.

 

 

HK: What is the significance of diversity in advertising?

 

KP: This question of diversity actually came up in a different agency I was at. I think it allows us to have a different perspective on things whether you’re Caucasian, Asian, African-American, you all have life experiences that you can apply to your job. I think it’s extremely important to have a diverse workplace because if not, you’re limiting yourself to one view of thing and one lens of something. It’s definitely an issue.

 

It’s hard to encourage people of color to go into an industry that isn’t very colorful right now. It’s odd for me to see a person of color who’s a sales rep, and it surprises me, and I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s why it’s important. It encourages other people to seek out and do things they’ve never done before. I’m still surprised that someone who is Asian that comes in as a sales rep, and I shouldn’t be surprised by that anymore. It still needs to change. We still have a long way to go for that, especially in the view of diversity inclusion. You can get a lot of good people from different places.

​

HK: What does advertising mean to you?

 

KP: It means creativity, people, and it also means that we are doing things to further goals of the client. We are doing things to tell people about different things whether they’re about products or different issues. A lot of people will say when asked “who do you not trust the most,” the first is usually politicians and the second is people who work in advertising.

​

There’s a lot to change about the industry in itself and it is hard because they only see what they see on Mad Men. There’s so much more to advertising than what they see on TV. You meet some of the smartest, greatest, most caring people in this industry as well. Seeing a new campaign go up and the creative work is so encouraging because they’re thinking of new and different ways to speak to people. It’s also encouraging people to change their thoughts as well. It’s a big industry but it’s also an industry that you can use to get people to change their perception on important topics.

​

​