Anticipating the Unpredictable: The Reality of Working at a Modern-Day Ad Agency

I’m sure many can relate with the feeling that comes from punching in and out to a job where you fulfill the duties asked of you, but don’t feel like you’re being challenged or inspired by your career. That’s the place I was in mentally before I started at FabCom, a top marketing and advertising agency in the Southwest. I was looking for not just a job, but to truly start my career and be inspired every day.

That’s when I found FabCom, a Scottsdale digital marketing agency that specializes in helping businesses grow their brands through a multitude of strategic marketing services. I was immediately drawn to the agency’s methodology that leverages neuromarketing to create personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with customers. President and CEO, Brian Fabiano wrote the book, Neuromarketology: Harness Converging Technologies and Diverging Audiences to Create Dynamic Marketing and Astonishing ROI. This book dives into the methodology of discovering each of your target audiences’ behavioral, demographic, sociographic, and psychographic connection points to your brand. Another key concept of the methodology is to learn how your customers think and anticipate how they will react. I knew that FabCom, as a full-service digital marketing agency, would give me the opportunity to learn and grow in my career, with the opportunity to apply my skills to different industries and in different contexts.

The agency challenged me during my first 30 days on the job to study and earn several marketing-centric certifications, learn various project management platforms, and conduct data-driven research to support our clients’ marketing initiatives. Next was understanding how FabCom leverages its myriad of marketing tools and systems for clients to effectively analyze and adjust marketing campaigns with real-time reporting.

During my first few months at the marketing agency, I gained valuable knowledge and soon was able to start making meaningful contributions to the team. The training and certifications enabled me to contribute to the management of PPC advertising campaigns on various advertising channels/platforms, focused on ensuring that our clients’ ad campaigns were creating awareness, generating engagements, and ultimately conversions.

As an account coordinator, I get to help plan photo and video shoots for clients—and attend them to make sure everything goes according to plan. Wanting the best for our clients, I always do my best to go the extra mile to plan for and anticipate their every need. After participating in the planning and execution of my first few shoots at FabCom, I learned the importance of the organizational aspects of this job. It is crucial to always be one step ahead, so we are prepared for anything and shoots run seamlessly. Our clients appreciate this so they can sit back and watch while the FabCom crew works their magic.

Working on the client services team, I have a front-row seat to observe how FabCom truly partners with clients to work toward achieving their goals and objectives. I have learned the nuances of managing multiple projects for different clients simultaneously. An essential component of the client services department is to maintain a clear view of each project/initiative’s progress and each team member's role, ensuring everyone is aligned and working toward the clients’ goals—and staying within the given timelines and budgets. It is important to stay organized so nothing is missed and clients don’t have to worry.

In our ongoing client marketing meetings, I am continuously impressed by how much our clients rely on our integrated marketing agency team members for strategic marketing advice, direction, and recommendations. During these meetings, we review all active projects and initiatives, ensuring that deliverables are on track and that our clients are satisfied. My role in these meetings involves taking thorough notes, capturing all key points and decisions so everyone is aligned and accountable for action items/next steps each week.

What makes FabCom different from other marketing and advertising agencies is its all-inclusive marketing strategy process. FabCom develops a “comprehensive marketing strategy” for new clients as part of the onboarding process that outlines the agency’s strategic marketing recommendations based on the client’s pre-defined goals and objectives, all backed by marketing research. In my first week, I began reviewing existing client strategies and learned a great deal about the creative and strategic marketing work that goes into each campaign. A significant component of the strategy process is a breakdown of the demographic, psychographic, sociographic, and behavioral characteristics of the clients' target audiences to enable hyper-relevant marketing.

Working at a top marketing agency in Scottsdale has given me the opportunity to gain insights on new technologies through FabCom’s sister company, HReality. HReality is a hybrid reality environment that utilizes virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR). Even after a few months, I feel like I’m only beginning to understand how complex HReality is, as well as the incredible number of real-world applications it has. For example, the HReality team has developed virtual classrooms and conference environments to support companies’ virtual events, allowing people to connect from all over the world with greater levels of personalization than what's currently available. Between character designers, asset creators, programmers, etc., it amazes me to see how much talent comes together to make this vision a reality.

While textbook marketing concepts provided a foundation, real-world application has been transformative. Immersing myself in practical online marketing at a top Scottsdale ad agency has helped me unlock a wide range of new skills, far exceeding the secondhand knowledge I learned in college. Working at a strategic marketing agency with such a wide range of marketing capabilities, it’s impossible to know what each day will hold or what challenges rise. But I do know that I’m excited to continue learning and growing at FabCom, a company that prides itself on its collaborative and innovative culture. Whatever comes our way, FabCom is ready—and now, so am I.