The transformation of AdvertiZing Academy into Young Lions for one day.
As part of the laboratory course “Leadership and emotional intelligence”, of Panteion University with professor Mrs.Iordanoglou Dimitra, the AdvertiZing Academy team visited Publicis Groupe, with the aim of observing the work of a person in a leadership role in an advertising agency, who is interested in working ideally in the future.
Through the interview and work observation, the way the company operates, the role of emotional intelligence, the new leadership requirements and the world of media was extensively discussed. At the same time, team members were given the opportunity to observe how a leader functions in her daily work life. This process lasted a full day.
Publicis Groupe, is a multinational advertising agency founded in 1926 and ranked 3rd as the world’s largest communications company. It has over 12 million employees in over 100 countries.
Athanasia Moschona has been working in the advertising sector and specifically in the media sector for over 20 years. She has been a member of Publicis Groupe for the last 12 years and now holds the position of Account Director at Zenith Media as she handles a multitude of multinational and local clients. Zenith Media, is one of the group’s media shops, with a range of teams dealing with both offline and online media.
AdvertiZing Academy, visited the premises and was led by the Director to a meeting room, where a range of questions were asked and a lengthy and constructive discussion was generated.
After the Director introduced herself to the group, she began by talking about her studies, which took place at the “Marketing and Advertising” school at TEI ATHENS and continued with her internship at Universal Media. As the leader of a large team, she mentioned that this responsibility is a big but complex challenge. At the same time, it is an interesting working routine, as she can manage the workload by sharing it with the team. Similarly, she explained that such handling is something that comes after many years of experience. Clearly there are difficulties, but if one loves it, it doesn’t go away. Instead, she learns something new every day.
She then explained to the team members the three main pillars of an advertising agency: creative, client service & media, and explained in more detail how each one works. As she mentioned, Creative captures and executes ideas. Client service is the bridge between creative and client. Finally, Media is the one that communicates it. Later, she emphasized on explaining how media works, as she specializes in it, saying that after research she follows an annual strategic plan which usually changes along the way.
She added that sometimes ideas are not accepted by the client because there is fear on their part of something new resulting in them staying in the traditional media advertising space.
Regarding the advertising space, she described it as full of challenges and likened it to a stock exchange as it is necessary to constantly negotiate with the media and clients. In the next 10 years, the company believes it will be even further ahead, with the growth of digital through programmatic.
She then went on to say that the contact with customers is multi-layered. She stressed that the basis for a successful partnership is professionalism and a human-centric approach to customers by charting a common course.
On the opportunities for a young person’s development in the advertising industry, she said that the chances of rapid advancement are quite high. This is because the departments in advertising companies and media agencies are diverse and “The space is quite challenging and in need of new people.” Every employee goes through training depending on their experience. “No one is born to know, theory is far from practice”.
She emphasized the importance of human relations, since for her the biggest challenge is maintaining a happy team by being the breakwater to failures and problems, while being the guide to the path to success.
Next, the case of having a problem within the team was discussed. In response to this question, the Director replied that a key step is primarily to talk with him and then referred to personal self-control. The final step is moving to another department of the company, if it is deemed necessary. She added that she herself has been affected by complaints made over time as everyone in the company is like a family. The key skill of a leader, to deal with them is patience and perseverance.
The topic of a leader’s skills followed, to which she stated: “hard work, willpower, patience and perseverance, good crisis management whether team or customer, emotional intelligence”. She also stressed that “The Alpha and Omega is to understand what employees want”.
The discussion concluded with the director referring to the work she is most proud of, telling the group that in reality, work is a team effort and that the credit is not just for her. She gave the example of the placement of products of a well-known brewery company in a Greek reality show in 2017.
As for her daily routine as an account director, which varies, on the day of the visit it was as follows:
After entering her office, the first thing she had to do was to open and carefully read her emails as they are the basis for her day to develop properly. Then after spending a few minutes with her team, she organized each task by allocating it to her members and what she needs to accomplish herself. She informed our team that in her day she has several scheduled team calls with more than one client, and the meeting she had scheduled with the team for the interview. Her day was quite pressured as everything had to be done with absolute attention and as quickly as possible.
In conclusion, the visit was a constructive and pleasant experience as the team found itself in a corporate space and observed how it operates. The way of managing a team, the values, and characteristics that a person with a leadership role and years of experience considers important were assimilated. Finally, the important role of the human factor and the difficulties it brings were explained and understood.
Here is the link to our video from our experience in Publicis Groupe.
https://youtu.be/HPjJ9pwgmMc
