Lisa Davies – Account Director

(Above, far right)
I started working in print many moons ago, so my career has always involved looking at things in various ways. Looking at proofs, looking at colour or the finishing on a job, keeping an eye on costs! And in more recent years I have moved into client services, so my roving eye has taken a broader view.

Working in client services is a challenging and stimulating role, involving the wearing of several hats at once! Our role is not just to quote, schedule and invoice jobs, but to really look at our clients’ businesses, understand their challenges and convey this effectively to the creative team within mark-making*. And in reverse – helping the creative team to see the bigger picture so our strategic and creative thinking is as focussed as possible, to ensure the strongest ideas get through.

With my mark-making* hat on, my approach is always to try and understand as much as possible up front about how a business works. I look at the products my client offers, their customers, the competition and work out why a customer would want to use them. But really valuable insights are also gained from listening – just sitting down and letting somebody talk to you about their business. Clients often, unknowingly, give you a little nugget that sets them apart from their competitors and gives mark-making* the insight we need for a campaign. It’s fascinating and also really important, as the more insight we give our creative team, the better our work is.

With my client hat on, I look at our creative solutions against the brief and my knowledge of the client, to make sure our thinking is on track and to ensure I have a good understanding of the creative inspiration behind the solution.

And at the end of the project I take a good look at the end result – how did the campaign perform, could we improve our process, did it come in on budget, amongst other things. If the client is happy and the creative team are happy, we’ve done a good job all round and can look forward to the next brief.

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By Lisa Davies

Editor’s note: I joined mark-making* in March this year, and now that I’ve had a chance to settle in, I can report that I’m enjoying myself. It’s been so interesting to work with and learn from other mark-makers, as we move through the various stages of different projects.

Something that has fascinated me particularly is the work that happens before the marks get made. When you learn to make marks in any scenario – hand writing, speech-making, life drawing – you have to do a lot of looking, first.

For this series of posts, I have managed to grab a few minutes with a few mark-makers. I asked them about the looking, and other preparation, that they do before they start to make marks.