A day in the life of a Red Setter Account Executive

Ever wondered what a typical day for a PR Account Executive looks like?

Ruby is one of our star Account Executives, who interviewed just before lockdown (we offered her the job the same day!), joining us officially as our first remote new joiner. Here’s a day in the life of Ruby.

A Day in the Life of a PR Account Executive by Ruby Goom

I started as an Account Executive at Red Setter during the first lockdown in the UK. Although my experience wasn’t in design PR, (I come from a consumer PR background, working on accounts for a pet food company, a fostering agency, and a theme park) I’ve always had an interest in and passion for art and design. It was the perfect opportunity to transfer my PR knowledge and skills to a specific sector I was really excited about.

When I joined the team remotely, I worried about understanding my role and getting up to speed with my clients, but I quickly felt the collaborative atmosphere of agency life from home, with regular Zoom catch ups and support from the team as I found my feet.

In PR, no day is the same, but here’s a look at what a typical day is like for me:

MORNING:

I start the day with a quick check of emails. My clients are UK and US based and I pitch to journalists in various time zones, so I like to check in first thing in case there’s anything urgent that needs actioning.

I spend some time in the morning catching up on the news – our media outreach is reactive, as well as proactive, so it’s important we’re up to date with what’s going on in the world. If any of the news is relevant to our clients, it could be an opportunity for them to react and talk about their opinions in the media.

Finding opportunities for my clients in the media is a key part of my role, so I spend a lot of time proactively seeking opportunities where my clients could offer their expertise or insights. This includes pitching my clients to journalists for interviews, comments, podcast interviews, speaking engagements, or judging at design awards.

Another key part of my day-to-day role includes monitoring and capturing coverage. It might not sound like the most exciting task but seeing my clients in the media gaining recognition for their work always gives me a buzz and it’s essential to track our success!

During the morning, I’ll have a Zoom catch up with the rest of my team. While we’re all working remotely, it’s great to chat through our key actions for the week together and ensure all our client status reports are up to date before afternoon meetings.

AFTERNOON:

We work with so many talented, innovative agencies, who produce incredible work, and we need to tell everyone about it! It’s launch day for one of our clients’ projects – NY based design studio Gretel are unveiling the new branding for Japan’s largest publisher, Kodansha.

As an AE, I’m in charge of issuing the news release about the work. Ahead of launch day, I’ll pull together a target media list, identifying the key editors/journalists that would be interested in covering the story. I then send the news out to these targets (many that I’ve already built a good relationship with so they know that what we send will be of interest to them) and monitor media channels for coverage.

In the afternoon, I’ll often have a few Zoom meetings with clients based in the US to update them on our PR activity. It’s great to chat with the team about new projects they’re working on or any topics they’d be keen to talk about in the press (I take lots of notes to use in our media outreach!)

I’ll spend the rest of the day continuing to pitch for media opportunities. On this day I was working on two interview pitches – one for branding and design studio Trollbäck+Company to talk about a title sequence they created for an Amazon Studios thriller, and another for design agency Team to discuss their recent rebrand of Pfizer.

The AE role is varied, and you need to be able to adapt quickly and have an attention to detail, but the new challenges make it an exciting industry. Whatever PR background you have, if you’ve got a passion for design and creativity, this could be a great place for you.