Annie Jones — March 30, 2018 — March 30, 2018
I’m the shot-caller at Rock Candy Media. That’s my job title. You probably think it’s cool that I get to tell people that. At least you do if you have no idea about the life altering amount of work and sacrifice that goes into running your own business, and no inkling of what it feels like being responsible for the livelihoods of your employees. Human beings who are living and working, trying to buy groceries and pay sky high Austin rent. And, when your business is a marketing firm or advertising agency, the success of other people’s businesses and, by extension, their employees’ livelihoods too.
Once you swallow that giant freakin’ pill you don’t really give a crap about what your “job title” is anymore. Just the jobs you have to do.
I know I say this all the time, but I say it because I believe it: Rock Candy Media is the Anti-Template advertising agency, naming, marketing firm, and graphic design firm. We aren’t like any other creative agency in Austin, or anywhere. Everything is conceptual. At other advertising agencies — especially big advertising agencies — you’re bound to meet a lot of people who are more concerned with their own personal “brand” than they are with the wellbeing of the client they work for. They want you to know they’re a “Senior Whatever the Hell” or “Director of Who Gives a Damn.” And for the most part those people stay in their lanes, work-wise. Even if they work hard for their creative agency — and a lot of them do — they’re still focused on themselves.
Everyone at Rock Candy Media technically has a job title, obviously. This marketing firm isn’t some ridiculous den of anarchy. (Well, mostly it’s not.) Still, like the title of this blog says, those job titles don’t mean 
.
What I mean by that is at my digital marketing company, you don’t have one job. You don’t have one responsibility; and if you only do what job description you were hired for, you won’t last a hot second. It doesn’t matter if your primary responsibility is web design, copywriting, graphic design, social media marketing and management, web development, or whatever. Literally after I finish writing this blog we have a meeting to rename a new client’s business. Every creative from my agency is going to be in there.
It’s all minds on deck.
That’s how it is across the agency at Rock Candy Media. A graphic design problem isn’t a graphic designer’s problem, it’s everyone at this ad agency’s problem, because it’s a client’s problem. A design inherently isn’t necessarily bad. If the messaging is off, the design is off. If we’re having a problem in web development, with a confusing site map or where to place CTAs on a landing page, I want a social media manager to weigh in. If I say a social media marketing plan is trash — which, by the way, is the sort of criticism I welcome — then you better believe every creative in the agency will be in the conference room ready to throw down ideas they can execute.
Oh and job titles also don’t mean much at Rock Candy Media because I don’t pay based on titles. I pay based on how much someone gives a crap. My employees never have to ask me for a raise, but they get them all the time, based on how hard I see them working, and the quality of work and effort they give me and my clients, a.k.a. my bosses. If you have to choose one, deadline or quality, choose quality. Clients won’t remember in a month if it was a day late. They sure as hell will remember if it was wrong. And we don’t roll that way. I get pitched to as a client before it goes to a client.
So yeah, job titles don’t mean a thing here. The work does.
This post originally appeared on RockCandyMedia.com
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