It takes a village to raise an ad – a village of talent and expertise aided in no small part by Post-it Notes, a little bit of popcorn and a lot of passion.
[This is the last in a series of blog posts featuring the agency’s various departments and how they function both independently and interdependently to deliver successful advertising campaigns.]
It’s all well and good for Davis’ creative department to tap grand advertising and marketing ideas into keyboards; it’s all in a day’s work for staff in the art department to make magic on their Macs; and it’s entirely normal for the agency’s account executives to hustle through the day in the name of customer service.
But what if the company’s technical systems or the Davis building wasn’t functioning at an optimal level?
Davis Advertising needs its information technology system to run so smoothly that the people using their computers and their creative software programs hardly notice it – except to recognize that the technology makes their work easier and better.
Moreover, reliable technology is part of what makes an agency like Davis so versatile; on any given day dozens of projects could be in development across dozens of mediums and platforms: radio commercials are being produced, the photography studio could be booked solid, websites are being designed and built, public relations articles are being written, print ads are being created, and more.
On the other hand, systems break down. It’s a fact of life. But Davis Advertising needs the breakdown to be short so that staff can get back to doing what they do best. And that’s where the IT department, namely IT Manager Justin Grant, comes in.
“If an employee’s computer breaks down, I’m taking the next three hours getting it up and running,” he says. “The entire focus is on making sure that the employee can keep working.”
The same goes for Dirk England, Davis Advertising’s property manager. If there are any outdoor, weather-related issues that could impede production or, likewise, any building-related issues – the heat or air conditioning, lighting or plumbing, for example – Dirk does his best to take care of things before they have the potential to slow anybody down.
Most days, Davis’ property manager even makes popcorn with the agency’s old-fashioned popcorn maker, timing it for that mid-afternoon moment when people need a boost. It’s all part of his job, he says, his job of keeping everything running at Davis.
“The number one thing is to keep all the employees happy so that if something goes wrong, they say, ‘Go see Dirk,’ and they know it’ll be taken care of,” he explains.
