Our ‘5 Question With’ series shares insight into the TMD teams’ experience of agency life. In this first instalment, Marketing & Research Officer Joey reflects on his first year at TMD.

What do you enjoy most about what you do?

I’m lucky to have a job where I get to make stuff — often in a way that’s self-directed — and where I get to see my work intersect with current affairs in a way I find really exciting.

My background is in performing arts. Throughout my early twenties, I spent a lot of time directing and writing for the stage, often on important issues that were and continue to be of-the-moment. For example, in 2019 I helped set up and wrote for The Greenhouse Theatre, the Edinburgh Fringe’s first ever completely zero waste venue. My work at TMD feels like a natural progression of that — making cool stuff that is informed by, and tries to inform, what’s going on in the world.

Going back a bit further, I studied International Relations at university, which is where my love affair with news media began (also, The West Wing). I used to see the news as ‘other’, not something I could imagine having an active stake in. Now I get to write about things that genuinely interest me and see my work create change in real time — like our recent fundraising campaign with Abaseen Foundation.

What skills do you need to excel at your job?

One of the things I like to think I’m particularly good at is being personable, or just generally taking an interest in people. Much of my job is getting as much information out of people as possible, to turn into compelling blogs or email campaigns or social media posts. Being a good listener and having a laugh is essential.

I also take pride in my writing, which is a skill that has crept up on me. I started at TMD to assist largely with business development. I still do that, but most of my work now is content creation and delivering on client projects — because, as it happens, good writing is hard to come by. I read a lot, which helps.

What are you reading at the moment?

Coming Into The Country by John McPhee. One of my worst character traits is I tell people about the books I’m reading — which is painfully dull. Anyway, it’s about the author’s travels through Alaska in the 1970s and the competing interests of the people he meets, i.e. conservation versus development. There’s also a lot of good bear content.

In terms of staying up to date, I am a habitual reader of Politico’s morning newsletter — as those that know me well can attest, it’s basically my personality. I consider it a cheat sheet to the issues driving the day and the agendas behind them. I’ve also recently been enjoying the hot takes on The Lead.

Being early-on in your career, how has your experience at TMD shaped your perception of the marketing industry and marketing agencies?

I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about agency work, but thankfully, my experience of agency life has been overwhelmingly positive, and I think that’s largely due to the way we work at TMD.

Our hours are flexible and we’re all on the same page regarding our amorphous working patterns, which is wonderful. I couldn’t do half the things I do outside of work — my playing music and running, my volunteering work, my country escapes into darkest mid-Argyll — if it wasn’t for that flexibility.

Equally, I appreciate how straight-talking we are as an agency, having raked through the jargon-loaded website of many a marketeer. I think we understand that obfuscating what we do doesn’t increase our value, it actually undermines it because people trust us less. That’s why we try to lay out what we do in the simplest terms possible — we ‘write marketing messages’, ‘build websites’, ‘design brands’ and so forth — and avoid words like ‘obfuscating’.

I’ve also become wise to an inherent advantage agencies have over organisations that take their marketing in-house. I like to think of the TMD studio as an informational cross roads, or even a village inn — where else can claim to have so many organisations through its doors, discussing their problems and seeking solutions? We’re able to join the dots for our clients because we act as that ‘hub’.

What have been your highlights of working at TMD?

I got to represent one of our clients at COP26, which was amazing. I had stupendous access and got to see the less-than-glamourous side to UN climate negotiations.

I also took on a big research project at the start of this year, creating a report on the Scottish low carbon heat sector in consultation with the sector’s key decision-makers. This report informed certain aspects of Scottish Government decision making, which I find absolutely dizzying.

In general terms, it’s been nice to work on campaigns for issues I care about, in areas such as conservation, climate justice and food poverty. On that last point, I’ve been volunteering with Citizens’ Advice as an advisor since early 2021. I’ve found the time I’ve spent there to be a good compliment to the work I do here at TMD.

There’s been so many highlights in my first year here, I’m sure there’ll be many more before the year is out!