Hello lovely people!
If you are in Social Media Marketing – you know it is ever-changing, constantly evolving, and there are new updates all the time.
Facebook always rejects your ads, you have to stay up to date with the latest trends but by the time you finish making a TikTok on one trend, there is another one already going viral. We all have to constantly work on ideas/ campaigns,keep them fresh, innovative, and appeal to our audience. Those are a lot of things to accomplish, right?
It is not as easy as people make it seem,but no matter what, people working in this space are passionate about the work that they do, despite all the constant challenges.
And this is why as a passionate social media marketer – I was super grateful to have the opportunity to intern at Like A Voss Inc.
Let’s rewind a bit so I get a chance to introduce myself and talk about my first week interning at Like A Voss Inc.!
My name is Nikita Jadhav, I moved to Canada back in May 2022 after waiting for more than 2 years (thanks to COVID) to come to my dream country. I am studying Digital Marketing Communications at St.Lawrence College, in Kingston.
As a part of my course I had to complete my placement/internship, and while I was doing my research for agencies in Canada with the support of my program coordinator, I got to know about Like A Voss Inc.
My boss might not know this but when I came across Like A Voss Inc’s website and Instagram page I immediately knew that this was the right place for me. I mean you could just see from LAV’S profile that they are from other agencies.
I follow a lot of brands, and agencies so that I stay up to date with the latest trends, famous campaigns, viral content, and just to see what’s going on in the space. But, all I saw was agencies only sharing their work, services and telling people why they are the best. Sure, you can say that there is nothing wrong with that but it truly surprised me when I saw LAV was not just another social media agency, but an abode where kind, like-minded, hard working people give their best, a place where mental health is given the most importance and discussed openly, a place which gives a platform and voice to the LGBTQIA+ community, POC etc.
A Bit About Me,
…and some other things of note.
I know this blog is about my experience and my first week at LAV so let’s get right into it…
I remember waking up feeling extremely excited but also nervous because I had too many questions going on. I am someone who usually overthinks everything so a lot of questions were going on in my mind – will I do good? What if I make stupid mistakes? What if I mess something up? Will my new team like me? With lots of anticipation and anxiety, I joined my first call for the day – where I immediately got welcomed and greeted by Mandi aka the Boss Lady or should I say Voss Lady. The way she smiled at me took away all my nervousness and the rest is history.
JK! It was just the beginning of my time here. It’s just been a week here and I am already working on researching my clients, doing competitor analysis, researching different content and engagement strategies and cannot wait to actually get to work on projects with clients where I will get to work on – ideating, stategising, creating content for our clients.
I will be sharing more in terms of my work here in the coming weeks as I get to be a part of more projects and handle more tasks but for this blog I want to talk about one last and important thing.
Mental Health In Workplace
…especially in Advertising Agencies.
Before moving to Canada – I worked for almost 2+ years in advertising agencies where luckily the first one was really good. I had a great learning experience and made some good friends.
After I moved to the second one I was juggling multiple accounts and projects which I thought would be great because I’d be learning and gaining so much experience, but that quickly wore off when I saw the reality of most of the agencies in the advertising space.
Looking back I just realised how unfair it was to me and other employees when we were expected to work everyday from 9:00 am to 10:00pm (sometimes even 11pm). Not to mention weekends without any overtime pay.
I remember one time when a client literally told my Account Manager that I wasn’t responding to her messages or wasn’t being active – it was around 12:00 am.
You would be grilled in your Whatsapp work group in front of your whole team if you made a silly mistake. Wait, there was no room for mistakes. I remember my friends from my agency and other agencies boasting about how they have to stay back everyday until midnight because clients and managers care more about the social media post going live than your employee’s work life balance. Some of them even had to stay back in the office several times and work there overnight, of course without any extra pay. Not even a single dime!
While I started working it was WFH that meant that you are always available to your clients or managers. I remember I used to have so much anxiety even to leave my phone alone for a few minutes just to use the washroom – because my phone would always blast with notifications from so many groups and people and I always had to respond back immediately because even if you take a few minutes to yourself, your client thinks you aren’t working or you boss just thinks you are scrolling on Instagram.
I remember there was a time where people in the team’s work group would go complete MIA for days because they were so exhausted with the work and couldn’t deal with the office politics anymore. Let’s not even get into office politics. It can get quite ugly with people talking behind your back, your manager favouring someone over you, and of course the status symbol that people bring to work as their entire identity.
There is a story that sticks with me a lot, it was from my time as an Account Executive. I was on a call with the client, my managers, and the creative and art teams.I was talking and giving my POV, a senior guy from the creative team immediately cut me off with the rudest tone saying I should not speak as I am just an AE. To this day I don’t know why he cut me off? Was it because I was below him workwise or because I am a woman. Whatever the reason might be, it shook my confidence and made me feel like I wasn’t good enough.
It just made me hate work. I wanted to quit, everyone else around me wanted to quit, most of them even did that and ultimately so did I. For my own peace.
I truly believe that things like this should be discussed and not be hidden. Mental Health at work is just as important as it is in other aspects of your life. You literally dedicate 30-40 hours a week and advertising burnout is a real thing, unfortunately.
Here are some of the reasons that I am ALREADY grateful for LAV:
- It’s more than an agency here. Though I just started working here – everyone is super chill, kind, and so nice to you.
- Mandi, our boss (she hates it when we call her boss) is more than just your average boss. She’s always so supportive, so kind. I can’t believe we share funny stories, reels, our experiences, what’s been going on during our week. She is always so interested and excited for your plans, our achievements.
- We have an internal Slack channel dedicated to Mental Health where Mandi checks up on us to see how we are doing mentally.
- Everyone is super independent and nobody ever micomanages anything. And yes, our team and our boss encourages us to do activities outside of work and take a break whenever required.
- We are always open and respectful of everyone’s ideas and opinions. Even though everyone is senior to me having worked here for so long but nobody ever made me feel less than, or like I cannot speak up.
Guess what? I look forward to work now. I love working!
Every single day I wake up excited to work, to discuss random stuff with my team, to be there for each other and I can’t wait to grow professionally and personally and this is all because people respect each other, respect work life balance and in the own words of Mandi, my mentor and my boss; “social media is not life/death and your mental health is more important than anything else.” She actually said that to me. I’m not crying, you’re crying. :’)
– Nikita Jadhav
