Bringing a creative background to account management

At Fishtank, we’re no strangers to onboarding brilliant people with impressive backgrounds, and our newest tankmate is no exception! We’ve been working hard lately to provide our clients with mould-breaking campaigns, transformative websites and exceptional design work – but in the background, we’ve been on a mission to recruit someone who can help us progress on multiple levels, and we’ve found exactly that.

We’re pleased to welcome our new Senior Account Manager, Laura! With 23 years of creative, innovative work under her belt and a strong passion to grow her skills, we can’t wait to work alongside Laura to expand our knowledge as an ever-growing creative digital agency and provide the best possible service to our clients. 

We like to be a little nosey, so we sat down with Laura to find out all about her impressive portfolio and life prior to joining Fishtank, and we were blown away by all the amazing things she has achieved:

“After graduating from Hartlepool College with a Surface Pattern and Textiles degree, I started out my career as a freelance designer for L.J. Woodhouse, who were a leading British design studio based in Sheffield with a reputation for producing innovative, original, commercially desirable artwork for all aspects of home interior, paper and giftware – all created as hand drawn repeat pattern designs.

Although designing was my first love, I had a desire to understand the commercial aspect of projects too. This led to an opportunity to work within a hugely respected Leeds-based advertising agency, working on their largest account ASDA, based in the client’s head office as part of the local marketing department. 

That is where my path to project management began. I love the process of leading the work of a team to translate brand or marketing objectives into briefs and creative strategies, whilst still fulfilling and delivering high-level creativity. I’ve worked on a cross-section of clients at a number of agencies, delivering many fantastic projects representing multiple brands.”

Laura has been a powerhouse in the industry for 23 years now and has gained some invaluable experience with an amazing roster of clients from a multitude of industries (they’re pretty impressive). As we love to show off our employees and their achievements, we asked her for some of her highlights:

“DFS – This was a highly demanding role to deliver effective weekly local and national advertising campaigns. I was predominantly delivering national press advertising, campaign-led colour supplements for weekly & monthly magazine titles, product range brochures and in-store POS.

Xscape – I worked on the delivery of a brand that created the excitement of a day out at Xscape along with campaign activity for a number of years beyond the brand launch activation. Xscape is an experience-based family leisure destination with real snow slopes, rock climbing, mini golf, bowling, multiplex cinemas, bars, restaurants and retail outlets, and is a great day out for all the family. We discovered a real sense of anticipation about visiting Xscape and that families left with great memories, so we put the human experience at the heart of our strategy. ‘Make Great Your Xscape’ became the central positioning with an energetic tone of voice and a dynamic creative style. 

Naturo Pet Food – This was a fabulous project to deliver a TV campaign for the leading 100% natural pet food brand, Naturo Pet Food. The aim was to create a truly engaging advertising campaign to raise awareness and drive purchases of Naturo products. The big idea focused upon the knowledge that healthy pets make happy pets, which makes happy pet parents, and the company believes that feeding our pets natural food is the first step to achieving this. Taking a universally known nursery rhyme: “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes’ – we swapped out Toes for Nose. The finished commercial showcases a selection of six hero dogs – various breeds, sizes, and ages, each one with their own unique personality. Fabulous eye-catching shots are then intercut with shots of vibrant, mouth-watering raw ingredients transforming into hearty-looking Naturo wet dog food.

LA Fitness – In this role I implemented over 450+ live briefs across the 87-club estate. I managed the LA fitness rebrand to ensure consistency across all brand comms, and even project-managed Alesha Dixon’s first major LA fitness initiative. I’m extremely proud of this project, as I developed the core brand identity along with campaign support collateral to promote Alesha’s ‘Dance Fusion’ classes.

I’m very much looking forward to embracing a new challenge at Fishtank Agency in 2023. Working alongside an established talented team of ‘digital’ specialists, I hope to share my experiences to provide strategic and operational support to the business.

I’m excited to fully immerse myself in the world of website design & development, UX digital strategy, eCommerce, organic, and paid media services with the aim to deliver exceptional digital experiences across the consumer journey to help our Fishtank clients achieve measurable success.”

We’re super impressed with everything Laura has achieved so far in her career and cannot wait to see what she brings to the tank. If you want to know a little more about Laura, she’s also written a great bio that you can have a peek at.