From the Eyes of an Intern: Phoenix Marketing Agency FabCom – Week 1
My first week as an advertising agency intern at FabCom, a full service marketing and advertising agency with offices in O’ahu, Los Angeles and Phoenix, was fascinating to say the least. Being an incoming sophomore at the University of Arizona who has yet to even apply to the Eller School of Management, I only had my communication skills, minimal marketing-related knowledge, a great mentor (CEO Brian Fabiano) and an open mind with which I could work. What I learned about first and foremost is the FabCom marketing approach: influencing customer targets through a natural progression of investment or purchasing behavior in the most effective manner possible.
The marketing theory simply stated: potential customers must first be aware the brand/business exists, then progress to considering that one brand/company over alternatives as the preferred option for their needs, then complete the purchase(s) and finally motivate the purchasers with a passionate or personally-relevant connection to the brand, marked by the customer expressing loyalty through recommendations to other potential customers and/or continued purchase.
The importance of this marketing and advertising model has been already engraved in my mind during the first week my internship at this top Phoenix advertising agency. The model represents the mechanism that must be followed to efficiently and effectively market a business. I’m learning that the name of the game is helping clients drive their prospective and existing customers to action through the perfect methodology that maximizes marketing return on investment (ROI).
Throughout my first week at full service advertising agency FabCom, I shadowed Mr. Fabiano as he interacted with various businesses in one or more of these marketing and advertising customer life cycle stages. I was privileged to sit in on meetings with three different clients in three different industries who work with FabCom. Most valuable to me as an advertising and marketing executive in training was watching the agency personnel work with the clients. Specifically, the personal client interactions, the win/win focus of the agency and the balance of focus required between customer service and the agency becoming stewards of marketing effectiveness. In each meeting, the difference was made by how well everyone was able to collaborate. Meetings were about accomplishing objectives and finding a win/win between costs and advertising return on investment. I noticed that it was the little things that made the biggest difference on how a meeting was conducted.
This culture of collaboration was the exact same inside FabCom’s office. I was amazed by the collaborative abilities of the marketing and advertising agency as a unit. The personnel functioned as a team, moving diligently and efficiently. Each person was a sub-subject matter expert and was responsible for a different part of the project or advertising campaign, yet when the pieces of the puzzles were put together, beautiful things were made. I look forward to continuing weekly blog posts in addition to ongoing work with FabCom. If this is what I learned in my first week, I cannot wait to be fed more marketing and advertising knowledge, information and wisdom throughout the summer… which is more than I could have ever imagined learning in a classroom.
