[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi.
I'm Gillian, and welcome to a day in the life of a project
manager.
Come on.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So a project manager is really just focused
on the full project lifecycle.
So I'm kind of the person that gets everything kicked off,
and I'm the last person that sees a project.
So I work in an agency called RPM,
which is focused on Broadway clients
in the advertising space.
And I've been there for a couple of years now,
and I really work across all of our different teams
to get the project all the way, completed through the agency.
I've worked at a couple of different advertising agencies,
and this is definitely the most fun because it's
such a great group of clients.
Our office has instated a work from home policy and a hybrid,
being able to go into the office.
So a lot of times, I'll go in if I have something that's
really important that I need a lot of people
in that I know that they'll be in the office for.
Otherwise, I can work from home, and just be in my sweatpants,
and not have to worry about what anyone looks like.
But it's just really great having that option.
So the first thing I do when I sit down at my desk
is make sure I open all of my applications,
so my email, my calendar, our project management software,
just to get a sense of anything that's come through overnight
that needs my attention.
And then I'll start routing things and following up
with people for my priorities for the day.
We really work with a project management software,
monday.com, which has been my favorite software that I've
worked with so far.
It's a web-based tool that is really color-coordinated,
and we're able to customize it to fit
the needs of our company.
So it's really great for our designers to upload any files
that they have, and it's really easy
to go through and route with our art directors, copywriters,
proofreaders, and really relay information easily.
When I start my day, I sometimes know
what the day is going to look like,
where it's going to be a slow day or a busy day,
but I have all of my priorities.
But inevitably, there's a fire drill that happens,
and there's something that we have
to get briefed within an hour and out the door
just to make the client happy.
So my morning is primarily spent on Zoom calls
and at my desk going through priorities
with my different account teams.
So the first meeting that I'm going to be on today
is with Ashley, my account executive
to work on all of our priorities for Hamilton,
so that she can give me a status of things
that she's gotten from the client,
and I can let her know where things
are living within the agency.
Good morning.
I'm just going to go through Hamilton stuff, so let
me get my screen up.
For these flex frames, I guess we'll just
see, since it looked like we now can do branding,
especially if it has to be centered.
I'm thinking with the star and the MJ stuff,
we should be fine.
Yeah.
I don't think we have anything that has writing on the sides
anyway for Hamilton.
So I think we should be good as long as we can actually
use branded material.
Yeah.
OK.
Cool, and then we'll just wait until we get that revised.
Yeah.
OK.
Thank you.
Of course.
[INAUDIBLE] the rest of the day.
So welcome to my living space.
Being in New York, it was really important
when I was making the decision to live alone
that I knew I was going to be working from home still,
so I really wanted at least some separation of where I normally
work versus where I live.
So just to get a change of scenery throughout the day,
sometimes I'll come and sit on my couch,
so I'm not sitting at my desk for 10 hours straight.
So a lot of my day is spent routing projects, which really
means going through our whole project lifecycle
with multiple different projects.
So once I have the first pass from a designer,
I will then take a look at it and make sure
that it fits the brief that I've been giving from my account
team.
And then I'll go through and make sure any person that
needs to see it has seen it.
One of the reasons I really like my job
is because I work with so many different teams.
Project management is one of the few roles that really
works across all team members.
So we're working across our finance team, our account
team, our creative team.
Anyone that really needs to see a project,
we're kind of that main line of communication.
So I wrapped up my day from home, so now let's head
into the office on Times Square, but first,
let's grab some lunch.
So I got into project management,
I was my company's first intern and kind of just fell into it.
And now that I've been here, I can't
imagine doing anything else.
My undergraduate degree didn't totally
prepare me for my day-to-day, but I
learned a lot of valuable skills,
like organization and then staying
on top of things, that were really helpful,
but I really do think the best experience is just
being in the role and doing the actual work.
What I love about my job is just really
being able to interact with so many different creative types,
and just being able to have my hands on all different types
of projects.
It's really special to go out and see my work
when I walk around Times Square.
There's nothing cooler than going up and seeing a billboard
that I know that I've helped put out.
So I'm in the office after lunch, and I've kind of just
been catching up on things that I missed
while I was on my subway commute,
but a lot of my afternoon is going to be still spent
routing different projects.
And one of the projects that I'm working on right now
is with our Hamilton tour, which is a tour that's
going all across North America.
And we have some billboards and bus
sides that will be going up in Seattle in July.
So one issue that I'm kind of having
at the moment is I have two different designers working
on both of these creatives, but it's essentially,
it should be the exact same creative.
So if I have the bus sides pulled up,
this is the approved option that we're
going with for the bus sides, and this is the Billboard.
So we're just making a small tweak
before this goes to the client to make sure that both of them
are consistent.
So one of the things of being a more seasoned project
manager at this company is I help onboard new project
managers, so this is Abby, who just started a couple of weeks
ago.
Today, we're going to be working through an email system
that we use pretty commonly for a bunch of different shows.
So if you log into your screen here,
the screen that you have pulled up,
this email system is primarily used for Telecharge houses.
So for Chicago, if you go over to the Campaigns tab,
you can see here, we have a lot.
This is an account that uses a system pretty regularly.
So you can see here, we have a post-purchase triggered email,
so any time that you purchase a ticket to Chicago
on Telecharge, 24 hours after, you'll
just get a confirmation that says we can't wait to see you,
here are the COVID protocols, things like that.
So those are pretty common.
You can also send just one-off emails
if you have a specific segment that you want to do.
So, for example, on Mrs. Doubtfire, a couple of months
ago, we did anyone who had bought a ticket in 2020,
but their show had been canceled after the shutdown,
just as a reminder, like, hey, we're back on Broadway,
here's a link to get tickets, and things like that.
Great.
So we finally reached the end of day,
and I have a couple more things I can
do before I get out of here.
So I'll go and just check my email,
and make sure everything is looking good here.
So we got some proofs approved with our vendor
here, which is great.
We got confirmation that some additional creative
was installed on one of our theaters today.
Then, I'll go into our project management software,
and just update any statuses to make sure
that everything is accurate.
So this newsletter is with the client,
and we are looking good for timing on that.
I'll take a quick look at Slack, and make sure
that all of my messages have been read,
so I haven't missed anything there.
And before I go home, I'm going to run
past the Phantom of the Opera theater,
and just take some pictures for the team
to confirm some new creative that we just installed.
So today was a pretty typical day.
Luckily, we didn't have any fire drills
that we had to quickly move on.
So I spent most of my day routing, and on Zoom calls,
and kicking off some new projects.
So overall, this is really what my day-to-day looks like.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So welcome to The Majestic Theater,
where the Phantom of the Opera performs eight shows a week.
I'm just here taking a picture of the poster
here to make sure that all of our creative is up-to-date.
We had a new cast member go in last week.
So I'm just going to take a quick picture for my team,
and send it off so that they know that everything
is looking good.
If you're interested in becoming a project manager,
I definitely recommend just finding
different skills and tools that work
for you as far as organization, and being
a really good communicator.
So something I didn't quite realize
when I came into project management
is just how fast-paced everything was going to be.
So I would say just make sure that you're building up
your stamina, and you're just able to roll with the punches
as they come along.
Thanks for watching.
Be sure to give us like and subscribe to Indeed's channel.
We'll see you next time.
All right.
She's directing, so--
[LAUGHING]
Sorry.