At the time I started my role at GFI MAX (which became logicNow, then Solarwinds, and is now part of N-able), I was still reasonably fresh-faced and wet behind the ears. As a graphic designer within the marketing team, I was responsible for producing high-volume, multi-channel campaign collateral across the company’s portfolio of products and for major industry events.
Working with a small team of designers and a number of marketing executives, the main challenge was interpreting the different ways each marketing executive would brief you on their project. Building good relationships with the team members was the key to understanding each person’s process.
Each month each of the products had their on specific marketing campaign, that consisted of print mailers, email, PPC adverts, and web content. In addition, there were regular events that required their own collateral. All this meant that you had a very limited amount of time to understand, design, and refine your work before it went out.
At the start of the month, we would begin our preparation for the next month campaigns. Working as part of the larger marketing scrum, we would sit down with marketing executives and discuss the upcoming campaigns. To begin with, I was only helping them artwork their ideas, but the longer I worked there, the more involved I became in crafting the campaigns alongside the executives.
We would sit down and discuss the ideas, sketch out visuals, and once a direction was agreed, I would go away and create a higher-fidelity draft. We would then review the draft together. Once the final visuals were approved, I would implement them across the different collateral types. This process would repeat itself for each products. As time went on and the relationships between myself and the marketing executive grew, the efficiency of the team increased.
Over four years I designed and delivered hundreds of campaigns, supported product launches, and contributed to global events. As the team matured and relationships strengthened, our output increased significantly while maintaining (and often improving) creative quality. We established streamlined workflows and reusable templates that reduced repetitive work and accelerated delivery.
I learnt many important lessons while working at Broker Insights. Here are a few of the most important learnings:
Relationships matter
Building strong relationships with team members improves how efficiently you can interpret briefs, and can be antidote to burnout caused by repetitive tasks.
Be prepared, stay consistent
Being satisfied in environments built around high-volume delivery depends on removing unnecessary friction. The use of templates and other streamlining methods helps you focus on the more creative elements of the process, that are usually the most rewarding.