Creative Agencies

A creative advertising agency is responsible for creating and executing advertising campaigns for its clients. A creative agency is concerned with what messages to convey to the target audience, and how to communicate the message in a creative way that gets it noticed.

In creative agencies you'll see people take briefs from clients, then recommend the best way to answer that brief through the production of ads. They develop scripts for television commercials, then make those commercials. They develop billboard executions, radio ads, digital and social media content, or build digital experiences.

The process of developing ads can involve market research, developing concepts and messages, creating visuals and copy, and production.

The key thing that distinguishes a creative agency from a media agency is that the creative agency decides how best to communicate a message and produces the 'ad' that does so. The media agency is concerned with where to best place that ad so that it is seen by the right audience. They then negotiate with media companies (such as TVNZ, Stuff, or Google and Meta) to buy the space that the ad appears in.

Close

Back to all roles
Social media manager

Social Media Manager

A Social Media Manager helps build, grow and manage different brands' online communities. This is both through engagement directly with customers or fans through creating events or social posts to build brand loyalty, or by using data (analytics) to monitor what people are thinking about their brands, or track behaviours. Within an agency, this could be across multiple brands, for each of your various clients. The Social Manager would work across the broader team, helping to support the content creators, and with the creatives to take the brand ideas and market them effectively. Social Media Managers collaborate well with their teams, and the clients they work with, and manage multiple projects (or campaigns) at the same time.

See what it's like...

Tara Ryan

Social Director at MBM

The #fyp page
ERROR in an excel formula
"The advertising industry is a place where you never stop being curious."
Watch more videos
Tara from MBM
Watch more videos

Career progression

Many Social Media Specialists look to specialise more and more as they progress through their careers – refining what they can offer to future roles - to being incredibly good in a smaller section of the broader social media space, or into programmatic or more media driven roles which expand beyond social media, and into other platforms. The roles would initially begin with a focus on community management, monitoring customer and client social communications and content, before moving into more specialised social media management and creating the overarching social strategies which each clients’ campaigns would be aligning to.
1. Community Manager
2. Social Media Manager
3. Social Strategist
4. Head of Social
1. Community Manager
2. Social Media Manager
3. Social Strategist
4. Head of Social

What might I be able to earn?

The following provides an indication of the sort of earnings that you can achieve in your career.

We’ve taken a selection of roles and provided indicative earning potential. Due to the merit-based nature of the industry, the different levels of responsibility that titles can carry – based on size of agency and nature of accounts – alongside geographical location and the different ways in which agencies interpret individual titles, these are indicative only.

To be successful you'll need...

You love creating social content already – you’re on all the social platforms, and all those platforms only the cool kids know about.
Comfortable and excited by data analysis – looking at how well a piece of work performs, and tweaking it for better reach is something fun for you.
Have an eye for detail, and a bit of a perfectionist with your posts.
Resilient and adaptable – you may not be totally onboard with your clients new posts, but you need to manage their communities without going viral for the wrong reasons.
Socially aware, and totally across trends and the ways your audience are thinking.
Calm under pressure – you are driven by deadlines and multiple clients.
Keen on tech and the future use of social media.

Common Study Choices for Social Media Managers

Like some of the other advertising roles, there are a few different areas you could study, if you wanted to continue your education. If that is the case, you could explore a number of different pathways – Communications and Marketing being one, Public Relations and Journalism another, or Events. Of course, Digital courses as well.

There are also short courses which could be easily translated into Content Creation roles, or Community Management roles.

Walking down a hallway at work.

Getting a job as a Social Media Manager

Applying for roles within the social space need you to highlight what content you are creating, how impactful it’s been, and creating a portfolio to share this is helpful. Like all of the advertising roles, it is good to start looking to make connections with other people in your chosen field, and understanding the role in more detail.

If you can, learning more of those transferable skills will help you stand out when you are applying to a place you have no previous connections.

Similar roles

Digital designer
Digital Designer
PR executive
PR Executive
Copywriter

Discover your dream career today!

Take the quiz