Agency Spotlight Series: Gareth Pickering
In this month’s Orientation Marketing agency spotlight series, we speak to Director & Co-Founder, Gareth Pickering.
Each month, we speak to a member of the Orientation Marketing team to find out a little more about their roles at Orientation Marketing, as well as what makes them tick.
This month we speak to Gareth Pickering.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR ROLE AT ORIENTATION MARKETING?
I’m a Director at Orientation Marketing. Chris Lawson and I founded the agency together back in 2015 and my role consists of a little bit of everything. In growing a business such as ours, you find yourself doing a bit of everything from account management to new business to the accounts to recruiting to everything through to emptying the bins! I love every minute of it all.
WHAT DOES YOUR AVERAGE DAY LOOK LIKE?
The alarm rings at 6:30 and Radio 4’s Today programme is on for the news. A quick shower is then followed by breakfast, then I cycle the 7 minutes along the beautiful canal path into the office for 8:00 where it’s the first coffee (espresso) of the day. (Right now I’m working from home, so the very beginning might look a little different to this!) I start the working day with a catch up on all the morning’s emails (and the previous nights’ US influx). I read through the various trade press, have a second coffee, then at 9:15, it’s on with the business of the day.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE PART OF THE WORKING DAY?
That part of the day from 8:00 till 9:00. It’s quiet and I tend to get most done in that hour; it feels like the calm before the storm. I always feel a little surge of excitement as the office comes to life - what will today bring? If you can get that each morning with your job, things aren’t too bad.
HOW DID YOU COME ABOUT FORMING THE AGENCY?
Chris and I worked together in publishing for many years. We had been working on pharmaceutical and analytical chemistry titles and it was here where we spotted the gap in the market for a good agency to create the bridge between our clients’ marketing departments and the publications. We asked our clients if they would support us if we started an agency and the positive response that quickly came back persuaded us to take the plunge.
HOW DID YOU COME ABOUT WORKING IN THIS INDUSTRY?
After studying for my degree in politics and European history I worked in publishing (in sales). I worked across several medical, life science, and analytical chemistry titles and it was here that I learned about the worlds of sales, publishing, marketing and science. Every day was different I enjoyed every minute of it. Chris and I worked alongside each other at a few of these publishers and the rest is history.
WHAT ARE THE TOUGHEST CHALLENGES YOU’VE HAD PROFESSIONALLY?
Most people will understand when I say 2020. It’s been a horrid year for a small business, and we are still not through the other side. COVID-19 and Brexit have dealt a huge double whammy of doubt and uncertainty in recent times and we are still not clear on the direction out of the woods. I now understand more than ever why business likes certainty, sadly this has been in very short supply recently.
TELL US ABOUT AN INTERESTING PROJECT YOU ARE WORKING ON RIGHT NOW.
We have several clients with whom we are working to develop their 2021 media strategy, it’s proving a heady mix of challenging and interesting, forming a strategy in a media landscape that is totally uncharted for everyone.
RECOMMEND A BOOK YOU RECENTLY READ
I’m a great fan of Audible and listen rather than read. I think I’m too impatient to sit quietly for hours. My library is mostly full of history books. I’ve just finished a great one called “Chemistry and our Universe.”
If I was recommending a book for the perfect cadences of the English language, I would recommend anything written by Clive James. For comedy perfection, I couldn’t do any better than to recommend any of the “Ed Reardon’s week” podcasts on Radio 4.
WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE MUSIC GENRE?
1970’s and 1980’s British and American hard rock and heavy metal. And any of the music of Mozart.
WHAT WAS YOUR FAVOURITE BAND 10 YEARS AGO?
Def Leppard (still is). Hysteria, what an album!
WHAT SKILL DO YOU THINK EVERYONE SHOULD LEARN?
Listening – properly. We all pretend to do it, but so few of us actually do it.
WHAT UPCOMING TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION WILL DRAMATICALLY IMPACT THE INDUSTRY IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS?
Any development in the field of telehealth or any advancement in the area of patient-centric drug design.
Gareth has worked for over 20 years in B2B publishing across global organisations and specialises medical device, med-tech, analytical chemistry and chromatography titles. He has worked on many integrated multi-channel global advertising campaigns and has a deep understanding of these media landscapes and has experience with both the strategy and the implementation of highly complex and niche B2B media programmes.
