A Day in the Life of Tom Wong

Name: Tom Wong

Company: Meteorite

Job title: Business Development Manager

What keeps you awake at night?

Not a fan of mess, my obsessive-compulsive side makes me clean the flat, otherwise I can’t sleep. Also my flatmate is perhaps the messiest surveyor in the world (at least she doesn’t read MarketingWeek.co.uk).

What keeps you busy all day?

If I am not planning and implementing the new business programme, I am having meetings with clients, Meteorites or the odd journalist. Oh and then there’s the internet – it is so distracting!!

Describe your working day:

I’m a bit of an eco-warrior so I bike the short hop from Battersea to Putney (narrowly avoiding cars, motorbikes, small children, fierce dogs, falling cranes, the rain and anything sharp). I arrive in the office raring to go just after 8am. Like most people I’m emailing or phoning contacts pretty much all day. I may pop out for lunch with a fellow Meteorite or client. Usually I have a chemistry or pitch presentation to prepare or I will be working on Meteorite’s internal collateral, so a lot of time is spent in our creative department. From time to time, I’ll also help out the account teams if there is a bucketful of work going through the agency; after all they are all more than willing to pitch in on pitches. My working days tend to be very varied.

What’s your busiest time of day?

Generally most of the day is busy – there are YouTube times throughout the day but these are more limited past 6pm as for some strange reason 6pm tends to be when the workload gets even heavier.

What brands/accounts have you worked on?

I work across multiple brands depending on what new business we are approaching at the time. I only have one client as such and that is Meteorite. Since being at Meteorite I have worked on Royal Mail, BlackBerry, Jumeirah, Yell, Emap, The Law Society and ConstructionSkills. I’m working on a lot more at the moment but they are all top secret.

Best day at work so far?

There are a couple that spring to mind: taking the call to let us know we were on the COI roster (without actually realising it – it was my first month) and finding out that we had got onto the Royal Mail Group design roster.

Worst day at work:

I was gutted when we were told we hadn’t won Innocent – close but no cigar!

Name one thing you’ve achieved that has made your bosses sit up and take notice:

To get on the Innocent pitch list I dressed up as a pineapple and went to Fruit Towers, refusing to leave without a brief. Meteorite hadn’t had such a young new business manager before; guerrilla tactics were new to them. Oh, we got to pitch.

Ambitions:

To make Meteorite one of the most sought-after agencies in the next three years. After that, who knows? Perhaps make it the biggest?

Advice to other rising stars:

Having received a few ‘no’ responses to job applications at the start of my career I have quickly realised that you are judged on what you know; a firm grounding in marketing is vital – take a course from the Chartered Institute of Marketing or The Institute of Direct Marketing to get the basics covered. It is also vitally important to deliver things passionately – if you believe in something, say so.

Quote from the boss:

‘Difficult to manage, always throwing up challenges for us, disruptive and loud but he has amazing energy and persistence. Would I have anybody else in my new business team? No.’ Hugh Bishop – Meteorite chairman.