A day in the life of Chris Spenceley

Name: Chris Spenceley

Company: TEQUILA London

Job title: Group account director

What keeps you busy all day?

Working on the Abbey account. Developing the communications for all of Abbey’s customer services keeps us on our toes. Putting some humanity and engagement into financial services direct marketing is a great challenge. I love it though.

What keeps you awake at night?

Zoe, my 11 month-old daughter.

Describe your working day:

I arrive at work at around 8.30am wishing I had cycled in, but at least I have successfully dropped Zoe off at nursery. I always start with 3 cups of tea – one of the great things about TEQUILA is the half-pint mugs that we have tea in! I work on some busy accounts and a lot of my day is spent developing and reviewing the strategy and work that we produce. I also enjoy working on the development of TEQUILA as a business. This is something everyone here is involved in, especially the shaping of our vision. For satisfying activity nothing beats the development of the team and monitoring how they have developed into what I think is one of the strongest account handling teams I have worked with. Also, I often make a trip up to Milton Keynes (fortunately not on my bike) for various account related reasons. However, the tea is not up to scratch there so I am keen to get back to TEQUILA as quickly as possible if only for the half-pint mugs!

What’s your busiest time of day?

If I don’t start the day well, then I am in trouble! So my busiest time is getting the monkeys off my back from 9.30 to 10.30 and getting everyone in my team organised. If you miss the start of the day, you miss the day.

What brands/accounts have you worked on?

Abbey, M&S, FTSE, AskJeeves, BBC, Oracle and the Guernsey Tourist Board.

Best day at work:

Being the only existing agency to retain the Abbey business after a long repitch.

Worst day at work:

Losing the agency tray baking competition – my double chocolate marble cake was just not up to scratch.

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

Showing them the power of a simple letter.

Ambitions:

I am so jealous of my colleagues all heading off to Shanghai, Sydney, Cape Town and LA! I want to use the TEQUILA network to travel myself, particularly to Canada and south-east Asia. I would love to sail there but somehow I don’t think they will give me the time.

Advice to other rising stars:

Who dares wins.

Quote from the boss:

“Chris manages to juggle the demands of running very large pieces of business, keeping a team motivated and getting actively involved in extra-curricular activities (he recently gave a very entertaining routine at an agency stand-up comedy evening) – all whilst bring up a young family. Surely this earns him the ‘Superdad’ title?”

– Ian Thomas, managing partner, TEQUILA London.