Name: Fernanda Fain-Binda
Job Title: Promotions Manager
Age: 22
From: North-West London
In London: Since 1983

What did you hope to achieve in this job?

Gain good experience to later get into event management.  Meet loads of people and use different skills (communication, marketing, sales).  I hoped to learn a lot about marketing, as you have to suss out what a brand represents and what each customer wants.

What were you doing before this?

I was at University studying Spanish and Latin & South American Studies.  Part of which involved a year abroad in Madrid, Spain.  In the summer months over a number of years I worked in Promotions part-time.

What does your job involve on a day-to-day basis?

There’s no set day, that’s the thing about promotions.  You can work on an exhibition that is all day on a stand serving customers or another promotion may involve just a couple of hours serving chunks of cheese outside a supermarket!

What responsibilities do you have?

Training staff, monitoring customer levels, looking after the equipment, promoting the product or service, making sure that you are always ‘on-brand’ and looking good & positive for when you are in contact with clients.

What are the best bits?

The contact with people is fantastic be it the positive feedback from clients or the staff you work with who tend to be fun, free-spirited lunatics, and the kind of people you wouldn’t necessarily come into contact with in an office.

And the worst?

Working with the public, sometimes you get the occasional person who doesn’t treat you with any respect.  The same I guess for waiters or barmen & women.  You can meet some really strange people at times!

Do you have to have prior experience?  If so, what helped get you the job?

You have to have had prior experience in promotions and show that you understand the responsibilities and duties involved.  Anything where you work with the public is always going to help you getting into promotions as an industry.  Often many people are aspiring actors, models, dancers, entrepreneurs, self-employed or just people saving up to go travelling.

How did you go about getting it?

This particular job was advertised on a recruitment website, but in the vast majority of cases you get promotions work through Promotional Agencies.

Any tips you could give our readers?

If you see people doing a promotion, especially during Spring and Summer (the busiest times), ask them what agency they work for, if it’s a decent agency, what payment system they have etc.  There seem to be very few guidelines of how an agency could be run, and the work isn’t constant, so it’s not always a job for everyone!

Anything you know now that you wish you’d known before getting into Promotions?

No as such.  But as you need to be very confident, it makes you well aware of your self-worth.  It’s also made me very wary to check the details not only of the particular promotions job but also the employer (in this case the promo agency).  I think this applies to so many things be it work or life.

With this experience, what do you plan to do next?

I plan to go travelling in South America and use the skills I’ve learnt through Promotions to teach English and fund me on my travels and hopefully get into Event Management or Marketing.