Sarah Evans, Studio Manager, Jones and Palmer

Sarah Evans is the Studio Manager at Jones and Palmer, a leading corporate communications agency, helping to make businesses understandable by crafting insightful corporate stories that provide their stakeholders with the tools to make informed long-term decisions. With over 17 years under her belt as a Studio Manager, there isn't much Sarah doesn't know when it comes to running an efficient and creative studio!

1. Sarah, can you share a bit more about yourself and what you do?

I was born in north west London, moved up to the Midlands for university, where I fell into working on the uni magazine, doing design, layout and writing on an antiquated Apple Mac SE. That led to my first proper job as an artworker when I left uni, and the rest is history! I've now been a Studio Manager in one form or another for about 17 years, working for big and small agencies across the Midlands, and I've loved them all. I'm a bit of a veteran these days..😂

2. You’ve worked within the marketing agency world for a number of years now. What is about agency life that you like so much?

My second proper job was in-house, and I found it pretty boring, the work was all very similar, formulaic and the culture was much more impersonal. I've always enjoyed a good challenge and love the camaraderie that you get working in an agency, where you're all in it together, trying to figure out the best way of delivering work to crazy deadlines. I can happily say overall I love what I do, I get so much enjoyment from it and there is NEVER a dull moment. Lots of frustrating moments, but it's never dull! I have made some wonderful long term friends throughout my time in agencies, and in the Midlands it's a lovely network where lots of people have worked with each other in one place or another.

3. Over the last 5-10 years what changes have you seen within the industry?

From a Studio and artwork perspective, I think it's getting very difficult to maintain relevance. There are so many additional skills that are needed now, because there's so many channels that content goes into. An artworker these days is expected to have technical artwork and prepress skills, in-depth Adobe CS knowledge, understanding of all the mainstream digital platforms, and a level of developer/coding knowledge too. It's really challenging, as there might be new skills needed that you don't have the opportunity to learn as part of your day to day that you'll just be expected to know if you move jobs.

4. Does Jones and Palmer offer flexibly working and what do you think is the impact of hybrid working in the creative space?

We do offer flexible working within certain parameters; we have the option to work from home and to manage hours flexibly across the week around childcare, elder care and essential appointments. It's really important for us to offer this, as there are times when we ask our team for their flexibility in return - it would be unfair for it not to be a two-way street. Hybrid working is great for flexibility but I do think it creates challenges in communicating effectively. We try to make sure any key messages delivered verbally are also written into project tasks and chats to ensure full visibility for all, especially if they couldn't attend a catch up, or are dropping into a project to support. I think the best solution is to balance remote working with a reasonable amount of social and in-person engagement. Fully remote working means inexperienced members of staff can't learn effectively through ad-hoc observation and questioning, impromptu discussions are harder to pull people into, and a lot of positive culture and teambuilding happens organically when people are in the same physical space.

5. What do you think will be some of the key trends appearing across the marketing and creative sector this year and beyond?

It's got to be the acceleration of AI - the challenges I described above faced by people who need to learn new skills are far more easily accomplished if you understand how to use AI to support your creative work and speed up aspects of what you do. We're spending time seeking out new tools, defining new ways of working and understanding how we can harness AI in our workflows. I think you'll start to see jobs which ask for experience and understanding of AI tools, or a demonstration of how you've used AI in your work to improve it or deliver it quicker.