Assembly Speaker, 4 October
That Lot, Media Company
On Monday 4 October Year 12 and Year 13 had the pleasure to meet a team from That Lot, a hugely successful media company, working on many media platforms. They create social media content for brands like Channel 4, Microsoft, and BBC in the forms of marketing and advertising.
Firstly we were introduced to the company’s ‘Junior Resource Manager’ called Kirsty. She began by asking: "How many of you use tiktok?”
While many people answered yes to using tik tok, not many said yes to the following question which was “How many of you would like to make a career in the social media industry?” This highlighted the aim of their talk which was to inspire the students that they develop many skills on a daily basis on social media platforms and that these skills could possibly lead to a career in the future.
We then heard from Nina, who worked in the Creative department. She told us about some of her daily activities during a regular work day which included coming up with creative content writing, visual aids and further videography. She had begun with an internship and then went onto working with different companies including Apple. Then we met Greta from the design department who is a production coordinator. She told us that she had grown up with social media very much like us and that she knew she wanted to get into entertainment from a very young age. She has since worked with the X factor and BBC 1 show.
Finally we met two other members of the team who work in account management named Tarja and Gup. Tarja said that she originally wanted to work with TV production. She had begun as an Account Executive for That Lot and then was promoted into Account Management. She taught us that the key 3 skills in account management were being organised, being a good communicator and looking after the team. On the other hand, Gup’s role is a paid social manager and she spends most of her time working in advertisement. She had studied communication and media in university but she reassured us that knowledge of social media platforms wasn’t needed in this role as her work was behind the scenes.
The talk ended with Kirsty telling us more about herself and her role in Operations. She told us about her work routine which involves collecting data from multiple platforms then taking that data to the account manager for advice in order to improve the company's productivity and output.
Overall, the students really enjoyed this talk and were surprised by the breadth and variety of job roles in the media industry. One student asked how each would rate enjoyment of their jobs on a scale of one to ten, and they unanimously agreed it would be a 9 or even 10!
Many of the students went to discuss possible work experience with the team from That Lot at the end of talk and left the hall inspired with many new ideas about different careers they could now consider. We would like to thank That Lot for taking the time out to join us on Monday and answer all our questions.