BroxtenDigital
A media planner decides where a brand's ad budget goes: which channels, which audiences, and how much to spend on each to hit a real goal. Eman Hubbard started with that kind of work early in her career and is now Director of Precision Marketing at Spark Foundry, Publicis Media.
I wanted to talk with Eman, Michigan State grad and a mentor since my college days, because she's living proof you don't need a direct line into media. She started out studying game design, not marketing.
What does a media planner do?
As a performance media analyst, I see the planner's job as strategy: deciding which channels get funded, which audiences we target, and what we need to prove. People like me then execute and optimize against that plan day to day.
Eman was all over that from day one. Her first shop was a small Old Town Lansing agency. Her boss was the media planner, and she was the digital specialist focused on paid search and programmatic. Being at a small firm meant wearing more hats than her title suggested. "I was able to sit next to SVPs, even our principal, trying to figure out things for campaigns," she said, and picked up planning, social and creative by watching the people who owned each piece.
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How do you get into media planning without a media degree?
At Michigan State, Eman focused on game design and Japanese, committed to making games, and didn't get her first taste of advertising until a digital business course in her last semester. She took that class, fell into paid search, and her major was already locked in.
Her advice for anyone unsure what they want to do: "Do it anyway, explore. It's okay to suck at something." She took an unpaid internship in Ann Arbor to learn the basics, then built her career one stop at a time: a small Lansing agency, the University of Michigan's in-house shop, her own consulting firm during the pandemic, Goodway Group, and now Spark Foundry.
Is the Meta Blueprint certification worth it for students?
Yeah, Eman actually told me that when we were in college. When I asked which tools matter most early on, her answer was the free ones: Meta Blueprint, Google Analytics, and Google's marketing courses.
I took that advice going in, and it kept me from having to learn Meta ads from scratch on day one of my first performance media role. Certify yourself in paid social and search before the work finds you, not after.
How should you bring new ideas to your manager?
Eman's rule for junior marketers pitching something new: "You probably do have a great idea, but need to identify the perfect moment to bring it up and who's in the room." She raises new ideas in one-on-ones with her leadership instead of in a group setting, since that's when there's time to actually talk them through.
She pairs that with a line on humility that applies to more than pitching ideas: "If you are the smartest person in the room, you need to go find another room." She says humility is what gets people to help you when you fall on your face, while showing up with a prideful heart shuts that help down.
Watch the full conversation
Watch the full episode for more on Eman's approach to culture, why she recommends staying in person early in your career, and the LinkedIn strategy she'd tell any 0-3 year marketer to follow.
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Eman is open to connecting with MSU students and young marketers on LinkedIn. Subscribe on YouTube for the rest of the conversations behind this show.