Olivia Kelly is a star in the eyes of everyone at Spark Foundry. Joining the team just a week before the pandemic, she has flown through the ranks to be an account manager within the publishing and audio team, becoming an integral member of the wider agency despite the obvious barriers that came with lockdown. Her focus has always been on big retail clients where news brands sit at the heart of their plans.
She started out working across Currys and Clarins, two very different accounts requiring specific skillsets. On Currys she quickly became adept at working with incredibly small lead times, last minute budgets and strict targets.
As Olivia rose through the ranks, her confidence and knowledge of the market continued to grow and she developed her own style of negotiating, which allowed her to develop some incredibly strong publisher relationships.
Over the past 18 months, Olivia has thrown herself into the deep end of retail by working on Asda, another fast-paced retail client. She has been integral to the team’s success, championing news brands at the core of Asda’s plans. She has delivered against tough targets, coped with fierce commercial negotiations and inspired junior staff on the account to be as passionate as she is about news brands.
Most notably this year, Olivia secured a tenancy across Mail Metro Media titles, running ads weekly and providing Asda with a guaranteed early position ahead of competitors. Olivia has also used news brands to drive innovation, gamifying Asda’s ‘Rewards’ campaign launch to offer Daily Mirror readers a reward for finding all Asda’s gold coins within the paper.
All of Olivia’s hard work has paid off for Spark Foundry as she has been instrumental in delivering the agency’s two strongest annual audits in print, demonstrating her negotiation prowess, her diligence in delivering extremely competitive pricing and her ability to harness her relationships to gain Asda an advantage on quality.
Elsewhere, she has found time to throw herself into wider agency initiatives including Spark Foundry’s JTI Programme, enabling new starters to take a month in planning, performance and investment. Olivia is the lead for the programme’s publishing team and helping to shape JTI for the next intake and inspire the next generation of media planners.
