Becca is a recent Marquette grad and an assistant PR account executive at Celtic. She shares her insights on collaboration and working as an integrated team.

Collaboration is defined as, “working with another person or group in order to achieve or do something.”

While I was at Marquette, I was often assigned the “dreaded” PR group projects and thought that through these exercises, I mastered collaborating and teamwork. However, since starting at Celtic, I realized that there is far more that goes into working and collaborating as part of an integrated agency. On any given day I might work with the media team, creative department or account management as well as my own PR team.

I’ve quickly recognized that while I do have experience in teamwork, there was a lot to be learned from agency life. I recently worked on a PR client project that called in the help of the Celtic creative team to design an infographic. Here are a few key takeaways from my experience:

1. Be prepared to communicate.
It sounds simple, but whenever you’re presenting a project to another team, prepare a clear and concise explanation of the project and all of the requirements. Despite spending the past days researching different topics and concepts for the infographic, when it came time to explain to Celtic creatives what the client needed done, I blanked. Just because I knew the PR client like the back of my hand didn’t mean the creative team did too. Because of this oversight, I didn’t prepare enough and struggled to share the details of the PR campaign, making myself look a bit foolish.

2. Be honest.
No matter what the budget or time frame for a project, always be honest with your team. The creative work for this infographic required the work be done quickly and on a fairly tight budget. I assumed that creative would be upset about the quick turn around and frustrated with the low budget. In reality, the team understood that we were all in the same boat and all under the same restraints. In turn, they were honest with the PR team about the realistic scope of work with the time and budget available. Because of this, we could work together to come up with a doable concept to present to the client.

3. Be open-minded.
Remember, there is no such thing as a dumb idea. Keep a completely open mind during preliminary meetings and share all of your ideas, no matter how crazy they may seem. Our final concept for the infographic was a combination of several ideas, many of which were mentioned during our first meeting. It’s okay to remind each other about the restraints set by a client, but letting the creative juices flow can help crazy ideas become very doable options.

I learned that while collaboration may take planning and coordination, it pays off greatly in the long run and truly shows an agency’s work at its finest. The Celtic Crew and more importantly, the client, couldn’t have been happier. In the end, despite the lessons that had to be learned, the creative work was on-time, on-budget and pretty awesome.