Get to Know: Happy Medium (@itsahappymedium)

Happy Medium posted a job opening for an Account Executive just over a week ago. They seemed like a pretty cool company and we wanted to learn a little more. So we interviewed owner Katie Stocking. Highlights include tequila, bulldogs, and why an honest media buying company is just what Des Moines needs. If you like what you read and you're interested in working at a great shop as an Account Exec perhaps you should apply.

Egotist: Let's hear the Happy Medium story.
Katie: Our story really turns more into “my” story at the beginning of it. After working at Channel 13 for almost 5 years as an Account Executive, I began to see a need for HONEST media buying. I felt several clients were working with some media buyers claiming to know what they were doing, but felt they were actually not as invested in the actual client as I thought they should be. (i.e. just taking agency commissions without doing any real work/negotiating on behalf of clients).

This is when “if you want something done, you have to do it yourself” came into play and I decided to open Happy Medium. We were very fortunate to have the support of Ramsey Auto on our side along with a few other great clients, which was a huge help in getting things up and running. Over the past eight months we have had tremendous success and we are VERY happy and thankful. Our strengths are media buying and social media management for clients. In July we hired Linley Bruess a recent graduate from ISU with a degree in graphic design. She heads up the social media management, any design work our clients need, and generally speaking in charge of keeping us from turning into an unorganized hot mess. We are currently looking to add an Account Executive to our team. It just goes to show– honesty and hard work pays off. (Seriously…it does!)

E: What is the single coolest thing about Happy Medium?
K: The coolest thing about Happy Medium is that we really do have an open, honest communication style between our team and between our clients – we aren’t just saying it. Our clients know they can trust us to do what’s going to give them their biggest bang for their buck because they’ve seen the results we deliver. When we say honest we also mean we pay to subscribe to media buying software, Nielsen numbers, and Arbitron numbers to make sure the numbers we’re buying off of are real numbers (we like to depend on honest numbers NOT numbers given to us by people trying to sell our clients their media).

E: Is there something that you folks go nuts over that might not be directly related to media buying?
K: We’re huge animal lovers at Happy Medium! Happy Medium’s mascots are my two English Bulldogs – Georgia & Cleo.

We’ve also got a big hand in a project right now called TequilaFest. TequilaFest is an event coming next spring to the greater DM area. It's designed to benefit the Pet Project Midwest and enable them to also help clients with spaying and neutering their animals. We will be announcing the 2012 Tequilafest date soon. Stay tuned!

E: What’s your culture like?
K: At Happy Medium, we like to work hard and play hard too. At the end of the day, we are all about making sure our clients are happy with our services. If our clients’ businesses are growing we are doing our job well. Once we know our clients are happy, we like to make sure we’re happy people too!

We do spend a lot of our time researching new advertising opportunities available. Last week we had a conference call with Pandora, this week we are looking into texting campaigns, and next week we have a meeting set-up with the local Google rep to make sure we’re improving our Google Ad Word placement processes.

We are all about continual research. In September, I spent an entire week in Chicago at a Media Buying Academy – working even more to learn the in’s and out’s of media buying. Advertising changes everyday. We consider it our jobs to be experts in what is available for our clients and what is going to provide them the best presence for their media budget.

E: Where does the name Happy Medium come from?
K: The very popular Saturday Mfg. came up with our name and logo. We LOVE it and would recommend them to anybody! We did have several options to choose from but we feel this best fit our business model of assisting clients with their advertising. We are not a giant agency and because of that we do not have the costs associated with it. We just try to be the “happy medium” if you will between the client and the media vendors/options.

Thanks to Katie and Happy Medium for a great interview.