Sarah Inoue Virk
Listen to the interview (approx. 1 hr, 8 min.) or download it.
Graduated in 2015 with a major in Music Business. Principal Instrument: violin.
Position: Assistant Media Planner at MediaHub (part of the MullenLowe Group), a large, multi-national marketing agency. Sarah specializes in getting marketing content in appropriate places on the internet and maximizing click-throughs and other actions by consumers. Her job involves lots of data-sorting, reporting, talking with people, and working with technology partners.
Overview: Sarah moved to L.A. in January of 2015, to do the music-industry internship required for her degree. She enjoyed the field, but disliked the specific work atmosphere, so after getting her degree she sought new opportunities, ultimately working as a part-time contractor for a high-tech staffing group and helping a new start-up with business development. However, around December the work dried up, as did her income. Sarah then co-founded a marketing/consulting business with a friend, targeting small businesses as well as musicians. The business struggled along, gradually doing better, as the bulk of their business was managing businesses’ Instagram pages. . They got office space and hired an employee. Then after about 8 months her partner went to work for a client while refusing to relinquish ownership of their company. Sarah decided, under those circumstances, to look for a job.
For a while, her job search was unfocused and yielded nothing, until a friend pointed out that her background made her well-suited for the role of media planner. Sarah’s boyfriend’s job was to edit commercials, and that also interested her in the power of marketing. With a new focus to her job search, Sarah quickly landed her current job (via a job posting) in January, 2017.
You can see Sarah’s LinkedIn profile here. Sarah wishes she had more opportunities to reach out to alumni as a student, and wants folks to be especially encouraged to reach out to her.
Choice Quotes: “My job is to find partners & vendors on behalf of our clients. We set things up and monitor it all, but the tech does most of the work.”
“At Berklee, we musicians constantly were told to know our audience. Marketing is the same thing as that. Just substitute ‘target demographic’ for ‘audience.'”
“I now realize that there’s a chance for companies that invest heavily in programmatic media to see a transparent ROI (Return On Investment). I get a lot of satisfaction from being able to show my clients exactly what a campaign did. ”
At Berklee everyone is super-passionate about music, and it’s easy to get caught up in that but it’s OK to work outside of music. The Berklee experience offers such a robust, unique perspective that will help you succeed in many fields.”
“If you want to start a career in marketing, working at a big agency is cool. It’s a good way to get experience and learn a lot before you work for a brand. Just like as music, expect to put in huge hours and it’ll take a while to be established, and always be eager to learn and do better.”