What do you actually do, our customer consultant and copywriter asked each other. Here it is:
Josie, the customer advisor
Calculating, coordinating, preparing meetings
Steffi: Josie, you trained as a media clerk with us and are now a junior customer advisor. What are your tasks at UVA?
Josie: I’m the girl for everything, that’s just the way it is. I answer the phone when central calls come in, prepare the conference room for appointments. I greet visitors, take deliveries and get flowers when it’s someone’s birthday. I really enjoy doing all that, but I’m not the only one of us. It is important that I know about all the projects we are currently working on and that I have an overview of all internal appointments so that I can assign calls and direct them to the right contact person.
Steffi: What are your commercial tasks?
Josie: Mainly calculating and writing offers according to the wishes and ideas of our customers. I then take over the management of many of these projects. I coordinate the team that implements the project and liaise between the client and, for example, our creative or digital department.
Steffi: You are also creative yourself, especially in the social media sector.
Josie: Yes, that’s right. I manage our social media accounts and draw up editorial plans. I am therefore also the contact person for customers if they have questions about the technical or practical aspects of social media.
Steffi: Why did you choose UVA back then?
Josie: I really always wanted to do “something with media”, and after two trial days at UVA it was clear to me that this field of work was really something for me. I was quickly able to take on tasks independently and get involved in the content, which I really enjoyed.
Steffi: Thumbs up and thumbs down for your workplace:
Josie: Thumbs up for the team, I think we have a really great working relationship. In practical terms, I think our technical equipment is great. Apple devices make my work easier every day. Thumbs down for the fax machine. I’ve been told that this is still needed from time to time, but this technology dinosaur is a real challenge for me.
Steffi, the copywriter
Language is my construction kit
Josie: You are a copywriter at UVA. What do you do all day?
Steffi: Writing texts. This can be a single word, a slogan, an advertisement, a text for a postcard. Or content for a website or brochure.
Josie: I would be interested to know where your ideas come from. Does it all just come to you, do you already have something in mind?
Steffi: Both, it’s actually like a graphic designer or when you design a post creatively. You work with images or digital tools. I work with the language toolbox. There is often material from the customer that I can use. Or there are specifications, this or that must be included, we want to say that. I make something nice out of it. Sometimes the brilliant idea comes quickly, sometimes it takes a while or it occurs to me at dinner.
Josie How do you approach a task?
Steffi: First of all, I would like to know who the text is intended to reach and what it is supposed to achieve. I ask myself: Where is the future reader right now, where do we pick him up, where do we find him? Which medium is used to reach them? What prior knowledge does he have, what are his needs? Or is it all coincidence? I often drive colleagues crazy with questions like this, but I think it’s important. My work is a mix of research, creativity and craftsmanship. The German language is my most important tool. And it is inexhaustible! What I don’t like are incorrectly used words and tenses, inconsistent sentence structures. This makes it unnecessarily difficult to grasp texts. Banal, empty phrases and meaningless, that’s not nice either. I find boring texts terrible. Who is reading this?
Josie: The SEO machine : )
Steffi: Yes, exactly. But nobody wants to read an unhappily stuffed text. An SEO-optimized text should also read well. And it works!
Josie: How do you do your research?
Steffi: I’m digging through the Internet. You can find a lot on health topics. Of course, everything has to be right. Then I have to weigh things up: Does the reader need a lot of medical details on this page or does he just want to feel that the doctor has a lot of experience and will do a great job?
Josie: Facts are easy to research, but we were once asked to write a CV about a doctor and found nothing about him, just this one video of him operating. You really looked at that. Why? For me, it was just a bloody operation.
Steffi: I wanted to know what kind of person he is. In the film, the doctor came across as enthusiastic, modern, open-minded and warm-hearted. That helped me to find the right words for his CV.
