A day in the life of:

Andy Bold:

Business Development Manager, Ethical Corporation
Joined: 2004

A bit about me

I came in to FC five years ago via an agency temp position after a few years as a professional musician and 6 years working in Jazz music education, magazine publishing, event management and mail order retailing. So, straight sales was something relatively new for me. That said, the basic principles of getting “buy-in” to a project are broadly the same across most sectors so it was relatively easy to make the transition and see the potential to develop in to a selling role.

Very quickly after joining it became apparent that there were (and are) a lot of opportunities to make money here, and make a real difference to certain business units. The FC business model encourages innovation, strong research, compelling content and well-executed conferences/magazines/newsletters. This puts FC brand-names at the heart of many of the world’s industries – many of the FC business units are leading news, information and intelligence “hubs” around which an industry audience will congregate. This model offers far more value to industry professionals than some other companies who just focus on conferences – and it’s a perfect platform for a focused new-business person to make money from sponsors, advertisers and subscribers and make step changes in revenue for certain sectors. I’ve worked in other conference companies and they don’t come close.

There is a tremendous amount of variety both in terms of topic areas and communication channels. I work in a sector with a research arm, conference arm, print magazine, e-newsletters and websites. There are a nice variety of larger “flagship” shows and new topic area shows to work on, which means in any one day I’m out of the office meeting clients for multi-conference sponsorships, keeping in touch with existing sponsors, or working with the conference research team on planning the vendor prospecting in new topic areas.

One minute I’m in Hong Kong with a logistics company discussing a research project; the next I’m meeting with a top 5 Forensic Investigations firm in Amsterdam discussing sponsorship for Anti-Corruption conferences and e-newsletters; and the next minute I’m with a well known drinks retailer in London planning sponsored editorial reports on food supply chains. It’s varied, interesting and challenging from day to day.  

I like the working environment in the FC office – relaxed in a formal sense (i.e. NO suits, NO stuffy meeting rooms)……but very focused, driven and entrepreneurial in a business sense. FC has a good mix of young, cosmopolitan, highly motivated and intelligent people – most with very interesting lives and activities outside of work…..so it’s a lot more vibrant and pleasant to work here than in many other companies I’ve worked for. Probably a big reason why I’m still here