Young Gun profiles takes a look at the young talent across the Australian advertising, adtech, marketing and media sector. Aiming to shed light on the varying roles, people and companies across the buzzing industry.
Kate O’Loughlin: associate strategy director at Rufus
Time in current role/time at company:
One and a half years at Initiative.
How long have you been in the industry?
Five years.
How did you get here? Was this always the plan?
“I fell into media” *rolls eyes*
But seriously… I had two family friends working at my previous agency who helped me nab an internship, from which I was offered a job and happily accepted.
During my first six months I was an absolute gremlin while balancing full time work with finishing my degree and studying full time. Massive respect to anyone else doing the same thing, it’s gruelling.
Who is your right-hand who guides you day to day?
Despite knowing next to nothing about sport, I do know that any good athlete doesn’t just have one go-to coach. There’s a whole team behind them getting them into shape to be the best they can.
For me, my coaches are everyone from my epic strat director Tom Davies and our CSO Chris Colter, to my amazing client service team at Rufus, to my fellow strat team (otherwise known as Strat Bratz). Shameless plug, but I’m lucky to work at such a smart agency like Initiative where literally everyone I work with has something I could learn from.
What’s the best thing about the industry you work in?
As a proud pop-culture-TikTok-trend-fandom-participant girlie, I love that in any given day I could be researching Taylor Swift, the cost-of-living crisis, and the latest breakthroughs in nootropics.
The number of times I’ve somehow been able to word in my obsessive love of teen pop culture idols or improv into a work session is honestly mind blowing. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to genuinely look into the things I love and am passionate about on a day-to-day basis – and better yet, do it with people who I actually consider friends for life.
And the biggest challenge?
When you do what you love with the people you love, the lines between personal and work life tend to blur. It can be challenging to put the computer away if I’m getting to go deep on One Direction subreddits from 2013, but at the end of the day I know it’s critical to my wellbeing that I set firm boundaries.
For me, establishing clear 'non-negotiables' in my daily workouts and walks has been a great way to reset myself and shift out of work mode. Making these practices something I have to do every single day has kind of been like a personal KPI, and being a competitive person it’s fun to see how many days in a row I can go sticking to routine.
Whose job have you set your sight in the future?
I don’t have a job I want, but more so an output I would love to deliver. If in 10 years I’m still able to do explore the topics and trends that I love while developing creative business solutions and opportunities, then I’ll be a happy woman.
Where do you turn for inspiration?
I want to say books, but my screentime says TikTok.
Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you:
To say I’m open would be an understatement. I’ll chat to anyone about anything at any given minute, so there is very little people don’t know about me.
Maybe that I still get nervous before any big presentation? I can come across pretty confident, but I think the childhood fear of speaking in front of the class never really goes way.
In five years’ time I’ll be.
A 31 one year old who still unashamedly hasn’t given up on her teenage obsessions… and hopefully, happy.
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