Five years, four roles: Ruby Keable on growing a career at Sowdens

Recently promoted to Senior Client Manager, Ruby shares five lessons from five years of agency life.

Four roles. Five years. And a career path she definitely didn’t have mapped out when she walked through our doors.

Ruby Keable joined Sowdens as a Digital Marketing Executive with no agency experience and no idea that client services would become her thing.

Today, she’s our newly promoted Senior Client Manager, working across some of our biggest and longest-standing client relationships. She’s also been selected as one of just 15 people for Future Humber’s inaugural Humber Leaders Programme.

It’s a progression we’re incredibly proud of, and one that says something important about careers in agency life. They don’t always follow the route you expect.

So, five years on, we asked Ruby to look back at what she’s learned along the way.

Over to you, Rubes.

“Five years ago, I took a chance.

“I’d known about Sowdens since I was about 17, when I volunteered with Freedom Festival’s media team and crossed paths with some of the agency. It stuck in my head.

“My mum’s an artist, so creativity had always been around me, and Sowdens felt like one of those places where people got to make and deliver genuinely interesting stuff for a living.

“My route here wasn’t particularly neat. I went to MediaCity in Manchester to study Multimedia Journalism, realised university wasn’t for me, came home and did a digital marketing apprenticeship instead.

“Then Covid gave me one of those slightly uncomfortable opportunities to ask myself: what do I actually want to do?

“A job came up at Sowdens. I applied.

“When I joined, my plan was basically: learn everything, get better at digital marketing and take whatever opportunities came my way. Client services wasn’t part of some carefully mapped-out career plan.

“Then I covered a colleague on one of our retained accounts and something clicked. I liked understanding what was happening in the client’s organisation and joining the dots between what they were asking us for and what they actually needed.

“That experience led to my first promotion into Digital Account Manager. I’ve since progressed to Client Manager and now Senior Client Manager.

“If there’s one thing I’d tell someone at the beginning of their career, it’s not to become too attached to the plan.

“Sometimes the thing you’re best at is something you haven’t tried yet.”

“I’ve had imposter syndrome at pretty much every stage.

“Every promotion has brought a slightly upgraded version of the same internal monologue:

“This is brilliant.

“Oh God. Can I actually do this?”

“My first move into client management was probably the biggest example. Paul and Polly backed me to take that step before I was entirely convinced I was ready for it myself.

“That’s something I’ve come to appreciate about good leadership. The best bosses don’t just recognise what you’re good at now; they spot what you might be good at next.

“I used to think confidence had to come first: I’ll do the scary thing when I feel ready to do the scary thing.

“Five years on, I think I had it completely backwards.

“The confidence has usually come afterwards. After the challenging client meeting. After the presentation that pushed me out of my comfort zone. After making a recommendation without looking around the room for reassurance. After taking on a bigger account and realising I was handling it.

“The nerves haven’t magically disappeared. I’ve just stopped treating them as evidence that I shouldn’t be in the room.”

“This might be the biggest professional lesson I’ve learned.

“Early in my career, I thought being good at agency life meant a client asked for something and you delivered it brilliantly.

“And obviously, delivery matters.

“But now I think some of the most valuable conversations start with:

“Why?”

“Or occasionally:

“Are we sure that’s actually what you need?”

“I’ve learned how important it is to become part of a client’s extended team rather than simply delivering a list of outputs. Creativity has to work alongside commercial targets and business objectives, and to advise an organisation properly you need to understand its products, people and priorities.

“You can’t bluff your way through it with a nice PowerPoint.

“I’m less interested now in what are we being asked to make? I’m more interested in what are we actually trying to achieve?”

“For a long time, I thought there was professional Ruby and normal Ruby.

“Professional Ruby was presumably meant to know all the answers, say suitably intelligent things in meetings and generally behave like somebody who had never sent a WhatsApp in her life.

“Over time, I’ve realised it’s all just me.

“And the strongest client relationships I’ve built have come from being myself.

“That doesn’t mean treating every client identically. Client services is partly the art of understanding people: who wants the detail, who wants the headline, who needs challenging, who needs reassurance and who absolutely does not want another Teams meeting.

“But authenticity matters, and so does honesty.

“Sometimes you have to have an awkward conversation. Sometimes you have to say something isn’t working. More often than not, you’ll need to challenge the brief.

“The best client relationships I’ve had eventually stop feeling much like ‘agency and client’. They feel like a team trying to solve the same problem.”

“This is probably the lesson I’m still learning.

“My promotion to Senior Client Manager has coincided with being selected as one of 15 people for Future Humber’s inaugural Humber Leaders Programme, which came at a pretty perfect time.

“The programme focused on leading through change – things like self-awareness, psychological safety, accountability, collaboration and influence.

“What I particularly liked was learning alongside people outside marketing.

“Agency life can become its own little bubble. Then you sit next to somebody from a completely different sector and realise they’ve got an entirely different way of approaching the same human problem.

“It’s made me think a lot about what leadership actually is.

“Being good at managing a client doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be good at developing another person. Being experienced doesn’t mean you have all the answers. And being the most senior person in the room doesn’t mean you need to be the loudest.

“The leaders I’ve responded to best have been approachable, willing to get stuck in and able to do two things at once: back you and challenge you.

“That’s the kind of leader I’d like to become.”

Four roles. Five years. One agency.

Ruby’s progression from Digital Marketing Executive to Digital Account Manager, Client Manager and now Senior Client Manager is something we’re incredibly proud of.

But, for us, career development isn’t simply about changing the words underneath someone’s name on their email signature.

It’s about spotting potential. Giving people room to try things. Trusting them with more responsibility. Supporting them when they need it. And creating opportunities for talented people to keep growing without feeling like they need to go somewhere else to do it.

As Ruby puts it:

“Sometimes I got things right. Sometimes I needed help. Eventually, the thing that once felt daunting became normal and something else took its place.

“That’s progression, I think. Not becoming fearless. Just continually expanding what you feel ready to take on.

“Five years from now, I’d like to be able to say I’ve become the kind of leader other people once believed I could be – someone who adds strategic value, helps other people grow and, importantly, never decides she’s finished learning.”

We couldn’t really ask for a better ambition than that.