Lalaine Villarino Chong juggles being a working mom, creating value for clients, and more as a media director. On weekends, she loves to spend time with the family. Today, she shares a slice of her day with us and shares why she orders pizza every Friday.

I am a wife and a mom of two boys. My field of study is broadcast communication and before I graduated from college at UP Diliman, I was already accepted as a field reporter in one of the biggest TV networks in the Philippines. But my parents found my beat really dangerous, so they asked me to resign after two weeks of work. But then, having to exercise my field of study, I pursued my passion and worked in a TV production for two years. After that work stint, I applied to a blind ad post, not knowing that the role was in media planning and buying.

After several years working on the media planning and buying side, I decided to move to the client side. I joined a leading global professional services company providing a range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology, and operations. After five years, I felt that I needed to take on a new challenge in my career. Fortunately, God led me to this opportunity and went back to media.

I currently work in a global media agency. I handle a group servicing, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), bank, and other local accounts as a media director at Starcom, one of the largest media networks in the world and a part of France’s Publicis Groupe.

My job is to help our clients connect with their audience and grow their business in the process. My team helps create value for clients through media strategy, insights and analytics, data and technology, performance marketing, and content. I am thankful that I have team members who are collaborative and passionate about delivering the best for our clients.

Since I took up baking lessons twice, I would bake for friends and family in my spare time. Let me share with you what a typical day for me is like.

5:00 A.M. – My kids and I have breakfast.

6:00 A.M. – I would bring my kids to school.

7:15 – 7:30 A.M. – I am already at the office.

7:30 A.M. – I would have my quiet time in the office to read the Bible and pray.

7:45 A.M. – 5:30 P.M. or onwards. – I work in the office and at times, I go to a client’s office for a meeting or attend training sessions. When there are no urgent deliverables, I catch our family dinner.

7:30 P.M. – I’m home already and would have dinner with my family.

8:00 P.M. – I check my kids’ homework or their school requirements. One time, my son was waiting for me, telling me what he had been keeping all day about his bad experience at school. I felt a pang of guilt, thinking what If I hadn’t come home early, he would have kept all the emotions deep inside him and nobody would have given him guidance.

9:00 P.M. – I put my kids to bed and we all pray before sleeping.

9:30 P.M. – 11:00 P.M. – I use this time to catch up on work when the kids are asleep.  There are times when I would sleep in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes, I forego sleep and just take a shower and head to work. This usually happens when we have big presentations to clients.

11:00 P.M. – 12 MN – I would catch some time with my husband. We either talk or watch TV series together.

On Saturdays, I bring my kids either to their school lesson tutorials or guitar lessons. And since I work full time, I don’t get to cook during work days but during weekends when I have time, I would cook for my family as they would also request that I cook for them. It’s something that I enjoy doing especially for my husband and two kids. Sometimes on weekends, I also bake my boys’ favorite cookies and on Friday nights, my kids and I would usually order pizza for our midnight snack, which is their reward after a week’s hard work in school.

At least once or twice a month, I make it sure that I also visit my mom and sister in Bulacan. My kids and I would spend the night there and every Sunday, my husband would take us out to go to the mall and have lunch together. This is sort of our ritual for bonding. Then we would go to church and have dinner with my loving in-laws. This is how my week goes.

What is the most challenging part of your job or day?
The most challenging part of my job is the constantly evolving media landscape and market trends. If you can’t keep up, you’d be left behind. New technologies with over-the-top (OTT) apps, connected devices, and social media are redefining the media landscape. Consumers can truly choose to watch anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

While those changes are great for my clients’ target audience, they are creating more complexity in the ecosystem: media fragmentation (more content and channels that need to be measured) and device fragmentation (media consumption on more diverse digital platforms). You have to keep up with the times and level up your knowledge and skills to be able to lead the clients into the future.

What do you like most about your job or business?
What I like about my job is that it’s dynamic. What I was doing yesterday might be different from what I’ll be doing today. Yesterday, I may be strategizing for a media campaign for the launch of a new product. Today, I may be monitoring a live telecast or broadcast on digital of my client’s segment buy or monitoring a movie shoot that my client had sponsored. Tomorrow, I may be sitting in a training session in either Facebook or Google or a network partner’s office. The next day, my team will be driving a brainstorming planning session with our clients. The next week, I’ll be presenting a campaign proposal or the next month, we’ll go with a client to do trade checks and do house-to-house interviews with consumers.

I, together with my team, get to think of ideas that you think are impossible to implement but we are able to pull it off—contributing business growth to our client. It’s such a fulfilling and rewarding experience to see our hard work come to life.

I also like that I get to work with the greatest marketers who push me to improve my work. I get to learn from talented women leaders who are my mentors and there are my collaborative team members and colleagues whose expertise complement one another to deliver the best for our clients as we work and win as one. I am honored to work with them and learn new things from them every day.

What is your advice for women considering your industry?
Working in this type of industry is very challenging but, if you’re keen in client servicing, continuous learning, developing communication plans, and launching media campaign plans, this is a rewarding role.

Keep abreast of the changes in the industry, continue to learn new things, and update your skills. There are also days when you get sleepless nights working on your media strategies and presenting to your clients. You should be prepared for the times when you need to revise your work multiple times but it’s rewarding when you finally have it approved by your clients.

To have a work-life balance, you need to find the balance that’s right for you. Work is never-ending. Proper time management and focus on the important and urgent projects should be prioritized and then find the other half that would balance out your life. It may be spending quality time with your family on weekends, meeting up your besties for lunch, getting a manicure done or baking for your kids on a Friday or just simply watching a Netflix series. What’s important is you find the right balance from work that will make you happy and to keep you refreshed for another busy workday.

What is your proven time management or productivity hack?
Prioritize those that are urgent within the day but always squeeze in one to two hours of time for deliverables that need to be submitted the following day so cramming will not be a cycle. Also, instead of taking on all the deliverables, focus on projects that you’re an expert on. If it’s not your cup of tea, then delegate it to someone who knows to get things done more efficiently or if there is no one to delegate to, ask someone to guide you.

What is your favorite quote and why?

“Like success, failure is many things to many people. With positive mental attitude, failure is a learning experience, a rung on the ladder, and a plateau at which to get your thoughts in order to prepare to try again.” – W. Clement Stone

Failure is real. But it is not the end if you stand up, correct your mistakes from the past, and move on the course of life. It would be wise if we treat it as an opportunity to learn. It is only through failure that most of life’s greatest successes are attained. We need to keep pushing ourselves forward, learning from our mistakes, and in the process, allow God to take control of your life.

Did Lalaine Chong’s “Day in the Life” inspire you? Interested in sending your “Day in the Life” story? Join the Connected Women community now!

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