Freelance · 2023 – Present · Hanoi
One job, three years. Every ads on Mì Creative Hub’s own page that needed budget came through me: the build, the delivery, and the money behind it.
Scope of work
- Role: Media buyer (freelance)
- Period: 2023 – Present
- Account: Mì Creative Hub, 1 page
- Reporting: Monthly settlement
| Area | What | Cadence |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign build | Boost Mì’s own posts, objective and audience | per post |
| Budget | Approved per post, 200k – 3M VND | per post |
| Delivery | Watch pacing, top up or stop | daily |
| Recruitment | Hiring posts across 5 roles | year-round |
| Geo split | Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City read apart | selected posts |
| Payment | Card, then QR via VNPay, ZaloPay, MoMo | per top-up |
| Tax | Facebook VAT, 5% then 10% | every row |
| Reconciliation | Spend, VAT, fee, paid or unpaid | monthly |
Most portfolio pieces show you the pretty part. The campaign, the launch, the graph going up.
This one is about the other part.
Mì Agency was founded in 2021 and sits under Mì Creative Hub, a Hanoi house doing events and communications for luxury real estate, banks and cultural festivals. I was never the person with the big idea. I had one job, and only one: advertise Mì itself, get the agency’s own brand in front of the right people, and make sure every Đồng spent left a trace.
The CEO of Mì is Cao Tuan Hiep (Mr. Hiep). We studied at RMIT at the same time, though we were just acquaintances back then. Our professional collaboration started in 2020 through his previous projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2023, he reached out with the first post for me to boost, and I’ve been handling every post for him ever since.
One boosted post in December 2023
The first row in my tracking file is a content post. Nothing dramatic about it. Then it turned into a standing job: every post on the Mì Creative Hub page that needed budget came through me – the brief, the build in Ads Manager, watching delivery, closing the numbers.
Three years later, I am still managing the Ads Manager everyday.
I worked for Mì, not for Mì’s clients
This is the line I want to be exact about. One page, one advertiser, one brand: Mì Creative Hub. I never touched a partner’s account and never spent a partner’s money. Every campaign in my file was Mì buying impression for Mì.
Which changes how you buy. Nothing on this page goes in a cart. Each post is a piece of work the agency just delivered, and the ad exists to put Mì’s name in front of a very small room: developers, marketing directors, and people quietly deciding which agency to call next. The work is the argument. The brand being advertised is always the one that made it.
Mì’s partnerships were about: Masterise Homes · AIA Vietnam · VPBank · Techcombank · TPBank · SonKim Land · Tân Hoàng Minh · Greenera Southmark · Hanoi Signature · KTO Vietnam (K-CHINGU 2026) · Huế Wonderverse Music Fest 2026 · KOL Summit 2026 · Vietnam Cybersecurity Day 2026 · “Chu Du” with VNeID · Digital Trust Alliance · Branded Living Summit
Subject matter, not clients of mine. These are the projects Mì showed off in its own posts — every ad behind them ran on Mì’s page, Mì’s budget, for Mì’s brand.
By 2026 most of the money sat behind three event lines – Huế Wonderverse Music Fest, KOL Summit and Vietnam Cybersecurity Day. Budgets per post ran from 200,000đ to 3 million VNĐ, some got split by city so Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City could be read separately.
Recruitment was the other half of what I ran
The second group of posts was hiring: Creative, Account, Event Executive, Art Director, Graphic Designer.
People file these under announcements. They aren’t. A good creative doesn’t apply because you posted a job. They apply because they already saw the work and wanted in. So recruitment got the same targeting care as the campaign posts, and in several months a bigger budget than any of them.
It is also the clearest thing I ran, because the result walks into the office. One hiring post was topped up three separate times across two months rather than being replaced with a fresh one.
The boring spreadsheet is the reason nobody ever argued about money
Here is the part nobody puts in a portfolio.
Every run is one row: order date, post link, actual spend, Facebook VAT, approved budget, status, note. Every month closes the same way, including total spend, VAT, my fee, paid or not paid. That’s the whole system. It isn’t clever.
But in three years there has not been a single disagreement about a number, and it caught three things that Facebook’s own invoice never showed me.
What the file caught from the reconciliation sheet
| When | What happened | What I did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Jul 2025 | Facebook VAT jumped from 5% to 10% | Fixed the formula that same cycle, then went back and collected the missing 5% from the two months before it. |
| 2025 → 2026 | A 1.1% card fee on every single top-up | Moved everything to QR payment through VNPay, ZaloPay and MoMo the week Facebook opened it. The fee line disappeared from the sheet. |
What three years of this actually taught me
- Every đồng needs a trace: A dull but complete reconciliation file beats a beautiful report every time. It is the only reason three years went by without one argument over money.
- A post that is working deserves more budget, not a replacement: The instinct is always to make something new. Topping up the post that already has traction is cheaper, faster, and it keeps the engagement it has earned.
