1. Tell us about your role in Shuttlerock?
I’m the Chief Revenue Officer, and I am responsible for running our global sales teams, spearheading our revenue generation efforts, and ensuring we deliver world-class service to our customers.
2. Can you tell us about your journey into this market?
I began my career in the media industry 25 years ago but jumped into the online world in 2000 to help build MSN in Europe. After that, I went on to run AOL’s U.K. business. Working at larger internet companies gave me a deep background and expertise in the digital marketing world, which empowered me to join my first startup, Criteo, and help take it public on Nasdaq in 2013.
I spent 2018 working for SocialCode, which is a marketing technology agency with offices throughout the U.S. That gave me a new depth of experience on the media buying side of the social media ecosystem. I joined Shuttlerock because I could see they had developed a platform that allowed for fast, scalable mobile-first creative, which is critical for advertisers in order to navigate the quickly evolving state of the current digital marketing environment.
3. How do you think technology is upgrading marketing Sector?
Marketing automation has eliminated many of the more mundane aspects of jobs that used to require human intervention, like workflow and approvals. The speed at which we move has increased dramatically, and we now swim in a sea of data. This has allowed for a level of visibility across the full consumer journey, as well as greater clarity on ad effectiveness.
4. How has launch of smartphones benefitted marketing and advertising sector?
I think smartphones have expanded personal communications, and our sector has benefitted from richer formats and a whole new reimagining of how consumers engage with video content. However, the notion of “always on” consumption and interaction creates a different set of expectations, which in turn creates the need for a brand narrative that eradicates the lines between advertising and customer experience. To most consumers, the smartphone is an asset they always have on them and feel they can’t live without, and so respecting those boundaries is even more important. Mobile marketing is personal in a way that traditional advertising has never been.
5. How according to you, data-driven approach helped marketers and advertisers?
Data-driven approaches have allowed for more accurate targeting, richer data sets that reveal what does and does not work, and an understanding of the correlation to real consumer actions (e.g., sales). Data also provides greater insight into who your best customers are, how often you should engage with them, and what you should show them in order to drive results. For our business, data is a critical part of our design process. It helps us understand how to optimize the assets we create based on prior ad results.
6. Why do you think social media marketing and advertising is at its boom now-a-days?
Social media has provided a massive scale of user numbers, consumer usage, targeting opportunities and shown a high level of performance that make it an incredibly effective channel for advertisers. In addition, there are a plethora of different formats and creative tactics that can be used to tackle almost any marketing use case.
7. Can you explain how does your platform create data driven optimized ads for social media?
Our approach is to take the great ideation that brands have already invested in and make the content sing louder across mobile video formats. We do this with a proprietary blend of data, technology, and design. For example, we can look at what worked across a huge array of previously created assets, from the content layout and duration down to the format and placement. We then add a dedicated in-house team of talented designers at our global studios who ensure we maintain a high bar of design aesthetic and format iteration of the new mobile video assets.
8. What advice would you like to give to the technology Start Ups?
Be able to articulate what you do in 30 seconds, think global from the start, and maintain a great culture
— especially as you scale.
9. What is the Digital innovation in sales technology according to you that will mark 2019?
Though we’re still in the nascent stages of conversational agents and the use of real-time messaging for customers, I believe AI-based approaches like these will change the face of customer service over the next few years. We will likely see rapid development in this area for the remainder of 2019.
10. How do you prepare for an AI-Centric world?
A lot of people talk about AI, but actually finding real engineers and companies who have deep experience in this area is pretty hard. It’s critical to understand which companies truly have AI and which do not. Brands should start with the real-life applications of technology that make sense for their customers and sales cycle. If AI can bring either a richer experience, better results, or reduce redundancy in process, then they should embrace it — but only with the right partners.
11. What are the major developments you are planning, in recent time?
Right now our focus is on deepening our understanding of where consumers are engaging with advertising — and in particular with mobile video — and anticipating what needs our customers will have so that we can be ahead of the curve. We are pretty excited about the potential opportunities virtual reality (VR) will bring to mobile and how it will blur the boundaries between entertainment and brand engagement and provide a fully immersive experience. In addition, AI that can handle image recognition and image creation offers a variety of opportunities we think could revolutionize the design process.
12. Can you tell us about your team and how it supports you?
We were “born global.” Our company has team members all over the world, working with both our platform partners (like Facebook) and our agency and brand customers. We also have a great, supportive culture. I wouldn’t be able to do my job without our teams’ level of local insight, enthusiasm, and the brilliant ideas they allow me to bring back to the engineering and design teams. It truly is a fun place to work, and I believe we are where we are today because of the company’s global perspective and enviable culture.
13. Which is the Movie that inspires you the most?
When I think about the movies I’ve seen in the last 12 months, I would say “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” was the most inspiring. It was funny and a visual feast. I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it was.
14. We have heard that you have a very joyful work culture, so can you share with us some of the fun pictures of your workplace?
15. Can you give us a glance of the applications you use on your phone?
Aside from the obvious ones that everyone uses (Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn), I spend a lot of my time on The New York Times, Medium, and podcast apps for content. I also love music, so I often listen to Soundcloud, Apple Music, and use a series of music production apps like Reason or iMaschine. At Shuttlerock, our teams all use Slack, and it’s been a great connective tissue for our global teams.