You are part of a multi-market team of storytellers, creatives, marketeers, planners, strategists and analysts – tell us about your role in that team in a few words?
Yes! We’ve built a talented team who help brands to tell their stories in the world of digital. I see myself as a conductor; bringing the right people together in order to create a smart strategy, bring it to life and ensure it makes an impact to the business goals of our clients.
What’s the biggest challenge you think clients face in today’s social first world?
Brands are way more than their products or services. Edelman’s Trust data shows that today’s consumer really wants to know what brands stand for before they engage or buy across both the B2C and the B2B spaces. Consequently, it’s vital for brands to tell a rich, personal, story, and link this to their offering. Especially on social. This requires alignment and real authenticity – but when a brand achieves this – it can truly shift the dial in terms of engagement and indeed sales.
What’s the first thing you do in your role to help them build trust and tackle this challenge?
Our best work is created based on data and insights. It’s like holding up a mirror to a brand. This becomes a great starting point for positioning, transformation and storytelling.
Give us an example of work you believe speaks to our mission to help brands thrive at Edelman?
There are many. Let me point out the work we do in the influencer space. Based on smart tooling we can assess which topics a brand should talk about and who is based placed to take the floor. From there we design programmes in which external influencers are engaged. We also train internal influencers, i.e. specialists or those who are passionate about what they do who can tell an organization’s story in a human way. A great example of this is our work for WBA.
You’re working with colleagues across the region, what’s your top tip for creating magic when you’re working across borders?
Through our international resource planning system it’s been easy to tap into the right talent across our network which often sparks the magic. I haven’t seen such level of international integration in my career. This makes Edelman a very special place to work and thrive. Also it certainly shows that social first means a client first structure in our agency - truly geared to create cohesive, scalable and measurable content strategies across territories and capabilities.
