spotify

History repeats itself for Audio, like ‘digital’ before it.

/ Author / Leave a comment

Recently Warc released one of it’s reports on media channel revenues vs time spent and I have seen a lot of commentary about the big gap between time spent (31%) and percentage of advertiser revenues (9%) in the audio space. As someone who was involved in digital back in 2000 and all the way through its growth it reminds me of how much the digital crowd used to complain about the exact same thing. To compound the digerati were always incredibly frustrated by the fact newspapers used receive disproportionally more revenue than they should.

I think in both cases, although from different directions, the one thing it shows is that the advertising community, both agencies and advertisers tend to move a little more slowly than the audiences out in the world. Speed of change is vital from a number of angles, firstly the industry moves more slowly than audiences, but then within that, some businesses (not all) move even more slowly and eventually start to fall behind. There are organisations in the Radio world for instance that need to continue to change and change fast to keep up with those audiences that represent that 31% and actually take advantage of them. The Publisher world has seen winners and losers and those who are winning all have one thing in common, they grabbed the future with both hands and turned it to their advantage. Companies like Hearst, Future, Telegraph, Guardian each took the chance to capitalise on digital developments and it has paid off for them.

SO back to Audio, and those who are commenting on the gap, what I would say is that although sometimes it is frustrating, I do believe the industry eventually does catch up and Audio will continue to see a great growth over the coming years. I have seen some comments about how radio is cheap / cost effective and other related words, as a means of explaining why advertisers should engage, I would massively look out for and avoid this kind of rhetoric. Many of the digital audio companies like Spotify, DAX etc are by no means cheap and rightly so, they bring the benefits of audio with the data and targeting of digital, they deserve to expect a premium. Audio just needs to keep focusing on its benefits and demonstrating the commercial benefits of spending with their media channel – TV and Radio has had years of demonstrating ROI, digital audio on the other hand needs to work a bit harder in that area, years of learned performance will help advertisers invest more and more and thats when the revenue will start to shift at scale.

Overall I am incredibly optimistic for Audio and I think we will see lots more growth to come, but the traditional publishers in Radio have to adapt fast to take advantage of this and the digital audio companies must demonstrate ROI if they are to shift that revenue vs time imbalance, only time will tell, but I am very optimistic.

Sales in a Pandemic. Did not see that coming!

/ Author / Leave a comment

Four years ago, I moved from agency to sales and at the time and since, a number of agency colleagues asked me about how the cross over was and asked what I had discovered. There is so much to learn in making the move and I have learned a lot along the way and more than just sales. I have solidified my leadership journey further and grown as a human. One thing four years ago I had not considered was how sales would be in a Pandemic where I have not visited the office in close to nine months and seen members of the team in person only once. That was not in the instruction manual.

By this time last year I would have visited every sales team in every country at least three times for varying lengths of time, I would have had client meetings in every country, presented at a number of conferences, attended CES, Cannes and Dmexco at a minimum. I would have eaten my body weight in pasta, Tapas and shit airport sandwiches. I would have taken at least 30 return flights. I would be exhausted but I would be full to the brim of people interaction. If you run a sales team from UK to Dubai, this is what you have to, this is sales.

Instead, I have been in my room, across the corridor staring at my screen, for nine months.

Sales leadership is something that Is heavily influenced by the human interaction. The people interactions are huge, people feed off each other in a very immediate way and momentum comes from those relationships. I have seen teams go up or down very rapidly based on those engagements. Morale is very fluid and so in the last nine months we have all had to adapt dramatically. I want to pause and give a huge shout out to all those sales leaders out there, a selection I have had a chance to talk with and know they are feeling it too!

The Pandemic has been like being in a car, seeing the corner coming but not having a steering wheel to turn, at least in a recession the steering wheel was turning to the team, brainstorming, taking refuge in humour and finding camaraderie of facing something together, maybe a drink, maybe a meal, a fitness class, a pool night, things to break up the relentlessness. This time it has been different and every single one of us in our industry has had to adapt and fast.

I can talk personally that going to countries and walking in the office gives you a chance to chat, speak to different people, learn about people on the fly. You can talk to them directly, you can get the feeedback, questions asked are important to me and in-person time tends to help draw that out. The Hangout/Zoom/Teams set up means that is very hard in a larger group and you get the sense you are broadcasting the whole time, thats my biggest sentiment, you are on broadcast, one way dialogue. It does get better in smaller groups of course but there is still an element of that, especially with people having to keep up with dialogues not in their first language. I think the biggest casualty of Zoomday is we tend to cut out the personal chat, or to a bare minimum and thats where we lose the connections, and spare a thought for all the new people who started in a lock down, we have had many and I have made a point of speaking to them all (ongoing!) and I am amazed at how positive they are and pleased our teams are rallying around them BUT excited for when they get back into the buzz!

So when I look back on this year, what have we changed, how did we do it and how in all this craziness did we win Sales Team of The Year?

  1. Agility: This comes top if the list for me. We all put so much store in strategy, we must have a plan and stick to it, this year was about how do we adapt that plan or indeed throw it out. Everything from how we interact, commission plans, market insights, obviously type of engagement, turn around times, business rules around bookings etc. The pace of adapting was amazing to see. My biggest goal was sharing of ideas/work/ideas across the region, the amount the teams have been inspiring each other has been incredible.
  2. Brand: In sales, what you sell is crucial of course and Spotify Advertising stepped up in the last nine months. A drum beat of insights, updates, analysis (not to mention some big acquisitions and announcements) allowed the team to be active in market, visible and relevant. Turning Pandemic insights into something marketable. Marketing that would have taken weeks was signed off and pushed out fast. Big shout out to our marketing teams.
  3. Offline to Online: Linked to above, the business had to get off its drug of live events, a focus in sales we take for granted, no Cannes, no Dmexco, no Festival of Media, and all the local events, our businesses are tuned to that. The transition to online was amazing to watch – LoveAudio events online were run across the region and drew huge crowds, it was a pleasure to see all those pulled together. A topic for another day, but a lot of pros to these online events.
  4. Team: Yes we would all agree that we are burned out with video calls. However, it was still important to bring people together and build team spirit. I literally cant think of a single thing we would do in person as a team that did not make it onto hangouts! Yoga, fitness, cooking, quizzes, training, drinking, eating, nail bars, hairdressing, concerts, interviews. You get the idea. All of these supplemented with chat groups that never stopped with humour and chat rolling every day – and of course Rak’s music playlists being pumped out every day.
  5. Empathy: Something that I know has been on all my leads minds, how to make sure they can look after their teams and how each member of the team has been looking out for each other. This has been huge and taken a big extra step in how we think about each other. When you are together every day those conversations happen more easily and frequently, so through these incredibly stressful times, taking extra time to think about your colleagues and reach out has been crucial. A big shout to the teams that lead amazing ERGs like Heart and Soul supporting everyone. Has this made us all more empathetic than before, thinking more laterally about the team, I hope so.
  6. Sales skills: I will say that as a sales team we have got better at sales. I am talking about Spotify but I am willing to bet it is beyond us. Sales changed this year. We had to listen to advertiser needs more than ever, we had to be agile in our solutions, we had to adapt what we had to support the brands looking to spend and indeed those who didnt. We had to dig deep into what sectors were benefitting and those that needed time. It has been so tough this year, but I genuinely think we grew as a team and we come out better than we went in as regards sales skills. I have learned a lot personally and when I moved to sales this was not one I had prepped for, but what a learning curve.
  7. Our clients: I think as an industry we came together like never before. The feeling of unity in such difficult times led to some meaningful questions, genuine conversations about life and business. We were all collectively grappling with what was in front of us and helping each other wherever possible. There was an openness to learn from each other, I felt as a sales person that clients wanted to hear what we had to say and apply it to their own challenges. Too often media brands are put in a box and only opened up when there is a very relevant connection. This last nine months has been more about learning collectively and thinking differently. Thank you to all those advertisers and agencies I have worked with this year!
  8. Onboarding: We have had to be really thorough around the process of onboarding and make sure people have a real chance to learn about the business. I think this is a good thing that will stand us in great stead for the future hiring, lock down or not.

There is so much more I could cover, to repeat something above in summary, I just feel like as a person, a team, a business and as an industry we have grown in the last nine months and perhaps some of the new behaviours started in lock down will carry on beyond, when things are more normal. A personal thanks to my whole EMEA sales team who have been amazing these last few months.

So finally, what would I like to see continue in a form of normality, lets call it PV (Post Vaccine)? So from PV1 here are some things I would love to see continue:

  1. Not all client meetings have to be in person – default is ‘does this meeting have to be in person?’
  2. An openness to listen and learn and not pre judge what Media Brands have to say
  3. Purposeful meetings, shorter and more full with challenges and ideas
  4. Events being professionally run to embrace on and offline elements so they are more inclusive
  5. A camaraderie at an Industry level – thinking collectively and in a way we solve things together.
  6. Flexible working, more trust, everyone has proved they can work from home, lets find that balance

So we are coming to the end of this 2020, all 67 months of it (quote from #wrapped2020) and it could not have been harder, but has allowed me to grow, I hope the team as a whole has grown and learned, but there is no substitute, as a human being, to be around other human beings. Noone will persuade me otherwise.

Well done you all. Here is to 2021.

How audio is changing lives for the better.

/ Author / Leave a comment

This post was originally posted on http://www.spotifyforbrands.com

At Spotify, we understand the power of audio. Music and podcasts bring joy to millions all over the world, and we see audio taking center stage as a result of our day-to-day screen burnout. And at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, we saw more clearly than ever how audio is changing people’s lives for the better. 

There is nowhere better than CES to see where technology is headed. Spotify was there all week, seeing the many — and sometimes surprising — ways technology is being used in every aspect of our life. This central role of technology is leading towards a big macro trend known as the “quantified self.” This trend is all about how we are using technology to understand ourselves better as humans — and how we are diagnosing, reporting, and creating tools to enhance people’s lives. 

One key trend of the “quantified self” is the number of applications that have audio as central to the solution. Audio is now helping people live a better life, supporting when screens are not relevant or indeed, individuals can’t see the screens because of visual impairment. I wanted to highlight four of the interesting solutions we saw, some incredibly sophisticated and life-changing, some more for fun!

Take OrCam’s MyEye 2 — a wonderful piece of technology for visually impaired or blind individuals that scans full-page texts, money notes, people and more, then reads it back to the visually impaired person through a small device worn on the ear. If there is a product in a shop, the person can scan the barcode and the product details will be read back to them, translating the visual world into speech. 

In a similar vein, there is Addison Care, a virtual caregiver who monitors in the home, making sure the individual’s vital signs are strong, while assessing their movement to look for signs of trouble. The system calls out reminders to take medicine and is mainly voice activated, something that is more intuitive to many older people. It is yet another exciting use of audio and technology that is changing lives for the better.

Not everything is serious and life-changing. We saw a lot about how voice assistants are being incorporated into every device imaginable. One of particular note was built into showerheads, giving you the chance to catch up on the day ahead, the weather, commute and traffic as you shower and of course, call out your favorite Spotify playlist or podcast! As a marketer, thinking how to connect in a world of screenless devices and screenless moments is going to be vital — how could you take advantage of Alexa in the shower if you knew that’s where someone was streaming?

Finally, we saw how voice will play a prominent role in the future of the auto industry. Auto brands announced massive screens for the driverless cars of tomorrow, and more cars announced integrations with voice assistants. Per Axios’ Sara Fischer, “one of the big themes at CES this year has been the race to own the media experience when cars go driverless.” Fischer noted that Lamborghini’s Huracán EVO will be adding Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant this year, while Amazon and Exxon also announced a deal to allow voice-enabled gas purchases. Meanwhile, Anker and JBL both revealed new Google Assistant-equipped devices that can plug into cars new and old. It’s clearer than ever that our voices will be the remote controls of the car — ultimately shaping the future of how we listen.

Thanks to continuous innovation happening with earbuds, connected speakers, cars and more, audio already surrounds our daily lives. Even still, all of these developments at CES showed just how much the role of audio will grow in our daily lives in the future. Of course, as we at Spotify aspire to become the world’s largest audio network, I’ll be keeping my ears open as more new devices, gadgets, and integrations are launched in 2020. And exploring and executing creative ways to bring brands along the journey. Here’s to another year of listening!

My Presentation at Dmexco about Spotify Culture Next Global Trends Report

/ Author / Leave a comment

Just back from Dmexco and a pretty hectic few days as usual. Spotify was in demand this year and we were lucky enough to hit the stage a few times through the two days. I was asked to present our Culture Next Gen Z global trends on the Debate stage which you can see below.

Exciting trends amongst this audience and Spotify sits right in the heart of what they care about, music and podcasting are huge for them and so our work with Culture Coop combined with our first party streaming intelligence has really helped create some clear insights.

Mentoring: How can I help?

/ Author / 1 Comment

One really important factor that I have discovered since moving from agency to sales is the ability to do more, more easily at my level. The array of things that get categorised under ‘more’ is significant, but on the whole they all have one thing in common, a request for money. I am not exactly sure why, but generally speaking, sales companies find budget to support a whole range of causes. We are asked by charities, by clients, by industry bodies, by trade titles and so on. It is brilliant to be able to do so much to help out and at Spotify we really support a range of different organisations. I have enjoyed that so much for the last two years, it has been very fulfilling.

Thing is, I also feel like we jump around and try to do too much / everything and although that is admirable, it is also perhaps skin deep at times. As a company we can do this to a point, but as an individual it becomes even harder. One person, especially someone who is travelling a lot and has all the usual time pressures cant do everything so more recently I have been considering what is most important to me, and what have I really enjoyed.

A number of years ago I started Speakers4schools presentations, and I have consistently been doing them ever since. I am pleased to say that we then moved from just presenting to working with an extension of Speakers4schools, NextGen who encourage their speakers to create work placements in their businesses. I am hugely grateful to my HR team who have allowed me to do this, and all the band members across the business that supported with their time and expertise. More recently I have been thinking about how to focus my energies and try to do more with less time and what is it that I really enjoy and adds value. Mentoring has always been fun, not the deep, lets meet every two weeks for years type mentoring, but the shorter, more specifics advice that when given could make a difference to someone, and even get them a job, they would otherwise of not had the chance to get.

As I reflect on our industry with a real focus now on gender diversity and indeed wider diversity, I still feel as if we are talking to the same types of groups, we still have not truly  moved the agenda. My personal goal and where I can, hopefully with support of Spotify, is to try and help under privileged young adults who are not getting access to the expertise that some schools or areas do. Speakers4schools has introduced that to me, and I feel it is great in its own right, but would also serve to bring more diversity into our industry and so I wanted to explore how I could help. I need opportunities that can mould around a busy schedule so advice, mentoring, speed mentoring etc is interesting. Today I was amazed at the response to a simple tweet I sent this morning.

4B640E87-3E14-40CA-B542-921ACD6BC908

The response was fantastic not a ‘likes’ count, but people passionately responding and making suggestions, and it served to highlight how many amazing things are happening, and so I thought it would be great to list out all those responses so everyone has a chance to identify opportunities that they may like to get involved in.

Female mentoring with BloomUK http://www.bloom.org/the-exchange

Brixton Finishing School for underprivileged young adults http://www.hoxtonunited.com/

Media Trust http://www.mediatrust.org

IAA Speed Mentoring sessions http://www.iaauk.london/events/iaa-mentoring

DevelopHer – Elevating women through community based opps http://www.eepurl.com/bJAKKL

Creative Mentor Network http://www.creativementornetwork.org

Mediatel Speed mentoring http://www.mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2019/05/02/sign-up-for-free-speed-mentoring-2/

There are others no doubt, so add in the comments if you want to keep it all in this article. Bottom line, there is the chance to give your time, and there are different routes you can take, but for me it is time to focus and I am excited to explore how I can help!

Coming to your senses: the Spotify Video story, presented at Dmexco

/ Author / Leave a comment

The Spotify journey from Audio to multi sensory platform that encompasses video and audio has been a really interesting one. It continues at pace and has been infused with our unique data proposition as well.

At Demexco we took the main stage and presented it to 600+ people, here it is in all its glory. Some of the videos have been covered, so hold your breathe through a couple of those! CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO LINK TO VIDEO.

50972C5A-D0A1-45EB-879E-7E1A687FA74B

BertozziBytesize: Spotify data: A Mirror not a Filter

/ Author / Leave a comment

Meet Marco Bertozzi

We talk a lot about data at Spotify and how it shows a lot about how you listen to music. We have a tool that I love, which allows us to add our account and get a pen portrait on our listening habits.  Now outside of this we go to great lengths to add colour to this data but I could not resist checking myself out on this relatively simple analysis about my music listening. I was desperate to see if Spotify thought I was as uncool as most people say! Turns out, it’s not so bad. Perhaps the 152 plays of Waves was a bit much and the fact I generally like Pop, Deep House and House is not appropriate for a 45yr old, but hey – keeping it real..

‘Spotify says: Marco is in his forties and has recently been listening to music in United Kingdom, where he lives. During his 6 years on Spotify, he’s streamed 15,877 tracks, which is far more than the average user. Of those streams, 4,205 were unique songs; that’s also way more songs than average. Marco changes up when he listens based on the day of the week. He listens quite differently on weekdays and weekends. Marco doesn’t listen to Spotify on desktop, instead preferring to listen on his mobile device. Marco is a lean-back listener. He doesn’t engage much with the app when listening, often having Spotify in the background; he plays songs all the way through, often letting songs from radio stations play without interruption, and he rarely skips songs. Marco has recently been jamming to Rag’n’Bone Man and John Williams, though Sia and Calvin Harris are his favourites of all time. In the last few weeks, he’s had The Chainsmokers’s “Don’t Let Me Down” on repeat. And he has listened to “Waves – Robin Schulz Radio Edit” by Mr. Probz 152 times on Spotify – more than any other song. When you compare Marco with all active Spotify users, his listening is very diverse. He listens evenly across many genres, and these genres tend to be very different: Pop, House, and Deep house. He does, however, have a strong preference for listening at specific times of day to music of specific moods. For example, Marco chooses certain times of day that need more instrumental music. Marco tends to prefer listening to his favourite music, but lately, he has been listening to more new music than he normally does. Marco listens to some nostalgic music, but not particularly often. When in the mood, he listens to songs by Howard Jones, George Michael, and John Williams.’

Learn anything? Well you learned a lot about my moods, what platforms I am listening on, type of music and how it forms part of my day. This is just a snippet of how we can work with advertisers and power their moments marketing. Understanding People Through Music will give us all insights that cant be replicated anywhere. Spotify as the worlds largest music streaming service is in a unique position to help brands do this, its an exciting proposition!

NB: Some of the above tastes are swayed by my pandering to my son’s likes! Family account coming soon!

Bertozzi bytesize: 20yrs of agency, 20K minutes of sales – what have I learned?

/ Author / Leave a comment

I could have waited a month, six months, a year to write this but the biggest impact of jumping in cold water comes immediately, not after a few minutes, so I thought I would try to sum up my feelings about the change from agency to sales two weeks in.

This is not a blog about better or worse, it’s about difference. I am old enough and wise enough now to know that everyone goes to work every day and takes what they need out of work, you can only hope that you find a role that fulfils you, we spend a lot of time at work and being happy there, whatever the role is important. What I will be finding out I guess is whether I should have been doing sales all along, as many have told me, or whether I had it right first time. I feel like timing and choice of company will also impact that decision and I will come back to that shortly.

1.Clarity of focus

So 20,000 minutes later, the first thing that really strikes me is the clarity of focus. I used to describe that as ‘does it not feel repetitive talking about only one thing?’ But now I am in it, there is something liberating about having a clear focus on what your role in life is, it helps being in a brand as strong as Spotify admittedly, but nevertheless. Agencies have a lot of ground to cover and they have to be experts in many things which is hard and they do a great job of it. When I think of a planning director in an agency, they have to be strategic, understand everything from content to programmatic, keep the client service ticking over and that is not easy. That range of services and opportunities needs to be communicated to clients and so meetings have to cover so much and sometimes without the time to really go deep.  When I hear people say ‘I can never get hold of someone’ I suspect it is because they have shifted their time to their clients and not meeting everyone and their dog from the outside. What appears to be a negative, is likely a positive.

On the media owner side, dark side, partner or publisher side you are there for one reason. Everyone knows you are there to talk about your brand and your proposition, the challenge for us is that we have to do a good job of that, since that is all you have to do. As an agency executive I would expect sales people to know their product inside out, ideally know what’s happening in my business and with my clients and deliver a clear and persuasive argument as to why I should spend money with you. The clarity of that purpose is quite liberating. I was in a meeting with a large global client and for me the first thing was that the relationship of our two brands was a no brainer – our audiences complimented each other perfectly. That is something as a publisher, if you have that you should be confident of it, how you then connect the two brands is just a collaboration using all the assets we have available to a brand.

2. Pace of work generates energy

I expected the pace to be different for sure, agency life runs on a different, longer term timetable, different objectives and I expected to find that on the sales side, but there is a stark difference. Of course things are shorter term, but pleasingly mixed with longer term strategies running in parallel. On top of the pace of things though comes the energy which is generated – the communication is fast and frequent, the team support each other and there is a great energy, again connected with clarity of purpose. I think that is something that 20K minutes in, I am enjoying the most. The team has great energy and I love seeing them getting behind each other, both in country and across countries.

The time in CES which I was lucky enough to enjoy with some of my European band members and some of the US as well was a joy in terms of spending time with people who are all excited and pulling for each other. The Spotify space in Vegas was real quality and I felt proud to be part of the company and especially when combined with the great people I met who all welcomed me in. I am going to spend the next week with them in NY as well, which I am thoroughly looking forward to.

3. Numbers

Yes. Numbers are everywhere, this is a company built on understanding our business regardless of your level, sounds obvious? Well I think sales people who move to agencies may be surprised how relatively cosseted the equivalent levels in agency are from the business metrics behind what they do. At a certain level of course there is more exposure but there is so much to make sure you are on top of in a shorter term revenue business to make sure that targets are met than you would find in agency. At a large Google conference that I go to every year they split it into buy and sell side. This year it fell right on the change in my role and so I asked if I could swap and join the sales side tracks even though I was invited as buyside. It was interesting to me that on the buyside everything focused on what could we target, how could we use the data more, how can we join up channels etc. On the buyside it was far more commercial. How do we drive revenue for our valuable and scarce quality audience?

So you want to join the dark side? Well I am afraid I think it will depend on who and when you join. I wrote down the kind of company I wanted to join, and Spotify came top and I was lucky enough to get in the door. I feel comfortable in this environment because I can be passionate about a brand that is in the hand of the most sort after audiences for 2+hrs a day. I feel passionate about a brand that people love and that makes my job so much easier. The clarity of purpose suits me, the brand suits me, and the team is great so it works, albeit 20K minutes in! Agencies provide a powerful view of the landscape, you get to see everything, that variety is intoxicating so if you move to media owner side I would suggest go somewhere you care about and has a great offering, that more than makes up for the slightly more focused narrative. That said, I have enjoyed meeting some of the agency contacts I have been mates with for 20 years, that gives a whole new perspective on  things. I look forward to working with all those agency friends, I just happen to be sitting on the other side of the desk.

Goodbye & thanks Publicis, hello Spotify!

/ Author / Leave a comment
Give or take 20 years ago I started at Zenith Media and with the exception of two years the Publicis Groupe is where I stayed. Through the intervening years I am pretty sure I set a record in the number of companies I worked for and in. In that time I have worked for Zenith Media, Zenith Interactive Solutions, Zed Media, ZenithOptimedia, VivaKi Nerve Center, VivaKi, SMG, Performics and PMX. I have worked in UK, EMEA and Global roles as well as two short stints in the US (NY and Chicago) and along the way I have met some amazing people from countries all over the world.  I still marvel at the fact that it is possible to pick up the phone from Australia, China, India to California and everywhere in between and speak to a friendly voice. It is without doubt the best part of the last 20 years and I could never have imagined back as a Trainee TV buyer in Paddington that all that would have been possible.
Publicis has given me so many opportunities to progress and for that I will always be grateful, from my earliest boss in Tracey Stern through to Gerry Boyle and the late great Curt Hecht. They all had one thing in common, they supported and guided but allowed you room to grow and take responsibility for your own work, and most of all, were human. When the pressure is on, when things are not always going the way you want them to, being able to keep hold of things that are important to each of your team is vital, support them as people and the rest will come naturally. Politics, P&L pressures, come to everyone, don’t let them make you forget that everyone is human and appreciates direct and honest conversations, integrity first. There are way too many people to mention in this blog, but thanks to all those who have supported me and helped me succeed over time.
I think my first few years in Zenith were foundational and there are so many friends from that period scattered all over the business and doing great. Zenith was a powerhouse and incubator for so much talent in the industry and we all still reminisce about the fab times back then. They all know who they are so I won’t list them, but its great to see them all doing so well. The VivaKi AOD years hold special memories, so much fun, working for Curt Hecht and Kurt Unkel, fighting it out on one conference stage after another with the anti-trade desk brigade, the travel, the growth and wonderful team. Paul Silver, Geoff Smith, Danny Hopwood, Jen Hubbard, Sam and Lina, the foundation of AOD and then broadening out to all the stars of the region with Jean Baptiste Rouet, Adeline, Lothar, ilke, Sara, Bea as well as the US team – Kurt,Cheri, Cassie, Sean, Kurt, Kelly, Doug. We were a dream team in early programmatic and what a laugh we had whilst working our socks off, and there it is, enjoying work will conquer all and boy did we enjoy it!
Finally on the people front, a massive thank you to Becky Hopwood, my one and only assistant through all the travel, the change the ups and downs, my good moods and less good moods! She has been part of everything since 2010 and helped me both at work and out of work and for that I am immensely grateful.
Publicis is going through huge change now, creating a new model for agency groups and I know they will come out of it better and stronger and ready to address this incredibly complex world we now find ourselves in, there is a great a team there and I wish them all the best for the future. I want to thank everyone from all over the world who has sent me notes and messages of support, its been an amazing eye opener, all the people I have crossed paths with and who have got in touch.
Now for the next challenge. In identifying my next role I had some criteria that I was adamant I wanted to have. I was looking for a company that was deep into data, technology and content. I wanted a company that could contribute to the desire of advertisers to engage positively with consumers and be part of their lives in a way that was one to one and added value. I wanted to work at a consumer facing company, being able to use the product, listen to people’s feedback and watch the world engaging with the brand. I wanted to work somewhere that had achieved a lot, but had so much more opportunity to go and finally somewhere that I knew was a company people liked to work for and with. I am hugely excited to have found that role at Spotify.
I am thrilled to be joining a team that is so focused, has a wealth of smart people and product and be able to work alongside all the other team members to create a company that leads the market in innovation around data and tech as well as delivering the best experience for our clients and agencies. I know the next few months are going to be a whirlwind of activity and can’t wait to get going and meet everyone internally as well as our clients. I have had a really enjoyable first chapter in my career and now to the next. 2017 here we come and yes it starts with a trip to Vegas.
Thanks and over & out.