Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

My Digital Hero: Thiago Correa, Head of Performance Media, Zenith

Thiago Correa, is Head of Performance Media at media agency Zenith. He was recently on Campaign’s Faces to Watch and PerformanceIN’s Top 50 Industry Players lists.

Who is your digital hero?

Andy Pringle, now at Facebook but previously at Zenith.

What has he done to win hero status in your eyes?

Personal integrity. Andy is a connector, he is an excellent judge of character and he creates relationships between key people which has an impact within an organisation that is hard to quantify.

He does this so well because he genuinely makes these connections because he believes it will be positive for the people he is connecting, irrespective of whether it will be of any benefit to him.

How has his heroism helped drive digital?

Andy set up one of the first, (he claims the first), dedicated social teams in the UK.

He championed digital and mobile, as you might imagine. But what really set him apart is that he created a platform for talent, irrespective of experience, which resulted in clients consistently stealing a march on competitors in that space.  

What the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?

Measurement. People get choice paralysis from the plethora of metrics.

What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?

When Instagram first opened up ads on its platform, we spotted that because the costs were prohibitive, we were often the only advertisers on the platform.

What was expensive for CPM was really cheap for 100% SoV. As a result of this insight, we ran more Instagram campaigns than any other agency globally,

Facebook officially dubbed us “The Instagram Agency” — all of those campaigns were sold in by me and my senior exec.