Katie Atkinson is MD at The Runway Media, a media agency with a focus on SMEs. Her industry career spans over a decade and includes roles at Dentsu, Mindshare, PHD and more.
Who is your digital hero?
My digital hero is Louise Nylander. Lou and I started working together at Zenith in her first industry role and it’s been inspiring to watch her assent!
She is a corporate machine, a successful entrepreneur and dedicates her time and energy to education and charitable organisations. I’m not sure how she fits it all in!
What have they done to win hero status in your eyes?
What hasn’t she done? Whilst running her own successful B2B marketing consultancy business, she also launched a social enterprise ‘Wildflowers of London’ supporting women’s professional development and collaboration.
She launched it to become the network she wished she had and it’s since won many awards including the Lloyds Business Banking “Purpose before Profit” Award 2023.
She teaches young people about marketing at Birbeck, University of London, and supports many charities including Digi Learning and Pancreatic Cancer Research, of which she is a board trustee.
How has their heroism helped drive digital?
She pays her success forward and delights in educating young people about marketing as a career. She’s also incredibly proficient technically and has driven incredible results for her clients.
What are the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
The biggest challenge that we face as digital marketing professionals centre around our ethics and how we conduct ourselves in the age of political extremism and generative artificial intelligence.
As stewards of advertising investment, we have a huge responsibility on behalf of our clients and society to ensure that we are doing ‘the right thing’ by supporting minority voices, British content creators (authors, publishers and artists) and the environment.
The rise of AI is bringing many of these issues to the forefront and forcing us to make some difficult decisions. Those people who steward large amounts of media investment must be cognizant that they also wield a large amount of power and influence and use it accordingly.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
I am most proud of stepping away from a secure corporate role to start my own business providing media buying services to Scale Ups.
It has been a rollercoaster ride but I have learnt many valuable lessons about myself and the industry. Turns out, nothing teaches you about digital quite like helping founders scale their own business with a limited runway!
