By NDA columnist Tom Ollerton, founder, Automated Creative
According to Ricardo Rey, Head of Digital Consumer MAZ at Anheuser-Busch InBev: “ There is no one person that can be an expert in everything in the digital landscape. In a complex, ever changing environment such as digital marketing, the best way to succeed is to surround yourself with a strong team where everyone’s strengths complement each other.”
Ricardo has worked in digital in one way or another throughout his whole career. From starting off in brand planning then switching into media and helping brands like the Discovery Channel navigate their own digital transformation in Brazil, he’s developed a keen understanding of this environment.
As a constantly changing and developing landscape, digital requires strong teams with multiple skills rather than one all-encompassing individual. This is why Ricardo’s top marketing tip is to build strong digital teams, accepting that you need to complement your own experience and understanding with the skills sets of those around you.
Working in digital is extremely dynamic and any experience is worth it. Ricardo’s advice for anyone looking to start a career in digital marketing is to start early. During his university years, he had already begun gathering experience with digital agencies, which has put him in good stead for his career development.
To help build the ideal digital team, you also need to understand the product and the ultimate objective that you’re working on. A good example is building digital products with an SEO focus. SEO isn’t just content, it’s also the way products are built, so that the search engines get to know your content. This is why you would need a strong SEO expert because it’s simply not enough to understand SEO theory. You also need to build a product specifically for the SEO strategy. Moreover, in this scenario, SEO isn’t enough either: you need to understand the consumer through social listening or trends. That will then help your brand get better at SEO and at developing the right digital strategy. And this also requires its own specialist skill set.
The Shiny New Object podcast is a production of Automated Creative, an adtech platform that turns brands’ media impressions into marketing intelligence.
