We’re asking some of our industry’s leading figures to nominate their digital hero and to explain what’s so special about them.
Américo Campos Silva is Global Head of Integrated Brand & Communications at Shell, the world’s second largest company in terms of revenue. He has been at the company for over 20 years with roles covering everything from local brand management to social media.
Who is your digital hero?
Kieron Matthews, EMEA MD, Flock Associates. Some years ago, when I took the role of leading social media at Shell we were not in good shape. Social media had evolved dramatically at multiple levels and the set up I received when I took the job was designed for the first days of social media.
Together with Kieron we did a detailed review of our current situation at the time and set up a new vision and strategy for social media. It was a very complex piece of work, but it definitively helped us to have a very objective baseline and define a clear “FROM-TO” and a road map on how to achieve it.
How has their heroism helped drive digital?
The ability to keep things simple, very clear and objective is critical when you need to engage a heterogeneous group of stakeholders that you need to influence and work with. Besides deep knowledge of digital and social, Kieron also helped significantly on the overall stakeholder management of the project.
Without this ability to influence others we wouldn’t have succeeded. Today we are miles ahead from where we were those days and without that piece of work to establish a clear base and a vision of where we wanted to go we wouldn’t be where we are today.
What the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
I’ve changed jobs in the meanwhile and my answer to your question is very much from a marketing communications perspective. I would say the current challenges are quite diverse and run from a very operational level up to a very strategic level.
For instance, from basic implementation of tagging on digital assets with all agencies following the guidelines established, to the design and implementation of dynamic creative and of course the ability to harmonize data across earned/own/paid channels and combining digital and social data.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
That review that I mentioned was definitively a big milestone in my career, but perhaps the biggest achievement is our current tech stack, where we have a small group of key partners, best in class in their areas of expertise, with whom we work with at a global level across all Shell businesses and audiences.
This allows us to drive significant economies of scale, data harmonization and very clear processes and guidelines internally and to all our agencies This movement started about 10 years ago when we migrated to one single ad-server at a global level.
