James Davies is Founder/CEO at crossover, a geo-targeting specialist with proprietary technology that fundamentally improves a brand’s ability to account for real-world factors across social, video & display platforms. He has over 25 years of location-based marketing experience.
Who is your digital hero?
Monica Ho is based in the US and is currently CMO at SOCi and Global CMO at GroundTruth (formerly xAd).
What has she done to win hero status in your eyes?
Monica and I worked together at the location-based adtech specialist, xAd, which I joined in 2015. My prior background was agency-side in the Out-of-Home sector and I was constantly paranoid about my severe lack of digital/programmatic knowledge and sell-side experience.
Monica has three massive strengths in particular which gave me a real confidence boost:
1) Very deep technical knowledge but with the ability to clearly articulate that in plain English without dumbing it down. Conversely, a very common trait across much of the industry was for people to try and sound impressive with all their programmatic jargon.
2) A really supportive manner that helped me quickly build the necessary knowledge without making me feel stupid or inexperienced (Many of my other xAd/GroundTruth colleagues did the same).
3) The ability to perform in pretty much any function in the company. Monica seemed just as at home in sales, product & tech or finance as she did in marketing, and it made me realise that I had no reason to be limited based on my own niche.
How has her heroism helped drive digital?
At the time (and now but to a lesser degree), the digital advertising industry was lacking in people who think and can operate in a broader context that isn’t just confined to pure-play digital.
I believe that the approach Monica took is critical for attracting different types of talent into digital and helping them realise that you don’t need to know every bit of jargon or tech.
I learned that so many people are bullshitting anyway and with effort and intellectual curiosity, and by challenging what you hear, you can very quickly build up expertise.
As the boundaries continue to blur between online and offline, brand and performance, advertising and content, etc., for digital businesses to thrive, they need sufficient diversity of experience and perspective.
She also demonstrated that in an industry full of ‘adtech bros’, you can lead successfully with a completely different style
What are the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
Related to the previous question: companies still thinking about optimisation and attribution in a digital-only silo.
Unfortunately, fragmentation is creating even more silos and we need better collaboration between the various specialists across the industry.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
Following an extremely rigorous pitch process towards the end of last year, in partnership with The Leaflet Company, crossover was appointed by Domino’s Pizza to handle all of its localised digital marketing across all platforms.
Collaboration, location & online-offline integration is something that I’ve felt passionately about for most of my career. To win such a prestigious pitch with all of those things at the heart and underpinned by our proprietary technology is something that I’m very proud of, and hopefully it encourages other brands and agencies to operate in a less siloed way.
I’m also proud that in the midst of return-to-office mandates and reductions in flexibility, that we’ve managed to (hopefully) remain just as supportive to the crossover team as we did during Covid, especially when it comes to health and family-related priorities.
