NDA’s Marketing the Marketers series talks to the marketing and comms leaders behind the success of our leading companies. Next up is Jessie Sampson, Communications Manager, IAB UK.
What exactly does your job entail?
I look after communications and PR at IAB UK – the trade body for digital advertising. That means shaping the IAB’s view and voice, keeping our members engaged with what we’re doing, and taking the edge off the often quite complex world of digital advertising.
There are so many acronyms and technical terms floating about this industry it can feel impenetrable, so I try to always approach everything we do by making it more human. The main thing I love about this job is that one day I will be turning around an opinion piece about the latest big policy development, the next I’ll be storyboarding a comic strip about cookie deprecation. It’s never one note and there is always room for some creativity.
What campaign or piece of marketing/communications are you most proud of in your career and why?
We have a campaign at the IAB to help advertisers rediscover the joy of digital, which is fronted by an 8ft AI bear called Joy (also a former NDA interviewee). It’s a project I’ve been involved with from the start and – from a comms perspective – giving a voice to a slightly sassy, Yorkshire-based bear and rolling that out across media felt really daunting to begin with.
Some things have worked brilliantly – like turning her into a Campaign agony aunt – while others have been less straightforward (ie. her LinkedIn page being shut down in week two), but the whole process has been so enjoyable and I’m proud of how real and natural her voice now feels.
Who has been your biggest inspiration in your career to date and why?
It’s cringey to answer this question with people I still work with, but I’m doing it anyway. Three people at the IAB have inspired me massively and been hugely influential in my career to-date: Tom Stevens (Director of Marketing), James Chandler (CMO) and Sophia Haynes (Director of Transformation).
I was still finding my feet in this industry when I started at the IAB six years ago and they are three of the best role models. Each in their own ways they have helped me to find my confidence, trust my opinion and back myself.
What is the biggest challenge in your sector and how is your company helping to address it?
I think the biggest challenge is probably how quickly the landscape changes and how to keep up with it. We are really focused on where we can target our efforts to have the biggest and most valuable effect – which you can see via the Gold Standard – but it’s a constant battle to make sure we’re keeping pace with the challenges and the tools that are out there to help combat them.
From a communications perspective, it can also be challenging to represent the industry in a balanced way while still having a clear and punchy view. We don’t shy away from taking a stance on issues, but it’s definitely a harder job to represent our breadth of members at the IAB vs when I worked at Newsworks and my sole focus was on representing newsbrands.
On the flip side, it also means we can bring together different parts of the industry in a way that not many can.
What is the biggest opportunity in your sector and how is your company helping to make the most of it?
Retail media, CTV, creator marketing and podcasts are all growing strongly and show how digital has moved well beyond the realms of last click attribution to also encompass environments where brands can tell a story and deliver that creative clout.
The opportunity for us at the IAB is to equip our members with the insight they need to understand this fast evolving landscape and the opportunities in the short and the long-term. We’ll soon be releasing an extensive project that unpacks what media, advertising, tech and consumer attitudes will look like in 2030 and beyond – there is masses in there to help businesses understand and plan for what’s next.
How important, and why, are the following in helping your promote your own company:
The press
These three – press, events and owned media – are pretty much the marketing holy trinity. As an industry body, having a voice in the press is essential to effectively represent our members and raise awareness of the work we’re doing among the wider industry. Objective, robust and original insight works particularly well for us when it comes to getting traction in the press – it’s something we can uniquely offer to improve everyone’s understanding of the digital ad industry,
Events
By and large, when you tell someone you work at the IAB, they will tell you about an IAB event they have been to. Bringing the industry together is what we do best and – I know I would say this – but I think our events are a cut above. We don’t do sponsored speaker slots so it’s never a sales pitch and we always look to surprise attendees in some way – whether that’s something like the legendary Ken Fawes stunt (before my time) or having a live poetry reading on stage at Engage last year.
Your company’s owned media
This is where we have control and can shape the IAB’s identity. Email comms and our socials provide the regular drumbeat to keep our members updated about what’s going on for us and the wider industry. A lot of our other owned channels – The IAB UK Podcast in particular – are then about showcasing the expertise and fascinating stories from across our membership. I love it when we have founders on the podcast to share their career paths – people’s stories are so unique and it brings a human interest factor to an industry that is increasingly centered on AI and automation.
