Declan Hollywood on LinkedIn: There’s a lot to be said for wearing silly hats at a company offsite to… (2024)

Fact: Uber changed the game and redefined our everyday lives. I interviewed the Head of Marketing for Uber & Uber Eats SSA, Mel Gischen, a founding member of the South African team in 2016. Great to hear about what makes Uber Tick; Big Vision ✅Bold Culture ✅Data Obsessed ✅One noteworthy insight (marketers take note): Uber runs a ton of marketing experiments and an effort is made to tie every dollar of spend back to the impact it has on the metrics that matter. In the early days, Mel taught herself how to run SQL queries to get the data she needed to succeed! She also shared a simple insight on what helped her progress her career: building and nurturing great relationships with colleagues locally and across the globe. Thanks for the amazing insights Mel. Uber sounds like a special place to work. This discussion formed part of our Marketing at C-Level series, in partnership with and you can watch the full episode on YouTube with the link below 👇 https://lnkd.in/ezWKSeKn

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Great piece of content marketing from “The Courier Guy”. Ticks a lot of boxes 📦 RelevantOriginal Impactful Thanks for that ROI construct Mike Abel 🙌🙌

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One of my favourite marketing books of all time...Seth Godin's "All Marketers Are Liars" opened my eyes to the power of stories and how marketing works. One of the concepts he talks about in the book is "The Red Queen Paradox". InThrough the Looking Glass, Alice, a young girl, gets schooled by the Red Queen in an important life lesson that many of us fail to heed. Alice finds herself running faster and faster but staying in the same place.This evolutionary paradox called "the curse of the red queen" states that what works yesterday is unlikely to work today. Staying in the same place is falling behind. How does this apply to marketing? When others move the marketing story onwards, the rules of the game change again. Case in point: Kanye Westmade over $20 million in a day from a low budgetsuper bowl ad that was shot in his car from his phone. The rules of the game have changed. How are you keeping up?

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The world of marketing has been turned upside down in the last five years. I read a great article from the CMO of Nestle, Aude Gandon, regarding the journey of transformation she is leading at Nestle. Here’s her perspective on the shift;“We’ve got to be more entertaining. Today, we are in the entertainment business.” … “I don't want it to feel like, ‘Oh, here comes the ad’. For me, there's nothing worse. And it doesn't work on social platforms, it just doesn't.” Thanks for the clarity Aude. The data supports your point of view. The graph depicts the engagement rates for paid advertising on social media over the last three years. Some context worth noting: Global spend on social media advertising is projected to reach approximately $227 billion in 2024, north of 25% of global ad spend. Why? More than any other source, It’s where we go for information, about everything. Here’s three takeaways for marketers from the graph:It’s really hard to cut throughLeaving aside Tik Tok, the average engagement rate for branded content on Instagram was 0.43% in 2023. What does that mean? For every thousand people that a brand reaches on instagram with their ad, a paltry four people (yes that’s right I said four) will engage with the content. Facebook, even worse.It’s getting harder over time Attention is the lifeblood of brands and the graphs show it's getting harder to get it. Instagram’s engagement rates have declined for the last three years in a row and it seems like FB’s have reached the bottom. Tik Tok has turned the game upside down. Although the engagement rates have halved in the last year, it still stands at 2.6% in 2023. That's 6X higher than Instagram's engagement rate and 43X Facebook’s. And guess what? Tik Tok describes itself as an 'entertainment network' not a social network. So how do you succeed as a brand in the world of social algorithms where the next piece of great content is a thumb scroll away? Here’s three parts of the formula we lean into at Engage Video Group:1) Create content that audiences care about which features the brand in a natural way2) Test everything ; Our founder, Jon Ratcliffe discovered while working at Google that small changes to video creative can have dramatic results on the engagement and watch times. And the scale of social platforms allows advertisers to rapidly test and iterate towards the most effective execution of the video. Putting the first two points together gets you to number three....3) Reach millions with your message: Marketing is a scale game. If you produce content that audiences love, which outperforms the benchmarks and thats tells the true story of your product, the platforms afford you the privilege of communicating with millions of their users. If Nestle, a 158 year old company, is shape-shifting to meet this new reality, maybe you should too? I’ve popped the link to Aude’s interview on transformation with Nestle in the comments.

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“Stand by what you decide and be fearless in the execution of it” - powerful words from Lana Strydom, Vodacom’s Executive Head of Digital, Content and Social Marketing.I recently hosted a Fireside Chat with Lana and the and discovered more about her successful 20-year-long career, the connection between art and maths in marketing, the impact of data and AI on Vodacom’s success and a whole lot more.Thanks Lana for sharing your industry expertise so generously for all on the call!This discussion formed part of our Marketing at C-Level series and you can watch the full episode on YouTube with the link belowhttps://lnkd.in/d6JQEg6U

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This was one of my favourites for sure. I had the privilege of speaking with Rachel Conlan , Global CMO of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency platform. She's had an incredible career, that spans Dublin, London, New York and Abu Dhabi, in roles as diverse as Global Chief Marketing Officer for Havas and Head of Global Partnerships for Creative Artists Agency in New York. The tip from Rachel that most resonated with me; "Never be afraid of what's behind the door", as she encouraged the students to make fearless decisions. Anyone who wants to learn how to grow their career should check out the full recording below. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and insights Rach and good luck with the incredible work you and the team are doing at Binance. I can't wait to watch the success unfold. This was part of our Trinity College Dublin "Marketing @ C-Level" speaker series, hosted by DUBES - Dublin University Business and Economics Society. Big thanks to Anthony Walsh and Harriet Reed for getting this off the ground and excited for many more to come 😁 Catch the full recording here:https://lnkd.in/dPn4ZA38

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Lana Strydom has been voted as one of the 30 most influential women in digital in South Africa, and on Wednesday, I have the privilege of speaking to her about her current role at Vodacom as Executive Head of Digital, Content and Social Marketing, as well as her successful career spanning two decades in various significant brands in South Africa.Vodacom is a leading cellular network in South Africa with 44,2 million customers and active customer market share of45,4%. But what really excited me is the business’s ambitious vision for changing lives in Africa. They currently touch 185.8 million customers across 8 countries and are driving a shift from a Telco to a Techco, not only providing connectivity, but also business, financial and lifestyle solutions.This discussion forms part of our Marketing at C-Level series in partnership with .If you’re interested in joining this discussion on Wed 29th at 1PM SAST, you can sign up below https://lnkd.in/dF5HUd-p

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