What excites you about joining Portland?
I feel it’s the ideal time to be joining Portland as a digital specialist with the growing Centre of Excellence offering, which combines the expertise of the Digital, Research and Creative teams. Joining an agency that has invested in a central resource filled with enormous talent of diverse specialisms, it’s exciting! I can’t wait to help evolve our digital offering to our clients.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received in your career so far?
Listening is more powerful than action! Someone once told me that their most effective ‘talent’ was their ability to listen. Being a person that also has two ears I didn’t think it was that impressive. But observing how they wouldn’t talk until they needed, and when they did it was more insight and to the point than anyone else in the room, due to the fact they sat back and distilled all the information. Since then, I try and listen more and fight the urge for immediate action.
What is your favourite part about your role?
That every day is a school day! The world of ‘digital’ is in a state of constant evolution. One week a new technology or platform will be launched enabling greater, more intimate communications with your audience, the next a data privacy policy is passed and you must find new ways to communicate. So innovative and creative thinking is a big pillar to my role which I enjoy. It’s a problem solvers dream!
What are the big developments in the digital sphere that our clients should be thinking about?
There is a tonne of new developments happening online with the emergence of decentralised online and social platforms, the disappearance of cookie (3rd party tracking) coming in 2023 and TikTok looking to take on Google.
However, the most actionable aspects clients should be thinking about is creating online communities as this will be a core source of future insights that brands can tap into. Clients need to think about how they are capturing 1st/0 party data to establish how to communicate effectively with their audiences as the reliance on big tech having the targeting capabilities and insight is diminishing.
What do you do to switch off from work?
I always try and carve out time for friends and family, and this time normally consists of doing something competitive over food and drink. There was also a time during lockdown that road cycling was a keen hobby of mine, but to be honest my lycra hasn’t seen the light of day in a while (which I’m sure most are thankful for).