Before graduating from Journalism, I had already begun working as a Content and Social Media Manager, and my interlocutors were Brand Managers, Marketing Directors, startup CEOs… I felt that, in order to offer them a good service, I needed to better understand their goals and needs, understand how commercial activities work, and be able to analyze the market. The Bachelor's Degree in Commercial Management and Marketing addressed these concerns.
Early in your career, you focused heavily on content management. What did you learn during this time?
My first experiences were at a SaaS email marketing service provider and then at a digital marketing specialist that also organized professional costa rica mobile database conferences. The fact that these companies were so focused on the more technical aspects of digital marketing allowed me to learn many tools and methods that I have continued to use to elevate and make my online campaigns more effective.
You then went on to work as a digital strategist and social media manager at the E-UREK agency, working for clients like Nutella and Codorniu. What did working for major brands mean for your professional development?
Making the leap to agency and with clients of this size allowed me to leverage all the knowledge I had about communication and digital marketing, contribute my creative interests, and learn about advertising, branding, data analysis, and more. Furthermore, E-UREK was an independent agency, small in size, but with a lot of ambition and a strong commitment to innovation. We had a team of developers who made any crazy idea we came up with a reality: from developing a Pong for the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell tennis tournament to creating interactive audiovisual content (it's more common now, but it was hardly seen in 2012).
Brands of such magnitude give you the opportunity to develop major campaigns and give your all; but that also requires very high standards. As a result, the quality and refinement of my work increased significantly during those years.
Which client did you enjoy working with the most and why?
It's hard to choose just one; I think you learn something from all of them. For example, working at Y&R for Danone's water brands, where we had to coordinate closely with other agencies, allowed me to learn how to integrate digital communications into PR plans or how to bring a creative idea that was conceived for television to social media. Or with Smint, as part of Primavera Sound, we were able to create integrated campaigns that included a digital activation and an experiential component, which is always a challenge.
But the most enjoyable part is working with clients who consider you part of the team, not just another supplier. When they see the work paying off, they offer you more resources to continue growing. The Nutella team was very good at that, and it resulted in the successful personalized label campaign.
You then moved on to lead digital communications for a large pharmaceutical company, Boehringer Ingelheim. What were your responsibilities, and what did you learn from this experience?
I joined Boehringer Ingelheim with the goal of developing the digital communications strategy. The main challenge was deciding how to respond to all internal and external clients: the marketing team, whose goal is to obtain prescriptions from doctors; the Patient Advocacy team, which wants to raise awareness among patients and the general public; the company's e-commerce managers, who targeted pharmacies; and Human Resources, which wanted to improve its positioning as an employer. There were many objectives and very diverse targets. And then there were the legal restrictions of the sector.
The first step, then, was to analyze the competition to see what strategies they were implementing and thus identify opportunities; study the different targets, see how they behaved in the digital environment and what content they were looking for; and perform channel mapping to further define the most appropriate platforms for each objective, phase, and audience. Then, it was necessary to train the teams so they were clear about how digital channels could help them achieve their goals. Initially, there was often reluctance, so I opted to conduct a pilot with a team that was more open to testing. The results, which were very positive, convinced the C-Suite, and from there, I gained the trust of the different departments. Third, I coordinated and supervised the work of the different agencies that produced the content to ensure consistency.
