Interview w/o 1/11

Question 1

Tell me about yourself

Answer 1

• VP title
• Ad ops, analytics, media planning background
• current role: three parts
  1. martech/crm; 2. media/audience strategy; 3. manage data-driven activation

Question 2

Why do you want to work at Blizzard?

Answer 2

Two parts
• Horizon and MEC, same team for 9 years
○ Proud of what we’ve done
○ Test myself vs. relying on a comf situation
• Blizzard has all of the things I’m looking for
○ Similar team structure
○ Data Driven account
○ Gaming aka enthusiasm

Question 3

What can you bring to this position?

Answer 3

Three things
• Diverse experience (analytics, ad ops, non-digital platforms, audience strategy, digital activation platforms)
• Experience managing high performing teams
○ Data Solutions used for pitched and to consult
○ Programmatic used to help other accounts short on staff
• Record of innovating within a large company, including getting stakeholders on board, presenting to exec management, managing up as well as managing down

Question 4

What interested you in the role?

Answer 4

• Goal = Test myself without 9 years of support
  
  • Role is similar to what I’m doing now, but for a product I care about and with more data
  • From the sound of it, a team that works together and cares about performance

Question 5

The Remix

Answer 5

• First few years at STX was about learning and partners. Learning about movieogers and media performance. Forging partnerships with stakeholders like the exhibitors and online purchase platforms
  
  • I was put in charge of putting these learnings to use
  • Utilized them to create a data-driven media mix
  • NOT TV vs. digital vs. radio
  • Moviegoer focued
  • Addressable
  • Moviegoer Aligned
  • Reach
  • Impact = most efficient moviegoer awareness growth of any theatrical studio in 2019-2020

Question 6

First Programmatic Impresssion

Answer 6

• Year of work
  
  • DMP Review
  • DMP Onboarding and Data Collection
  • Cookie-based
  • DSP Review
  • DSP Onboarding and plan building
  • The Bye Bye Man

Question 7

NBCU Upside Deal

Answer 7

• First team to negotiate a business outcome deal with NBC
  
  • Bought TV inventory guaranteed on Fandango ticket sales vs. Nielsen GRPs
  • My responsibility was to figure out the number we should guarantee on and how were gonna measure
  • Recent deal with “large e-commerce company

Question 8

Difficult Teammate

Answer 8

• Volunteer gig. Abigail Wheeler
• Logistical stuff so there were two buyers
• Jess’ previous relationship with campaign manager
• Couldn’t reach her, so I took it over for the strategy, but there was resentment
• Realizing this, I scheduled a call with just her and I to chat through our issues and figure out next steps
• Jess = communication with creative designer and campaign manager
Me = platform implementation and data/voter segmentation. We advised each other’s work but had clear lanes.

Question 9

How would you go about developing a marketing strategy from scratch?

Answer 9

Start with three things. An understanding of your goals, audience, and capabilities
• Goals: What are we trying to promote? A game, an expansion, an event? Awareness or interest?
• Audience: Use data, historical performance, and consumer insights to understand our consumer. We talking someone who’s churned? Someone who’s already engaged? Someone new?
• Capabilites: We talking a large scale media buy or a smaller budget? What platforms are available and do we know what they can do?

Amazon briefing

Question 10

How would you build influence with people when you can’t do it by authority?

Answer 10

• Political Science terms: Hard Power vs. Soft Power
  
  • As Data Solutions, we have to primarily rely on soft influence as we get activation teams to go along with our plans…especially more traditional mediums
  • Brand team, digital direct buyers, and more traditional mediums
  • Social Side: The reason I’m doing a Bachelor Fantasy Bracket
  • Work Side: Showing them that I know what I’m talking about, that my motives are on the up and up, and that’s a team game
  • Not coming for their job, but to improve the overall product and make sure credit is divided appropriately

Question 11

Eduardo

Answer 11

• Open communication and figuring out their motives
• Programmatic Manager. 6 months in
○ Me-first attitude
○ Didn’t want to actually do any work
○ Managing complaints
• Had a direct conversation
○ Not good enough, here are the issues? What’s going on
○ Need to improve and this is how WE are gonna get you there
○ Twice a week meetings
• 1.5 years later promoted him

Question 12

Examples of your best qualities and how they’ve helped you solve issues.

Answer 12

Determination = Hulu
Teamwork = PVOD Remix Adjustment

Question 13

Hulu

Answer 13

• As the analyst I saw Hulu not working from ROAS perspective.
○ $30+ agency CPMs and a $4-5 sales goal
• Showed results and got rebuffed
○ Well known name, premium, larger agency commitments
• I made it an effort to measure over the next year. Slicing and dicing the data, showing the same results
• Came to my client: results are still bad, you’ve wasted X amount of dollars, I understand the pressure. Here are three ways you get around it:
○ Buy through networks who we have better rates with
○ Long-tail CTV
○ Force Hulu to sell programmatically where we can monitor and utilize it to help us with unique reach
• Ended up being one of the earliest programmatic Hulu buyers and were a major factor in getting TTD their inventory

Question 14

when your overwhelmed with tasks what do?

Answer 14

Prioritize and, if needed, ask for help

Question 15

Explain a situation where you faced a problem and how did you solve it?

Answer 15

• Facebook removing third party data integrations
○ Worked on alternative approaches (AMC, Kansas City)

	○ Push through three legal contracts as I waited for my agency to catch up

Question 16

What makes a good team? How would describe your approach to talent development?

Answer 16

• Goldilocks
○ Don’t want overly competitive with overlapping responsibilities. Too hot.
○ Don’t want a team who just does there own work, at their own level, and ignores everything else. Too cold.
• A good team to me is one that works together as a team, is continually working and debating with each other, and filled with people who want to do their best work.
• Talent development
○ Always learning
○ Almost any decision is open to discussion. My call, but debating is encouraged
○ Learn more than just your lane. Learning ad operations was the most important thing to me for my career
○ If you’re learning, I find you’re more willing to put up with bad spells at work

Question 17

How could you help us to innovate?

Answer 17

• Three parts:
○ Partnerships with vendors. Google, NBC, Neustar, TTD. History of partnering and leveraging duel resources to maximize innovation
○ Pushing through innovation within a large organization
○ Managing people and teaching them to be open to innovation.
○ John Shi. Was a marketing analyst and, after working for me for two years, moved on to Riot Games. Is not the Senior product manager running their marketing technology.

Question 18

Is there any one personality type you can not work with?

Answer 18

• I can work with a lot of people. I’m pretty good at finding common ground.
  
  • However, it struggle working with people who actively try to do the bare minimum in their work. That especially hurts when you see their protentional.

Question 19

DMP Review

Answer 19

• A month into starting at Horizon Erin goes on maternity leave
  
  • With analytics being a part of the DMP I was put in charge

Question 20

Jaivi Promotion

Answer 20

• Horizon, like all agencies, pulled back on promotions and raises due to the pandemic
  
  • I had someone leave so I had money for a jr. hire and a single promotion. Use it or lose it dollars
  • Three people on the team who are managers and all on the border of a promotion
  • Picked on who would have the largest impact upon leaving
  • Conversation with Kat. 6 month plan

Question 21

Example of Google Collaboration

Answer 21

• reguarlly meet with Google PMs
  
  • Custom Affinity (Valerian)
  • Intent-Based Optimization
  • Ads Data Hub
  • Google Geolocation Attribution

Question 22

What is your leadership style like?

Answer 22

• Player/Coach analogy resonates with me and has since I saw something similar at Netflix (though more Objectivist)
  
  • I’m a big soccer fan. In soccer there are 11 people on the field. Each with strengths and weaknesses that need to be put into your gameplan.
  • Also need to lead by example
  • Also need to communication. So they know the gameplan and feel comfortable sharing their insights as well
  • Professional Growth

Question 23

What can we expect from you in the first three months?

Answer 23

• When I take on a new position the first thing I want to understand is what has happened previous. What has worked, what hasn’t.
  
  • Then I want to make sure I form a relationship with the team and get their insight into the past.
  • Pending campaign timelines, I’d probably start making small tweaks and then outlining potential larger ones
  • This is better than coming in and being “this is my team and we’re gonna do thing my way now)

Question 24

Biggest Weaknesses

Answer 24

• Procrastinating difficult conversations
  
  • with vendors. with my team
  • But something I’m working on. Setting deadlines for those talks, and rewarding myself for having them. Like training myself

Question 25

Tell Me About a Time You Demonstrated Leadership Skills.

Answer 25

PVOD Switch
• When it became clear that theaters were not opening I took it upon myself to kick off research into PVOD ecosystem and releases
• Large enough project that I couldn’t just have my team handle it so I had to coordinate with the other two divisions on STX (digital and brand)
• I had two teams performing platform and audience research
• Organized activation team to reach out and collect information
• Brought everyone together to rebuild our 2 year old media strategy
• Month long product, but when my client asked for it, we had it ready in a day.

Question 26

Motivation Quote

Answer 26

“Whatever you are, be a good one.” ― Abraham Lincoln

Question 27

Priciple

Answer 27

Learn and Grow

Question 28

No gaming experience?

Answer 28

I don’t, but I have both plenty of experience in entertainment and experience adapting and thriving in new situations.

* theatrical = large budgets, short flights, challenging demands, but it's 50% CPG and 50% ecommerce
* Adapting = PVOD in covid.  Completely new ecosystem.  New sales destinations, new audiences and data, new media strategy
* First major title, Greenland, was a tremendous success for the company

Also The Limit.

Question 29

Think outside of the box?

Answer 29

Simulmedia.

Noticed via analytics that TV is too expensive, especially when layering on data

Had the idea of running on longtail networks. Places where no Horizon client are on. We don’t have upfront contracts or even contacts.

My NY team wouldn’t do it, so simulmedia