Our Industry Profile takes a look at some of the professionals working across the advertising, adtech, marketing and media sector in Australia. It aims to shed light on the varying roles and companies across the buzzing industry.
Annie Marendaz, performance director at The Media Store
Time in current role/time at the company:
Four months/ One and a half years.
How would you describe what the company does?
The Media Store is a full service media agency. Our proposition is all about ‘media reimagined’, and I think about that every day in my role. How can I reimagine programmatic or social when everything changes, sometimes daily!
What do you do day-to-day?
Manage my team to activate all in-house programmatic and social campaigns. We work across multiple clients daily, all with different business goals, KPIs and requirements so we must be a team of avid multi-taskers. My team of digital superstars are tasked with campaign set-up, optimisation and reporting as well as finding new and creative ways to reimagine and deliver to our clients’ KPIs.
Define your job in one word:
Juggler.
I got into marketing/advertising/media/tech because:
I studied communications, so it was a natural fit. When I moved to London I just said to a recruiter ‘I want to work in digi’ and I landed a junior trading role at Captify. At the time I had no idea what programmatic trading entailed, but I was thrust into the world DSPs, optimisation and endless acronyms. As a result, my keen attention for detail and methodical work style allowed me to thrive at Captify and cemented my love for trading and digital advertising which has blossomed into a successful career.
What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role?
Constant change. You have to be ready to test new platforms, new data partners, new ad formats. It’s also what makes it so exciting.
What’s the biggest industry-wide challenge you’d like to see tackled?
With the current climate crisis we are facing globally, anything we can do individually or within our industries to move the needle to slow climate change is crucial. According to the Scope3 Q1 2023 State of Sustainable Advertising report, programmatic advertising creates 215,000 tonnes of carbon emissions every month. Therefore, as an industry we need to find solutions for effective advertising that is carbon neutral and sustainable. It will be very interesting to see the ideas and initiatives put forward to tackle this in the future.
Notable campaigns you have worked on:
ALP in the 2019 Federal Election. Onboarding RMIT for The Media Store and jumping straight into its very important “Change of Preference” campaign.
Who has been a great mentor to you and why?
Aisha Hassanwho I met in my first trading role in London. She trained me in all things programmatic trading, but also to think outside the box to find the right user and smash KPIs for clients. It was also influential to see a woman succeeding at the beginning of my career, especially in a male dominated sector.
Words of advice for someone wanting a job like yours?
Keep an open mind and always be willing to learn. Not only do you need to be comfortable with change, but also embrace it!
If I wasn't doing this for a living, I'd be:
A meteorologist (if I’d studied science!)
My mantra is:
Pressure makes diamonds.
My favourite advert is:
Aldi Christmas – Kevin the Carrot 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEs-dADRlJw.
Music and TV streaming habits. What do you subscribe to?
Too much. But I’d give them all up to keep Spotify.
Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?
My first job out of uni was selling gold bullion.
In five years' time. I'll be:
Head of programmatic at The Media Store.
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