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.
Fiona Roberts: MiQ managing director, ANZ.
Time in current role/time at the company:
Current role 4 months, company in total 4years
How would you describe what the company does?
MiQ is a global programmatic partner helping marketers and agencies to navigate the growing complexity in the programmatic ecosystem. We do this through agnostic data and technology solutions, coupled with world class service from beginning to end.
What do you do day-to-day?
As a people first business, I dedicate the majority of my time to working with the incredible talent we have across the park at MiQ. Coaching, mentoring, & challenging them to constantly think bigger. We are a business that encourages our people to be ambitious. Have a go, go large when you do, and we will support you in any way we can to achieve that ambition.
Overall though, given I’m mainly with people, no one day is the same, which I absolutely love. I’m less market facing now than in the past, and there are certainly days I miss the hustle and bustle of charging into an agency with a pitch, but I get excited now about being in a role where I can use my experience to build out longer term strategic plans that will support our ambition for growth for the nxt 5, 10 and 15 years, and be able to support the growth of our people to achieve that.
Define your job in one word:
Thrilling
I got into marketing because:
I couldn’t get a job as a receptionist. When I left high school all I wanted to do was the job my mum did when I was a kid. Looked fun, talking to people all day. Answering phones. When I couldn’t get a receptionist job, telemarketing was the next best thing.
What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role?
I think it’s the same for me no matter the role, because of the nature of our industry.Nothing is ever fully completed. Regardless of the task or project, another one always rolls around, usually before the other is ‘finished’, as does another budget to hit and role to fill or client to win. Knowing that and being able to avoid the anxiety that can bring is a challenge.
What’s the biggest industry-wide challenge you’d like to see tackled?
Our attitudes to alcohol and drugs, how that correlates to those people who are overworked & underpaid, the impact of that on their mental health, and mainly how we normalise it as an industry.
Sure, I could say cookieless future and measurement, or whatever the next marketing fad is, but really, if we invested as much time in talking about the excess in our industry and why it exists as we have in those things the last few years, we might have actually changed a lot of people's lives for the good.
Who has been a great mentor to you and why?
There are far too many to mention here, so I’ll stick with my first, Jodie Smith. Jodes was the first leader who really believed in me. She gave me a chance to become more than I thought I could be, and invested so much time in developing my confidence, marketing knowledge and was always so generous with her contacts and time.. There is no way I would be where I am today without her, and I still rely on Jodes now as a mentor to help guide me through when I get myself stuck on how to move forward.
Words of advice for someone wanting a job like yours?
Check your ego at the door early in your career, because ego is the fastest way to a short, and unsuccessful term in leadership.
If I wasn't doing this for a living, I'd be:
Hustling some illegal booking making ring at the Randwick Mid weeks.
My mantra is:
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
My favourite advert is:
The 1989 Antz-Pantz ad… as a little kid i thought it was hilarious, as an adult, i now wonder how the hell that got through advertising standards! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdoYLLNvbck
Music and TV streaming habits:
What do you subscribe to? My favourite way to shake off a tough week is to pop some country music on and pour a glass of single malt whisky and feel my worries wash away. My viewing habits are almost exclusively confined to European Crime dramas, or Yellowstone… Season 5 back in November on Stan, don’t miss it!
Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?
Absolutely nothing. I’m an open book.
In five years' time I'll be:
48? I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine, I take nothing for granted, so long as I’m doing it with people I admire and respect, I’ll be just as happy then as I am today.
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