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.
This week we speak to Jaywing Australia head of digital strategy Ed Raine.
Time at the company:
Two and a half years.
How would you describe what the company does?
Jaywing Australia is a performance marketing agency that leverages data, technology and creative to fuel growth and results.
What do you do day-to-day?
I am given the freedom to ensure that our agency’s outputs always have a well-rounded, data-led strategy and that we are focusing on things that will move the needle for our clients.
It is my job to understand what will have the biggest impact for our clients and bring all the pieces together to align multi-channel campaigns. I am heavily involved with refining our agency’s service offering, talent acquisition and internal training to ensure our service and team are ahead of the ever-changing digital environment.
More recently, our agency has been enhancing our data and attribution capabilities which I have really enjoyed being a part of.
Define your job in one word:
Unpredictable.
I got into digital because:
I studied product design at university, but quickly developed a greater interest in market research and the concept of getting products to market, rather than the design and manufacture of what goes into them. I followed this with a few internships, one of which was with a US agency who were innovating in the digital media space, and from then on, I was somewhat hooked!
What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role?
For me, ensuring I am constantly across the changes to existing software and arrival of new technology platforms is an endless challenge. Every client has a different tech stack and there is a deep requirement for us to be an expert in all of them. In recent years we’ve also seen (and welcomed) the integration of marketing with other business units, so being well-versed in sales automation systems, customer experience tools and business intelligence software is now part of the basic job.
What’s the biggest industry-wide challenge you’d like to see tackled?
Inaccurate and misleading data. Time and time again we encounter clients who are optimising to the wrong metrics or ignoring data which is critical to success. Without a considered approach to analytics and measurement it is impossible to effectively develop strategies that improve performance and create good return on investment. Businesses of all sizes can benefit from this and so can all marketing channels. Every marketer should be challenging themselves to identify what data is useful and how to use it more effectively.
Previous industry related companies you have worked at:
Evolution 7, Australia
Southern PR, New Zealand
Fusion Unlimited, UK
TCG Agency, UK
Notable campaigns you have worked on:
In Australia, I was fortunate enough to work on the launch of Athena Home Loans. Athena is a disruptive fintech start-up that has forgone all the usual rules of safe, boring finance creative. They have some amazing creative, including the ‘Bondage Bus’ which is getting great attention from the media and general public as it cruises around.
Who has been a great mentor to you and why?
Paul Norris. Paul works for Jaywing in the UK and was a leading factor in my decision to move to Sydney to join the agency. Despite living on different sides of the planet, Paul’s always been quick to share some helpful advice or help troubleshoot SEO-related issues. Our UK marketing arm of Jaywing is renowned for their search marketing services, having won Best UK Search Agency amongst other noticeable accolades recently… I know Paul has been a key part of this service innovation.
Words of advice for someone wanting a job like yours?
Try your hardest to secure hands-on experience with a broad range of marketing channels to understand how they work together to achieve different marketing objectives. Once you’ve got this base, always try to remain somewhat hands on and amongst the details so you know what’s possible and what isn’t. Understanding the theory is great, but until you have tested things for yourself, you’re never going to know whether they’re going to fail or succeed.
If I wasn't doing this for a living, I'd be:
On the slopes! I’m big into snow sports and actually also part-own a boutique ski travel company. I’ve enjoyed knowledge sharing between the agency and my own company, and it’s a great way to test things in a risk-free environment. If I wasn’t working at Jaywing, and travel was to normalise, I’d likely be living in the mountains somewhere strapping my snowboard on!
My mantra is:
Is there a better way to do it?
This philosophy works perfectly for both how I approach work, but also anything I’m passionate about.
My favourite advert is:
I’m going to be boring here and say I’m a huge fan of Apple’s creative and advertising. While every brand is trying to shout louder and louder, creating more and more noise, Apple does a fantastic job of focusing their adverts on the quality of their products and the emotions they create. In fact, the best marketing is a bi-product of a great product… No number of slogans and discounts can fix a broken product when trying to create a loved brand.
Music and TV streaming habits. What do you subscribe to?
Spotify, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Blinkus. I’m big into my podcasts and think anyone wanting to learn quickly should be. If you’re into tech, ‘Tech Meme’ is a great podcast to keep up-to-date with Silicon Valley news. ‘Today in Digital Marketing’ is also a great podcast to hear the latest news from marketing platforms and companies.
Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?
Most people at work will know I’m big into takeaways and eating out… What most don’t know however is that I’m actually a huge fan of cooking too. In fact, during lockdown I decided to master the art of making pizza at home. I invested hours and hours into YouTube to gain a cross-sectional view of recipes and methods. I tested different mixes of dough, varied proving time and different cooking approaches. Outside of the woodfired category and after many burnt crusts, I believe I’ve created one of Sydney’s best pizzas.
In five years' time I'll be:
Continuing to help businesses grow! I’m particularly interested in the incubation of start-ups, helping them to grow new categories of demand within backwards industries. I believe one of the reasons this tends to be of interest is the involvement in the wider business strategy, product, and operations, rather than focusing solely on marketing. I would like to continue this type of work and become a rounded business consultant with expertise in digital executions.
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