In this series, AdNews spotlights young talent in the Australian media, marketing and advertising sector. This time it's Enigma data and technology executive Tom McLoughlin.
Time at the company:
I’ve been at Enigma for more than three years. I started what feels like a lifetime ago as a digital coordinator in January 2021 and have worn many hats in my time here. I can proudly say that I have booked two billboards and a light rail placement during a cameo as a media buyer when we needed some extra hands but most of my time has been in the digital, data, tech, and performance space.
How did you get here? Was this always the plan?
I can’t say it was, I wrapped up university right in time for COVID to properly kick in which was fantastic timing for job searching. During that time, I decided to ‘make lemonade’ and started a business that sold puzzles with photographs from around Newcastle.
It was a great way to build experience in something I had never done before - working with manufacturers, importing licenses, etc. I also got to dip my toe into digital advertising. Fortunately, I managed to pick up a couple of casual days at a small start-up agency towards the end of 2020 and I really got a buzz for agency life.
When the job market started to pick up I applied for a job at Enigma, and was offered a job. The owner of the start-up I was at was upset there wasn’t the work available to put me on full-time but told me I was mad if I didn't go for it with Enigma.
I got really lucky when I started. I was put under the tutelage of a brilliant digital practitioner, Kellyn Coetzee. I took a real interest in paid search, and it was in no small part due to her initial training. I didn’t exactly gel well with the academic side of school or uni. That job was one of the first times I had someone adjust the delivery of knowledge to how I best took it, instead of being asked to find a way to consume it the way it was being delivered.
It was a pretty empowering concept to me and I dove head-first into search. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why I liked it so much. Looking back, it was a perfect fusion of understanding people, how they interact with information and thinking creatively about solving ‘problems’ that arose through marketing.
After search, I took a liking to the website event tracking, ad platforms, and user behaviour. We have a remarkable leader in this space, our Head of Data & Technology, Antonio Panuccio. I’m yet to find a question he doesn’t have the answer for, and I have spent years trying. Getting to learn one-on-one from leaders of the calibre that Kellyn, Antonio, and others in Enigma are is amazing.
After sensing a bit of a theme with what took my interest at work I decided to go back to Uni and study data science. It was a big jump in terms of demand - my coding and statistics skills were minimal and it was a very hectic time juggling study and work especially with the extra maths, stats, and coding courses I needed to take to get up to speed, but I wouldn’t change it for the world now.
Now I get to sit under some seriously impressive minds in our newly minted department at the business, dDigital, Data, and Technology, which is a really, really cool prospect.
How long have you been in the industry?
Close to four years.
Who is your right-hand person/who guides you day to day?
My day-to-day right hand is definitely Tones (Antonio). He’s my go-to. He's probably already cringing from the rap I gave him before, so I won’t harp on. But as I said, I couldn't ask for a better mentor.
What’s the best thing about the industry you work in?
I love being in an agency setting, where individualism is accepted and nourished. The ethos is ‘how can we foster an environment where people are encouraged to be creative and attack this problem?’ and that's best done through people who are trusted to be themselves.
So, I do love the fact that those things are part of the culture here at Enigma.
And the biggest challenge?
I think when you work so closely with clients, you do start to take a sense of ownership over their success. You want to see them do well. The actual people themselves, like the CMOs and Marketing Managers, you build genuine relationships with them and I think with Australia having such a culture of mate-ship you feel emotionally invested in them doing well.
Off the back of that, there is inevitably internalised pressure that you place on yourself just to get things right and for things to work.
Where do you turn for inspiration?
From a professional development point of view, I take a fair bit of inspiration from the several different leadership styles we have within the agency. Our Founder Lisa is awesome - any time you get to soak up knowledge from her is time well-spent and the way our Director of Digital Ren thinks and operates blows my mind.
Our Managing Director in Media, Justin, has a really unique leadership style and he's balanced by his offsider Amy Dasciano, our General Manager in Media. Watching and learning how they interact with their teams and lead people is inspiring and it's a great way to build on those soft skills.
My favourite advert is:
My favourite ad is the OG ‘I feel like a Tooheys’. I think Thinkerbell and Lion did a great job of doing the reboot justice but I don’t think you can beat the original.
Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?
Bit of a history buff. A big unwind for me almost every day is coming home and cooking dinner and listening to a history podcast. Just learning about some random period in Feudal Japan or Rome’s many (many) fall-offs - I love listening or watching something completely unrelated to work or study.
Whose job have you set your sights on in the future?
I’m pretty envious of my department head at the moment, Director of Digital, Renaud Frise. The idea of being able to be a part of building something really cool and launching a new product inside a business is a really exciting prospect at my level, let alone being at the pointy end of the spear on leading it through.
So yeah, probably Ren’s job but I’ve got a lot of knowledge to soak up from him between now and then, I’m sure he will be posted up on a beach eating baguettes long before I’m ready to fill those shoes.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
To be honest, it's difficult to say where I see myself in five years earnestly because if you'd asked me five years ago if I saw myself here, I definitely wouldn't have. But at the same time, I'm extremely glad that's where I ended up and I wouldn't change a thing.
So, with that in mind, what I will say is that I hope in five years’ time when I’m looking back on this time, I hope to look back with the same feeling I have right now. Proud, excited, and a little bit surprised at how well it all worked out.
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