Meet Rob Wigman – Senior Account Executive at OMD Fuse, our partnerships & experiences division
From starting his own business at university to working on the HTC Vive Virtually Dead activation, we caught up with Rob Wigman to find out more about his career path so far.
1. How did you first hear about OMD Fuse and what attracted you to the role?
A friend of mine within the OMD network introduced me to Fuse. I would not call myself a sports fan, but Fuse is more than just sports focused. The role was for the Fuse brand partnerships team working with clients like Disney and Bentley. This sounded perfect as I had a good level of skills from running my own company, which could be applied to the world of marketing.
2. How did your previous experience help you secure a job at OMD Fuse?
My photography degree probably didn’t have the biggest effect on securing my role at Fuse, but founding and running Pholio, an agency for emerging photographers, for six years definitely put me in a good place. When starting a business and running it, you have to understand all elements from client relationships, new business/pitching, strategy and finance to working as a team to reach your goals. These skills led me to secure the role at Fuse and have proved integral to my growth within OMD Fuse since I started a year and a half ago.
3. Could you explain a typical day, if there’s such a thing?
This might be a bit cliché, but there is no typical day! One day you could be pitching creative ideas to a client/CMO and the next running a brand partnerships workshop with two clients to come up with activation ideas – it really depends. What I love about working at OMD Fuse is that we are all one big team and everyone who works here comes from different backgrounds and specialties. When a pitch lands or retained client work comes in, you work with different people to do the job. Personally, this has meant getting involved with anything from football and motorsports briefs to VR and high-end luxury brands.
4. What are your career highlights so far?
Getting to work at OMD Fuse is first and foremost! Secondly, it would be a project I helped create and activate for HTC Vive, HTC’s VR offering. They came to us with a challenge of how to launch their VR headset Vive in the UK and Paris with very little budget targeting millennials, which are hard to engage through traditional media. We created and activated ‘Virtually Dead’, in partnership with millennial app Dojo. The activation is a world first in immersive theatre with VR at its heart showcasing a zombie shoot’em up game. 10,000 millennials participated in the experience and we smashed our KPIs by 91%. We have been shortlisted for quite a few awards, winning best partnership at the 2016 M&M Global Awards. Seeing it from conception to completion and now winning industry awards has been a great highlight for me.
5. What challenges have you faced?
Coming from a company where we had five or six employees and numerous freelancers, the scale of OMD was a challenge at first. I needed to figure out who best to speak to and work with on projects and briefs. This challenge was made easier when I joined the Grand Tour, a 10-week course setup to learn and become familiar with all the different OMD agencies and offerings. I am now working on a number of projects with client, insight and data teams to ensure a 360 response. This has turned my initial challenge into a huge advantage when creating data-driven projects and work for our clients.
6. What tips would you give people who would like to follow in your footsteps?
Don’t just apply for roles based only on your experiences in an industry. OMD Fuse looks for talent and the right person, not just a wealth of specific experience. The second tip is to be passionate and go above and beyond! You can really create a role for yourself if you have these qualities.