Tag: career

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.

Monster has launched a new campaign with OMD, their first in seven years, to reinvigorate the Monster brand in the UK with a specific focus on the millennial audience; potential candidates who are in the earliest years of their career.

Andrew Warner, Vice President Of Marketing at Monster said,

“For too long the job market and career conditions in the UK have seen jobseekers as victims. In terms of competitors, the landscape is ‘functional’ rather than thrilling; category apathy means there is little to distinguish between the major competitor offerings. This campaign, planned and implemented by OMD, aims to reposition jobseekers as heroes – champions – with Monster on their side and in their corner. Monster helps jobseekers ‘Find Better.’”

It’s a bold stance and is supported by a bold, multi-million pound media campaign, combining high-impact Out Of Home and Digital OOH advertising in commuter-saturated areas nationally with high-reach executions across radio, digital and social channels. This includes the BFI IMAX, the largest ad canvas in Europe, and digital screens across major transport hubs in London and nationwide.

Further nationwide coverage is provided by a nationwide radio campaign that manages to keep reach high while still focussing on the ‘Millennial’ audience.

“As well as prominently displaying Monster’s revitalised brand, the media mix speaks to the target audience through their most prevalent channels and will land the brand values as well as driving direct response through digital channels,” added James Jackson, International Executive Director at OMD. “It is well supported by social media campaigning across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and to further target the young jobseeker audience, features Snapchat as a major element.”

The practical outcome of the channel mix is that the varied channels work together to reinforce the refreshed Monster brand and drive candidates and new partners to the Monster site. This campaign is mirrored across European markets.

Monster have big growth ambitions and this campaign is a reflection of that, as is their significant investment in their product offering and a successful drive to increase the number of jobs on their site to 500,000 in the space of a year, helped by aggregating jobs from other sites and partnering with more blue-chip clients such as Sky, Apple and Lloyds. Monster are dedicated to doing more than providing a simple job board and are supporting jobseekers with a wealth of career resources and training initiatives.