The trend in the market is that companies are preferring to get all their actions from a single source. Digital marketing is still growing, and we have the ability to marry media and digital communications. And we have a lot of backing from the entire group, for example, when it comes to business intelligence – which we can use specifically for customer development and pitches.

In some industries, companies are actually still a little hesitant in terms of digitisation. For certain consumer products, TV, for example, is still an important hub for reaching customers. However, if I can directly measure a channel digitally, based on a test drive being booked at a car dealership for instance, the clients are much more open. If I have a purely digital product and the conversion is purely digital, then we are clearly dealing with an entirely different type of client. So it really all comes down to the segment. Overall, we can see that there is more “digital” in the marketing mix the more digitally a company operates. The importance of digital channels for marketing is obviously growing – and digital marketing has grown more mature.

We are witnessing a generational shift. More and more marketing decision makers see business intelligence, that is, the evaluation of data, as the most critical basis for their decisions. I went to Plan.Net because there was so much experience in business intelligence there. It is becoming increasingly relevant to derive the right decisions from technology and data.

Artificial intelligence and big data are not enough to approach and win customers in a targeted way. You need much better and broader analyses, which always take the context into account. Human intelligence is indispensable for the optimisation of campaigns and other measures in the analysis.

There are good examples of the predecessors of today’s content marketing. For example, when a manufacturer of cleaning products or household appliances has been offering tips for daily life to the customers for years and is well prepared in terms of content. For a long time now, there have also been brand ambassadors who tell their personal story about the product. From my experience, I advise companies on content marketing if they a) truly have something to tell, and b) have the infrastructure within the organisation to make this content available as the basis of our work. As an agency, we can provide them with perfect support, but if a company is not able to identify its own stories and motivate its employees, it won’t work.

In a lot of projects, I actually used to have to deal with technical and functional requirements specification sheets. Today, this helps me to better evaluate technical implementation possibilities or to advise clients on which technical infrastructure is right for them. Solutions are more and more often “customised” for the client – tailored to the individual requirements since these experiences are important.

We are working in an increasingly agile way, thereby becoming more efficient and flexible. One person’s digital-technical expertise meets another’s communication strength, which is very exciting, but doesn’t always go off without some tension, so the various ways of working are actually too different in some ways. But the mutual understanding within the team is growing with each new project that we successfully work out together.

Yes for sure. For example, younger employees would definitely like more flexible working environments. There are also more career-changers than before. For me, this also means that I have to continually adapt myself to the team and to give the individual employees room to develop. Of course, this is only possible if the agency also creates the framework for it.

I am still human and lead intuitively. My many years of experience help me assess people and make the best possible use of them. For my colleagues, I am definitely a good regulator and a quality checker. I am not some kind of pit bull, who does everything for her career. My family is far too important to me for that. In my career, I’ve worked a lot with men, which has shaped me and taught me a lot. Apart from the fact that some of them were important mentors to me, I have learned that a casual word is often the best solution – provided you know what you’re talking about. At meetings, I like to let the others do their “dance” before I jump in.

Many women have the tendency to identify with their weaknesses and supposed mistakes and are prone to intense self-criticism. Female talents should begin to believe in themselves earlier on and not be dazzled by the self-assurance of their male interlocutors.