Europe 2020
Kathryn Addo
Group Account Director, Wieden+Kennedy
Kathryn Addo
Group Account Director, Wieden+Kennedy
Without Wieden+Kennedy Group Account Director Kathryn Addo, impressive projects like Facebook’s “More Together,” a global effort that set out to rebuild consumer trust around the brand as it grappled with privacy issues, and Nike’s first-ever German brand campaign, which highlights the country’s next-gen athletic heroes, may never have seen the light of day. “There are lots of different nuances to how various agency-client relationships work best, but at the core of them all has to be trust and passion—on both sides,” Addo says. The agency’s two biggest accounts aren’t the only things she’s juggling—she’s the mom of a 2-year-old son and just gave birth to her second child.
Born in London to Ghanaian parents, Addo passionately advocates for diversity in agency ranks. “The future of our industry rests on whether we can be truly diverse in our makeup, our culture and our output,” she says. “To do that we simply need more people of color hired into our teams, more people of color in positions of leadership, more inclusive cultures where people of color feel valued and essential, and a rethink of where we find talent and what we think it looks like.”
Nadja Bellan-White
Executive Partner, Ogilvy Group
Nadja Bellan-White
Executive Partner, Ogilvy Group
Nadja Bellan-White was a digital marketer before such a designation existed really as VP-marketing at Digitas at the turn of the millennium, working on transformation of mobile platforms. Now, as executive partner of Ogilvy Group, WPP Team Unilever Leader for Dove and WPP Team Lead for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she’s working at making an agency work with digital tools in a virtual world.
From her London flat, Bellan-White, 51, led an Ogilvy team based in Toronto and London that created Dove’s “Courage Is Beautiful” ad in April honoring frontline health care workers. It was created in little over a week despite the massive challenges of producing work in a pandemic, and was then customized for countries around the world.
“We didn’t have time to be afraid,” says Bellan-White, who is also a former CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Africa. “There’s something about having a single-minded purpose and what mattered to us around Courage wasn’t about anything other than the stories of those front-line workers getting out.”
Let me be honest with you, it’s hard, because the biases are real. The biases particularly at my level, at the client-service level, where I’m on the front line, it’s not always something that you feel comfortable bringing up with your leaders. We need more representation at all levels on the client and agency sides. And you need to have a real commitment, tied to [key performance indicators], and have accountability to make sure you not only recruit but retain as well.
It is a sad thing that I’m one of a handful of Black people in senior positions. …I know my name comes up so often because I’m one of the ones who’s still here. And that’s sad, right?
I know so many more talented individuals, but they all left the industry, just because it became too hard, not because they weren’t smart enough, but because the challenges were too tough. Too many times the doors are slammed. Too many clients telling you you’re not the right fit. Too many times you’re passed over for that promotion when you know you’re more qualified. You just get tired. So is the industry going to get behind real change? Are clients going to get behind real change? Or are they just going to continue to pay lip service to it?
I think the time for action is now. I think it’s easier to stay silent and keep the peace rather than be a positive agitator. What’s great about our industry is that we have both the benefit and the privilege of being the voice and the narrator and the curator of what people say. But that can be a burden if it’s not used the right way. Couple that with not having the right representation, and you can see what happens.
So my challenge to my colleagues in the industry is that are you going to stand with people like me, make a comment, stand up for me when I’m not in the room? Or are you going to put your head down and say that’s a shame?
I’ve been fortunate. I’ve had some amazing sponsors who decided to look past color of skin and say, well, she’s smart. So when I got put in Africa to be CEO and then came to London, [Ogilvy & Mather EMEA Chairman-CEO] Paul O’Donnell and [former Ogilvy Worldwide CEO] John Seifert are two amazing leaders who were like, ‘Well, she’s just good at what she does.’ But I’ve had my share of those who all they did see was color. I’ve managed to navigate it, but it’s definitely not been an easy path for me at all.
Tania Boler
Founder and CEO, Elvie
Tania Boler
Founder and CEO, Elvie
Tania Boler set out to create a device to help women strengthen their pelvic floor in 2013. “It’s such a taboo issue, no one was talking about it,” says Boler.
She’d spent years in public health, but learned more about the issue after the birth of her first child. “I’d never worked in business, I’d never worked in tech. I saw a problem that needed solving,” says Boler.
The name Elvie came from a competition and is meant to invoke the feeling of a trusted friend and plays on the word elevate. After all, that’s what “your most personal trainer” does, Boler says.
After the app-connected pelvic trainer came a more discreet breast pump. How discreet? A model sported one while walking the runway at a 2018 fashion show. Elvie has also placed giant inflated breasts on London rooftops and set up pumping facilities at the CES trade show. Now, the Elvie pump is a leading brand in the U.K. and U.S.
In 2019, Elvie raised $42 million, the most ever for a feminine technology company. Next up: launching two new products and expanding into nine additional countries.
Emine Cubukcu
Ogilvy Istanbul CEO
Emine Çubukçu
Ogilvy Istanbul CEO
Ogilvy Istanbul CEO Emine Çubukçu, with 27 years of advertising, public relations and lobbying experience under her belt in Turkey and the U.S., is credited for her expertise in crafting strategies into effective messaging. Çubukçu began her career in Istanbul and then made her way to New York and Washington, D.C., returning to her homeland in 2008. In August 2017, she was appointed CEO of Ogilvy Istanbul and last year led the agency to a breakthrough year. Under her leadership, the agency’s net sales rose by 41 percent and its operating profit soared 345 percent.
Çubukçu led Ogilvy Istanbul to pick up new assignments from clients including the Turkish Tourism Board, Vavacars and Revo Capital—wins she said “were not easy” but came from “our companies’ trustworthiness both at a business level and individual level.” Çubukçu has a background in sociology and says it remains “the backbone of what I do. Sociology is critical in helping me understand social life, social change and the social causes and consequences of human behavior through which I am able to give guidance, advice and make the right decisions,” she says.
Alexandra Evan
VP of Publicis Conseil
Alexandra Evan
VP of Publicis Conseil
As VP of Publicis Conseil since July 2019, Alexandra Evan oversees the Paris-based agency’s account and strategy teams. She also brings a multicultural and international perspective that helped the shop win new business from the likes of Coca-Cola and Castorama in the past 12 months.
Trilingual Evan grew up with a Colombian mother and Scottish/Lebanese father. Her father’s job as an international government advisor meant constant travel, living in Latin America, the U.S., U.K. and Spain, and she attended 10 schools prior to high school, which she believes gives her a unique perspective. “To survive in school, and fit in with all kinds of different people, you adapt very fast, she says.”
Starting in New York at Y&R, then working internationally with DDB, Evan became managing director at BETC Paris and was subsequently hired by Publicis. In 10 months, Evan has developed new initiatives including the “Positive Academy,” which encourages clients to put sustainable behavior on the agenda for branding and marketing, and “Cultural Jams,” a program that puts social data, art and science together to decode the way a culture evolves.
Jane Evans
Founder, The Uninvisibility Project
Jane Evans
Founder, The Uninvisibility Project
Jane Evans saw herself and female colleagues of a certain age being written out of the ad industry. So she founded The Uninvisibility Project in 2019 to show agencies and brands that they should not ignore older women as they cater to younger cohorts. “Women over 50 buy 47 percent of everything,” says Evans. Yet despite years of skills, she adds, “we fall off a career cliff.”
Evans collaborates from her London home with women around the world. “I’ve been running this as my side hustle with the aim of making it my whole hustle,” she says.
And hustle she has. Evans began her career in London, snagging a job at Leagas Delaney at the age of 19 and later moving to Australia to work for J. Walter Thompson in Sydney. That’s where she founded Giant Leap, an agency whose work included the launch of James Squire beer and campaigns for the likes of Maserati and Revlon.
The Uninvisibility Project’s network is “deliberately small” for now, Evans says. The group signed its first big client, a brand in the cosmetics sector, in early June.
Townsend Feehan
CEO, IAB Europe
Townsend Feehan
CEO, IAB Europe
Navigating the complexities of the European Union’s Global Data Privacy Protection law, also known as GDPR, is littered with both technical and legal challenges. Townsend Feehan, CEO at the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe, managed to do just that after the trade body developed and released the Transparency and Consent Framework. It was the largest cross-industry initiative of its kind.
Privacy laws such as GDPR are extremely nuanced and can change at a moment’s notice. Feehan not only spearheaded the IAB’s efforts to make sure its framework was up to compliance, but also fair to the organization’s diverse group of members.
“We are helping thousands of websites and their technology partners comply with the world’s most demanding and prescriptive privacy and data-protection rules,” Feehan says. “I personally think the next big challenge for the digital advertising and marketing industry is climate change. We need to assume responsibility and begin to address our share of the large and rapidly growing environmental footprint of the internet. I hope IAB Europe can take a leadership role here, as we are trying to do with consumer privacy.”
Camilla Harrison
CEO and Partner, Anomaly London
Camilla Harrison
CEO and Partner, Anomaly London
Camilla Harrisson has run Anomaly London since 2014, but it’s in the past 12 months that her agency has really become a player to contend with. It won major global pitches including Diageo’s Johnnie Walker and Vodafone, oversaw a redesign of the Unilever master brand and has even, as she puts it, so far “crushed it” in lockdown, winning major new business including Mini’s global account.
It’s the culmination of six years of hard work for Harrisson, who has taken Anomaly from a staff of just 11 to more than 100 and overseen a creative renaissance that has included purpose-led work such as a highly acclaimed anti-obesity campaign for Cancer Research UK. She says the key was to first establish the agency, once seen as U.S.-centric, as a strong local player and then attract the kind of talent, particularly in design, that has landed it global assignments. “For me, it’s about bringing in talent that is global and progressive and helps everyone be better,” Harrison says.
Jo Kelly
Director, News and Sport, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Twitter
Jo Kelly
Director, News and Sport, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Twitter
When a broadcaster or media company in EMEA wants to collaborate with Twitter, they come to Jo Kelly. In her nearly three years at the social platform, Kelly has worked her way up, moving from the head of news to director of news and sports partnerships.
By bringing exclusive live content to the platform through partnerships with companies including BuzzFeed and Eurosport, Kelly has boosted revenue by more than 300 percent. Her goal: To convince brands of the benefits of connecting with Twitter audiences. Kelly also leads Twitter Women across EMEA, the platform’s internal resource group that supports gender equality and women advancement.
A former editor at the Mirror Online, Kelly has used her experience in media to guide her career, but says the path hasn’t always been easy. When she initially made the leap from print to digital, Kelly had to take a significant pay cut, add on more hours and receive much less respect in return.
Now, she can look back in relief: “By taking that risk, I managed to position myself at the forefront of the industry and so much of the change which came after.”
Kalie Moore
Co-founder, The Story Mob
Kalie Moore
Co-founder, The Story Mob
There was a void in the esports communications market, and The Story Mob Co-Founder Kalie Moore was in a prime location to see it. As Head of Communications at BITKRAFT Esports Ventures, Moore advised the fund’s portfolio companies on who to hire freelance, but no one stood out in esports PR.
Moore and her fellow female co-founders launched The Story Mob — the world’s only communication consultancy solely focused on esports at that time. “We are all avid gamers or spectators. So we know the language,” she says.
Now after two years with The Story Mob, Moore says she’s leaving the company this month as she begins building a European-based wellness brand. Moore says she loves the early stages of building companies and has ambitions to move into venture capital and focus on funding diverse founders.
She will continue to work in digital entertainment—leading comms for several current clients in esports, gaming and digital entertainment—but has a desire to do more since becoming a mother last year.
Suzie Nguyen
Managing director, Optimist
Suzie Nguyen
Managing director, Optimist
Portland, Oregon native Suzie Nguyen found her professional voice by blending “creativity, business and empathy.” Perhaps that’s an approach that comes naturally for someone who started out as a research chemist before jumping into an advertising career.
Nguyen is managing director at experiential agency Optimist in London, which she helped to found after steering the company’s Los Angeles headquarters for six years. Under her leadership, the agency created campaigns for Google Pixel 4, in which the phone came as the prize in a cereal box, as well as a Google-powered experience for John Lewis, turning the retailer’s Oxford Street flagship into a carnival. Nguyen was also instrumental to Optimist being named creative agency of record for ŠKODA and brand experience partner for UberEats.
Nguyen gives back as a mentor to young women and recent grads through a program she founded, “Women in Progress.” As a first-generation Vietnamese-American, she says she’s “hyper-aware” of what it feels like to be “different,” and wants to “lead by example; to be inclusive and empathetic, to champion the spirit of learning what you don’t know and absorbing it as fast as you can.”
Irene Nikolopoulou
Co-CEO, Wunderman Thompson Athens
Irene Nikolopoulou
Co-CEO, Wunderman Thompson Athens
Irene Nikolopoulou, who runs Wunderman Thompson’s Greece operations, is focused as much these days on human rights initiatives and fighting discrimination as securing clients. Wunderman Thompson Athens, part of WPP, is know for its work with Vodafone, Greek grocer Vassilopoulos and bottled water company Chitos.
This month, Nikolopoulou will be on a panel discussing corporate responsibility at a conference on human rights in business. “Even in 2020, there is a problem, a systemic one,” Nikolopoulou says. “And it will remain so, unless we face it and deal with it, provoking a systemic change. The moment we accept that it is not just about feminism or racism but it is about human rights, then we will have ignited the change.”
The civil rights discussion might have intensified because of events in the U.S., but Nikolopoulou’s leadership has been challenged by COVID-19, too.
“I took advantage of the available time, to participate in more meetings with our clients, discuss the situation ... helping them adapt their purpose and strategy to be more relevant and present to their customers,” she says.
Since Day One, I was starting my day, every day, with a “coffee meeting” with my people via Microsoft Teams. Listening to their concerns and fears. Discussing together the projects and organizing the work.
Ally Owen
Founder, Brixton Finishing School
Ally Owen
Founder, Brixton Finishing School
Ally Owen has a quick answer for anyone suggesting they can’t find diverse talent. “Bollocks,” says the London resident. “It doesn’t have to be your excuse anymore.”
Owen is founder of Brixton Finishing School for Digital Talent, which trains young people from underrepresented communities at no cost via a 10-week digital accelerator. Sponsors include R/GA and Clear Channel. Brixton placed 32 graduates in jobs in the past 18 months.
She founded Brixton after working at companies including Yahoo and content agency John Brown Media. While running big brand partnerships for the Daily Mail, Owen became upset that Mail Online ran columns from Katie Hopkins, known for her anti-immigration views. “She was everything that me and my community weren’t—and the fact that I, through my work, was fuding her, just led me to think, that is it.”
She founded Brixton in 2017 with funding from a digital marketing agency she runs called Hoxton United. Brixton started a virtual program with some 250 students. “If anybody says to me I couldn’t find a diverse candidate for my entry-level job, I can say, I’ve got 250 of them.”
I implore those at the top to make diversity and inclusion a business imperative and own the outcome. Be accountable for it and publicly measure your performance against it. The future of our industry depends upon the inclusion of all voices so, if you have power or privilege, you need to take personal responsibility for ensuring there is change. Invest in the creation of a robust diversity and inclusion strategy.
At Brixton Finishing School, our focus is on supporting 'diverse' entry-level talent. A recent survey of our graduates and applicants found 31 percent of respondents thought their race would be a barrier to industry entry and 13 percent of them perceived their gender as an issue. For an industry that prides itself on marketing products to consumers, we've done a terrible job of selling ourselves to multicultural and female talent and are missing out on some brilliant minds because of this.
Stop talking and start doing. We are way beyond the time for more words—let's see deeds.
Aside from developing a toxic relationship with my kitchen table, my role has gone completely digital. In the U.K., groups that have traditionally faced challenges breaking into careers are likely to be disproportionately affected by this crisis. We saw the need to create positive pathways for those affected by the crisis and provide them with the chance to upskill and open new doors. These young people needed a structure to help them win in the market and give them hope.
In response to this, we've gone from a wonderful, London-based, in person diversity initiative with a cohort of 30 young talents to a free, nationwide virtual gateway to adland for all talents across the U.K. We've seized the digital learning opportunity, which is being accelerated by COVID-19, as a way to game-change the blend of our entire industry's future talent pipeline. We are now not limited by capacity or location so our potential to engage, prepare and invest in diverse talent in advertising careers has expanded to a much bigger scale. There will be no excuse not to create balanced shortlists for entry-level roles when adland's lights come back on post COVID-19.
For me, a pivot this big has come with its challenges. Our funding pipeline was decimated so we have had to convert to crowdfunding donations for the virtual gateway. I’m also finally getting to grips with this new way of working. However, whilst the physical element has been removed from my role at Brixton Finishing School, the connections I make with students have not. I aim to get to know each and every young person in any way I can, be it through a video chat or a socially distanced meet-up. We are living in a new normal but the importance of our work has stayed the same.
Nicky Palamarczuk
Head of Social and Influence,VCCP
Nicky Palamarczuk
Head of Social and Influence, VCCP
Two and a half years ago, VCCP’s Nicky Palamarczuk was diagnosed with breast cancer when her daughter was just 1 year old. Palamarczuk, who leads VCCP’s social team as the head of social and influence, had to pause everything for six months for intensive treatment. After such a life-altering incident, it wasn’t easy to simply return to work and continue where she left off.
Understanding that she’s not the only one, she founded the Back to Work After… event series where high-profile speakers from media and communications companies talk openly about returning to work after dealing with often taboo topics, such as cancer scares, miscarriages, addictions or menopause, with all proceeds going toward organizations supporting those causes.
“I don’t think people are open enough about how these topics affect who they are at work,” says Palamarczuk. She wasn’t sure people would want to pay to hear people talk about cancer or miscarriages, but when the events began to fill up with people she had never seen before, she knew she was “actually on to something.”
Stop waiting for someone to reward and recognise you for all the hard work that you’ve put in. Recognise your own achievements and have confidence in yourself.
When I read “Lean In” over five years ago, the penny dropped. I finally realised that I had really earned every pay rise and promotion. And that they probably should have come sooner, but they didn’t, because I didn’t have the confidence or knowledge to understand that I should and could ask for them. I was too busy waiting patiently for someone to come and stick a tiara on my head and say “Well done.”
Carol Starr
Managing director, Northern Europe, Rubicon Project
Carol Starr
Managing director, Northern Europe, Rubicon Project
Shortly after graduating college in 2010, Carol Starr, now a managing director of Northern Europe with Rubicon Project, declined a job offer to work at a large social media company in favor of a career in ad tech — a field she admittedly knew nothing about. “I committed to training myself to be technical and analytical and I got the job,” she says. “The key learning experience for me was that taking risks makes us feel a little bit uncomfortable, but it can be a great conduit to push ourselves forward in new directions.”
Starr continues to buck trends today, spearheading an all-women team in a field that is largely dominated by men. Through her leadership, Starr laid the foundations for a new header bidding strategy to capture market share in Germany. In just one year, the team went from working with 20 percent of the top publishers to more than 90 percent today.
Beyond her leadership, Starr is also quite likeable: Earlier this year at the NEO IO Awards in Berlin, Starr won an award by her peers for having the best personality—beating all other candidates — all of which happened to be men.
Right after earning my college degree in 2010 I landed a job in the digital unit of a large US media company working on social media projects. This gave me a small glimpse into an adtech world that was just emerging. I did not understand much about adtech, but sensed it was going to have a transformative impact on the digital industry. Change was coming and I wanted to be at the forefront of that change. At the time, the company underwent some organizational changes and I was offered a comfortable digital sales job, but decided to decline it. Instead, I dared to get started on a career in the adtech industry.
Being new to the ad tech field, I decided to pursue an entry level role on the ad operations team of a small adtech platform. The role requirements listed technical and analytical skills, neither of which I thought I really had. Regardless, I did apply and committed to training myself to be technical and analytical. Low and behold, I got the job! Taking the risk to leave a comfortable job at a big media company and accepting that AdOps role did not result in me becoming the best AdOps person in adtech (I quickly left that role after one year), but it provided me with experience and further insights into adtech. This helped to kick-start my career in the adtech industry, which eventually led me to my role today as the MD of Central Europe for one of the world’s largest independent programmatic ad exchanges. The key learning experience for me was that taking risks that make us feel a little bit uncomfortable can be a great conduit to push ourselves in new directions and unlock opportunities.
Rebecca Swift
Global Head of Creative Insights, Getty Images
Rebecca Swift
Global Head of Creative Insights, Getty Images , Unilever
Advertising and fashion photography has long been a man’s game, shot for a male audience. Getty Images and Dove set out to rectify that with “Project #ShowUs,” an initiative to diversify stock image offerings led by Getty’s Rebecca Swift that introduced more than 170 female photographers from 39 countries to the industry. “Being able to work with them and inspire them to create great work and, to get that out into the marketplace and see them get paid and pick up other jobs—you’re kind of creating this entire legacy which you can then lean into to bring on other partners,” Swift says. The database has more than 10,000 assets that have been used by more than 2,500 customers and businesses in 60 countries.
“This is creating thought processes around how we might do other work and how we can help other organizations be more forward-thinking and more thoughtful about the imagery that they’re choosing,” Swift adds. “I’m the most senior female creative at Getty images, so it gives me a lot of pride to be able to stand up and be a leader in this way.”
Renee Vaughan Sutherland
Founder and host, Greater Than 11%
Renee Vaughan Sutherland
Founder and host, Greater Than 11%
Renee Vaughan Sutherland heard an eye-opening stat at a May 2018 event: Only 11 percent of women held the title of creative director in the U.K. media and communications industry. Vaughan Sutherland says she left the event feeling the need to do something.
That birthed her weekly podcast, Greater than 11%, which features female guests, explores different roles and opportunities within the industry and promotes the industry’s diverse female voices.
Vaughan Sutherland says these voices are already within the industry, but that gender identity, race and class work against creatives, and that diversity is not reflected in leadership. The issue is not solved by just encouraging a more diverse industry, she says, but by creating a pipeline for them to succeed once there.
“I don’t feel it’s about encouraging more women, people of color, gender non-conforming people into the industry. It’s about employing and promoting us,” she says. “Because then we create that waterfall effect. So employers, work a little bit harder.”
Amy Williams
Founder and CEO, Good-Loop
Amy Williams
Founder and CEO, Good-Loop
Amy Williams left the agency world when she realized the relationship between consumers and advertisers had been eroded. ”I wanted to do something I was proud of,” she says.
So she embarked on a nine-month trip to Argentina, where she spent time working in a soup kitchen. There, Williams witnessed feeding 30 children on what would amount to little more than $10, making her realize how much can be done with so little.
Good-Loop, an ethical advertising tool, was born out of Williams’ desire to rethink how brands communicate with consumers around social purpose. The company allows consumers to choose a charity to donate to for free if they watch an ad. Good-Loop’s clients have included Toms, Unilever and Nestlé, among others, and the company expanded to the U.S. earlier this month.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic and social unrest, Williams says what has emerged is an outpouring of kindness and evidence that brands want to help. Good-Loop created a COVID-19 version of its product where watching and engaging with an ad can fund frontline initiatives.
I’m a big believer in the idea that you can be what you can see. Amplifying women and people of color that have somehow slipped through the cracks and crashed glass ceilings and giving them a platform is an important first step. There were female founders like Sarah Wood of Unruly that made me feel I can do it too.
Internally at Good-Loop we are deeply questioning our recruitment strategy and where there might be biases, unintended and therefore, quite dangerous. Where you advertise your job, and the language you use, need to be thought about. My dad hooked me up with someone at his company, and so many people don’t have a dad that can do that. I try not to enable those networks.
Jane Wolfson
Chief commercial officer, Hearst UK
Jane Wolfson
Chief commercial officer, Hearst UK
Jane Wolfson says that work under quarantine has been intense but productive. “I’ve coped remarkably well with it, I think,” Wolfson says from her London home. And just as she’s commenting on her ability to make work work at home, Wolfson is interrupted by her 8-year-old daughter checking in on her Zoom call.
It’s a sign of the times: families are now co-workers. Wolfson says she spends most of her time on video conferencing, up to seven hours a day.
Wolfson, chief commercial officer at Hearst UK, manages a team of approximately 130 people. She misses walking the floor and seeing her team face-to-face.
Still, Hearst UK has kept humming even with Wolfson and her team working remotely. In April, Wolfson helped stand up a new creator network, which she called a quick turnaround studio for branded content that links advertisers and digital talent. “Work has been intense but in a good way,” Wolfson says. “The pace that things are moving is much quicker probably for everyone because it has to be.”
Zeynep Yalim Uzun
Chief Marketing Officer, Arçelik
Zeynep Yalim Uzun
Chief Marketing Officer, Arçelik
Zeynep Yalım Uzun was always interested in human behavior. But it wasn’t until attending Agnes Scott College in Atlanta,—where she majored in psychology and economics—at dinner with a Unilever marketing exec that she discovered the behavior of marketing and how messaging can influence purchase decisions. She switched careers from human resources to marketing, taking a job at Unilever in 1992, and hasn’t looked back.
“Marketing in my opinion is all about behavior and how you can change it,” says Uzun. “How you can affect it, influence people’s choices—that’s what it was for me and I started loving it.”
Three years ago, Uzun joined Arçelik, the Turkey-based home appliance and electronics company, where she has a team of 2,000 staffers globally marketing brands including Beko and Grundig. At the company’s Beko brand, Uzun debuted the “Eat Like a Pro” campaign in 2017, with creative partner McCann Europe, as part of a push to eradicate childhood obesity. Now, during the pandemic lockdowns, that campaign has evolved into “Live Like a Pro.”