Like a Fish in Water

CMO on demand

AGILITY

You can probably remember when you were young (or maybe more recently with your children), up to your waist in water with a fishnet and bucket. How successful were your efforts to catch that quicksilver creature?

Having the agility to survive isn’t only important for a fish. It’s vital for any commercial organisation operating in a world that never stands still. Particularly today, when many companies tend to be increasingly introspective and overwhelmed by issues around International expansion, IT, Big Data so everything related to e-commerce and customer journeys. Than there is a call for operational excellence.

I can help you and your marketing and commercial colleagues gradually bring the focus back onto the outside world. So you can interpret the ever-changing needs and behaviour of your customers. Enabling your company to respond to shifting market conditions review and sharpen its commercial strategy with the agility of that little fish.

ADAPTABILITY

Fish change course, seek out fresh waters, dive deeper, are constantly on the move. Which for a company translates into constantly discovering new (foreign)markets and additional customer segments in existing markets, and extending the range of your product and service solutions.

But adaptability is also about critical evaluation of existing practices and processes in the light of new opportunities technology presents. Digitised, automated marketing calls for `always on` social media content marketing strategies. Which in turn requires rethinking not only how to improve the customer experience, but also how to make that experience easier, faster, richer. And how to ensure your organisation is both ‘mentally fit’ and ‘functionally competent’ to cope with the pressures your strategy will put on it.

I can assist you on that journey. Helping you define the customer journey, set buyer and decision maker profiles, optimise your value proposition to customer needs, draft a content strategy for online presence with landing pages and social media. Support your sales teams, discover which competences need to come on board, accelerating only as and when confidence and buy-in within your company allow.

ALIGNMENTS

Self-reliance — the quality held by companies or marketing departments who have the answers and keep their cards to their chest — is rare in today’s world. Strategy at the corporate or product development level, innovation drives, development of innovative strategies: does your company have the expertise and resources to select, guide and manage the alliances you need to forge with third parties to unlock the full potential of the opportunities out there and accelerate their impact?

Does your company actively and deliberately recruit and build teams around talent with a diverse education, professional experience and complementary personality?

I can help you keep on course with your guiding star. Helping you work with more effective teams from inside and outside your organization, bringing together their networked contributions in support of your strategy.

Configurations are always changing. So additional expertise and a fresh mind-set can only enrich the mix of experience and quality of outcome.

ABOUT ME

I am a lawyer who never practiced law but instead became a banker. I gained a lot of knowledge about finance and gained experience in relationship management and started to developed an interest in marketing and brands. So I went into advertising, where my career allowed me to manage agencies and work both internationally and very locally in different countries, with clients from a vast range of industries including Coca-Cola, Nestle, Unilever, Rolex, Renault and the European Central Bank.

Later on I became the Global marketing, brand  and/or communications responsible director at Zurich Insurance, Stage entertainment and Leasing company DLL international and run an EU co-funded Mushroom promotion programme in the agri&food sector.

As general manager and most senior marketing chief I build organisational structures and led teams through change and managed relationships within a wide range of industries in areas of marketing, strategy, business development, media and technology.

Requisites for success are in my belief, the possession of a social antenna, people management skills and a capacity to receive and give energy back to people.

After years working in Spain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland in multi-national and multi country tasks I had moved back to Amsterdam but never stopped servicing my international network and now, since July we made booming Colombia our resident country and work from Bogotá for a year or longer, we will see.

For 25 years together with Angela Pelaez Vargas, a Colombian-born children’s author and illustrator, with whom I have 4 children.