Nous York, I knew we would love each other
After the past few days of Halloween celebrations everywhere (at Dailymotion, at Havas Media New York, in the streets), I can say that I have definitely fallen in love with this city. Even if people get really busy with their job, they definitely know how to party, and Halloween is the perfect example of the mentality here: work hard, play hard. I noticed that you have three kinds of costumes for this event: the classical scary one, the sexy one for later in the night, and the funny ones, which are the most used by American people at work. And everybody is wonderfully imaginative.
As mentioned, New Yorkers are very busy with their work. At Dailymotion for example, they’re in the process of migrating from Live Rail to Sticky Ads: two different SSP platforms which will hopefully improve the user experience on the website, increase campaign measurement, and optimize the way they sell inventory. A whole program! It doesn’t seem like much, but it is a new starting point for everyone in the company, and it’s only the beginning since many new things must still be developed and reconfigured: new people, new website, new contents and new technology to support all these changes.
And what caught my attention is that even if the launch is scheduled in November and they still have a lot to achieve, each person knows exactly what his or her role is — and how to accomplish it on time. Everyone is very responsible and autonomous in reaching their end goal, and several development meetings don’t seem to be necessary. Indeed Dailymotion is like a big startup but it remains really agile in the way people interact with each other.
In the middle of all these major changes that are coming up, my coach Fan has a really central position. She is in charge of the relations with all the partners from the demand, supply and non-monetization sides, and has transversal missions such as signing the contracts and negotiating the rates with the different partners. She also handles the the long term strategies with existing and new partnerships. That’s why she needs to be commensurate with all the different AD teams in the US but also in the other countries because the partnerships she is dealing with are mostly global.
While people from the AD team are connected to each other and know what their colleagues are working on, people from the Content team have specific and completely other issues to focus on. When I talked to Eric, Head of Hispanic Content Partnerships and Alex, Head of News/Entertainment Content Partnerships, I feel like I was in a different world: music, artists, entertainment and content world opposed to technology, programmatic, sales and advertising world.
But I am sure that they will succeed in joining the 2 parts of the bridge: when the new SSP platform will be implemented and when the synergies will be much easier to operate between the departments of Dailymotion and within the Vivendi Group. Everything is getting really exciting here!!!
