#Newsmaker: Melissa Daniels new Levergy MD: Adding in her own spice

Image supplied. Recently appointed Levergy MD, Melissa Daniels

Tell us a bit about yourself... where do you come from, what did you want to be where you were growing up and why?

I was born and raised in Johannesburg, and grew up in Bosmont on the Westrand. Growing up my dream was to not necessarily grow up but rather continue playing. Apart from that I always wanted to be a teacher, coming from a family of enthusiastic and passionate educators.

What led you to the creative industry?

I’m a marketer by training, and having begun on client side, I was curious about what went into the work often presented by agencies. Being passionate about digital, I took up an opportunity in a digital agency which provided me with great exposure to the creative industry. The energy, people and journey to create great work has kept me enthralled in the industry.

What does your work day look like? What does your role entail?

Meeting mania, a spike of coffee and hopefully a few laughs in between. My days are a combination of client engagements; team meetings, business planning and implementing initiatives that have been identified as part of our growth plan.

As a passion marketing agency, we’re in the business of connecting brands to people through the things they love.

My role entails managing a team of specialists who help bring these connections to life.

We’re responsible for everything from the strategy development and creative ideas for campaigns, to bringing it to life for fans and customers to engage with.

Like any other marketing specialisation, our world is ever-evolving and part of my role includes business strategy and implementation to ensure we’re adapting to the needs of fans and clients alike.

This means staying on top of new technologies; ensuring we can implement in any medium and constantly immersing ourselves in the fans passions and insights.

What inspires you in your work every day? What is it that you love the most about your work? What gets you out of bed in the morning?

What inspires me most every day is the people I work with – both inside our agency and our client partners. Being surrounded by curious, constantly learning individuals is a gift, because it makes you want to be the same.

We’re also in a lucky position to have very brave and intelligent clients who are always looking to push the boundaries in passion marketing and are committed to created engaging customer experiences.

What do you see as your primary goals in your new position?

Being in passion marketing means we’re ultimately in the business of people. Not just the people we create for, but often more importantly the people we work with.

With this in mind, it’s key to elevate and empower our very ambitious team members to excel. This is being done through a tailored plan that includes coaching, formal skills development and critical thinking training.

Apart from a dedicated focus on the growth of our team members, I’m focusing on improving our digital and experiential outputs, with the aim of creating more delightful experiences for fans around their passions.

As part of the process, we’re establishing bespoke task teams who are focused on research into new passion points and insights through our bespoke Passion Pulse tool; trialling technologies that can help us engage with customers better and building new partnerships with individuals and companies that will advance our experiences and content.

You have been in Marketing and Communications for more than 15 years. What has changed? What has changed for the better and for the worse?

The essence of marketing has stayed the same, with a sound strategic plan being more important than ever to guide and align marketing initiatives to deliver value to both the business and the customer.

What has changed is the way customers are engaging with brands, with the average person seeing between 4,000 and 10,000 ads in one day, they’re more discerning than ever.

That’s why we believe in passion marketing, because it’s about engaging with a customer around the things they love.

This provides brands with a greater opportunity to cut through the clutter, and connect with customers in an emotive way.

These customers aren’t simply more open to messaging and engagement around the things they are choosing to spend their free time with, they’re also proving to be more loyal (74%) and likely (58%) to purchase from brand that partners with their passion.

This provides us with amazing opportunities to tap into mass traditional and new, more nuanced passions to develop creative solutions that connect with customers and drive business value as a result.

If you were not in the creative industry, what would you be doing?

If I wasn’t in the creative industry, I would probably be making nonsense in the kitchen. I’d love to think of myself as a wanna-be chef, but I’m also extremely aware that I don’t follow cooking instructions well enough to excel.

Which is probably why I enjoy the creative industry so much – there are many recipes for great work, but they all provide you with a bit of freedom to add in your own special spice for a unique outcome.