TRANSCRIPT
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Robert Berkeley 0:07
Hello and welcome to Inside Jjobs the podcast for an aboutAnnabell creative leaders brought to you in association with IHAF a forum for in house agency professionals and Eexpress KCS, the production agency who execute agencies creative ideas quickly across all media on time on brand and offshore. Before we start today, I want to mention an ebook that landed in my inbox just a few weeks back call five hidden truths supercharging today's in house agencies. It's written by Amsterdam based crave love ledge. It's a quick read, but you may come away with some new thoughts about how to get the best from your teams generally. It also names some very useful online tools that you might want to add into your day to day operation. We'll provide a link to download the book on the inside jobs podcast.org website. This episode we meet Tara DeZaode Zeo from Oracle Data Cloud who may even be a supplier to some listeners brands. Tara is a shining example of someone who had absolutely no idea what career she wanted, but as water finds its own level. So she found her place in creative operations. She was passing through the UK last week. So I grabbed the chance and a microphone, not a good one as it turned out, and apologies for the intermittent crackling it produces. It really is me and not you. And I headed to London to meet her in person. And TaraTyra told me that she started life in New Jersey, but at 14 the family up speaks and moved to the Wwest Ccoast.
Tara DeZaoDezao 1:34
My dad was actually a Ppharmaceutical Rrep. And we moved to California when I was 13. Aa bit of a change from New Jersey climate. Hhuge change ended up being the best thing for me. I, you know, did all my high school and college in California,. and then I
Robert Berkeley 1:51
youAnd then I came to move from New Jersey thenough.
Tara DeZaoDezao 1:53
though. You know, at the time I was not because I was like 13. So you can imagine how a 13 year olds mind and yeah, and all that is working. But you know, it gave me access to a lot of different options for university.
Robert Berkeley 2:09
Did you know what you wanted to be when you grow up?
Tara DeZaoDezao 2:11
I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. But I knew that I wanted to go to UC Berkeley. That is the only thing that I wanted to do. Why? I just loved it.
Robert Berkeley 2:21
It was cool. It was a great name,. I say.
Tara DeZaoDezao 2:25
Iit does have a great name. I mean, the moment my parents first took me there and I was 13 the moment I stepped on campus, I knew that that is wrong. Okay, interesting,
right? Yep. And so I didn't have any interests. Besides going to Berkeley and playing rugby. I didn't know what I wanted to do for school, so that playing rugby as well. Okay, yepI played rugby at, you know, I was a liberal arts major. I didn't have a plan for my future. And I just sort of, you know, went through my degree and learned a lot and,
Robert Berkeley 2:55
you know, went through my degree and learned a lot and which degree did you choose not knowing what you wanted to do? The easiest one to get into Berkeley with?
Tara DeZaoDezao 3:01
with? I got exactly No, I got the most interesting, amazing, necessary but totally unusable degree, which was in women's studies. Okay. Yeah, I had no idea what I wanted to do. And it just so happens that I graduated right after the tech bust. So I couldn't even get a job. If I wanted to get a rest. Now I could not.
Robert Berkeley 3:25
So but the rugby thing was part of college for you as well.
Tara DeZaoDezao 3:30
It was and it gave me a great network of people. And it taught me about being resilient. And it sort of sustained me through this really hard time of not being able to find a career path.
Robert Berkeley 3:44
So I sustained you, but how good were you at rugby
Tara DeZaoDezao 3:46
I was really aggressive and really driven and I would do all the training and so I felt like I was good. I was actually trying to try out for the US national team, but I kind of blew it. Why? When I went to my trialyout I was just like having a terrible game. The trial was in Florida, it was humid. I was dying. And then the last 10 minutes of the game I separated my shoulder
Robert Berkeley 4:16
you separated or someone else's? Oh, well, I
Tara DeZaoDezao 4:18
Oh, well, I was tackled by a very large, much larger person and slammed no doubt they were on steroids. I mean, I think that they were.
Robert Berkeley 4:29
Sso that was the end of the rugby career. Yeah, that sounds like it did get pretty. Eye flying in the end. Yeah. Rugbyeally International. Yeah. I mean, at least they went out with a bang. Yeah, I suppose. Okay, so you went back to California without without the sporting ambitions anymore. They were already you'd already Yeah, turn you back on that I guess and realise that wasn't gonna happen. Not gonna. Yyou had a degree in women's studies? Yes. Which you are trying to tout around. Yeah no jobs for that. Okay, so what happened?
Tara DeZaoDezao 4:56
So I ended up I was still playing rugby sort of just for fun. On the side, and I ended up moving to Seattle to join a team that was up there. And there were jobs, there all kinds of jobs. So I got into the tech industry. And I was doing network attached storage. So I was managing partnership. Did you know anything about networks, attachment story?, I didn't even know that this was a thing.
Robert Berkeley 5:20
didn't even know that this was a thing. So so this is obviously there was no internet storage or anything like that, because the internet wasn't so much a thing at the time. It was
Tara DeZaoDezao 5:27
It was very, it was replacing tape. Yeah, so it was cloud based, but it was, it was catching on. And people were super into it, because it was a new thing. Okay. But it was taking a while to sort of penetrate. And.
Robert Berkeley 5:43
And your role here was was the continue to be this liaison role. Yeah,
Tara DeZaoDezao 5:47
Yeah, I was like a channel marketing, management really?, it was kind of like that I was a channel channel marketing representative. And so I would help, you know, facilitate the operations and marketing programmes for these partners.,
Robert Berkeley 6:02
Okey helping them out. And so you were really there to help the partners sell your product, yes. And champion for partners really, robbing their voice? Yes, absolutely. So were you enjoying this this job?
Tara DeZaoDezao 6:12
You know, I loved that whole partnership aspect. But the company culture was not a good fit. For me. It was a very much the company was sort of,
6:26
sort of,
Tara DeZaoDezao 6:28
I'm trying to be politically correct here. But it wasn't very focused on empowering women. Um, there was not this, you know, push that we have now for equality. in the workplace, and. I think it's been a really slow progression for equality in the workplace. And we're still so far from where we are,
Robert Berkeley 6:48
are, and this was affecting you personally, or it was just a vibe that was around you, you didn't have a taste for. it
Tara DeZaoDezao 6:54
It was affecting me personally, because I felt that it was just a glass ceiling, that was really hard for me to burst through.
Robert Berkeley 7:01
So you could be twice as good as the going to you. Right? Yeah, it wouldn't help you at all
Tara DeZaoDezao 7:04
right. And even my boss was amazing, great guy. But, you know, he was having similar problems with advocating for, you know, diversity. Um, and it just so happened that my mom was sick. And she lived in California, and my wife and I decided that we were going to give the Bay Area try again and see,
Robert Berkeley 7:31
come down from Seattle.
Tara DeZaoDezao 7:32
Yeah, see if I could help my mom a little bit. And I ended up joining a startup, which was in the AdTechad tech space. And AdTechad tech is so progressive, in terms of, you know, creativity and individuality. And innovation, really, I mean, in AdTechAD tech, you invent a product for one purpose, and then it can be used in so many other ways. And I loved it. I was hooked immediately.
Robert Berkeley 7:56
So when was this AdTechad tech? It was about 2013-20142013 2014. Okay, so I thought it was pretty established as a it was as a concept. Yeah,
Tara DeZaoDezao 8:05
Yeah, absolutely. I never had never even heard of it in the space that I was in.
Robert Berkeley 8:10
But when you came into it, what am I What I'm saying is an established I mean, people were, Yeah, ad exchanges existed all that life side demand side, all that was going on by that time. Oh, it was fully bear you you have oblivious, oblivious.
Tara DeZaoDezao 8:21
Oblivious, yYeah. And and when I was looking for jobs, one of the functions of the network attached storage that we were selling, is that it could move these like massive amounts of data. Yeah. So I've just searching for jobs around data. Yeah. And so I came across this company, which was a data provider, essentially for b2b. And it funnelled me right into AdTechad tech.
Robert Berkeley 8:44
So you were really trading on your experience as an account manager to get the job. Yeah,
Tara DeZaoDezao 8:49
Yeah, yeah. And so I ended up doing that same thing. I was a Partner Manager for these other data providers. And I had some of the, the large accounts that we were trying to build relationships with. And
Robert Berkeley 9:01
so it's kind of a commercial role, but relationship roles. Yeah. Heavily relationship focus. Okay. Okay. So you so you came in there, and this opened your eyes to?
Tara DeZaoDezao 9:12
Yes, yes everything that I was learning, and everyone I was meeting was this just amazing to me, my wife was seven months pregnant. And the company I was working out was really small as a startup. And we were acquired by a much larger company. And that company said, we're not going to sell data outside of our walls. And so everyone that's doing that needs to move on. So I was laid off, right before my wife was about to give birth.
Robert Berkeley 9:45
Okay. Great timing,
Tara DeZaoDezao 9:45
but fortunately, my biggest partner relationship, not knowing at all what happened. He called me that week and said, Hey, I have this role of my team. And I think you'd be great at it. And it was amazing. content manager role. And the partnership was BlueKaiBblue Kai. And BlueKaiblue Kai had just been acquired by Oracle Data Cloud. And
Robert Berkeley 10:08
what did they see in in you? Is your account managing up to that point? Yeah. And this is content. So what did they see in in you?
Tara DeZaoDezao 10:13
I think the hiring manager was just kind of impressed by my dedication to the industry and how much knowledge that I had acquired in such a short period of time. And just really, when you're in a partnership role like that, you get to hit every part of the ecosystem, you know, you touch publishers, you touch the aapp nexuses of the world, you touch the data providers of the world. So it was really a lot of exposure in a short amount of time. And I think she thought, hey, this person knows our business, and is a great writer. So I'm going to bring her on board.
Robert Berkeley 10:49
bring her on board. So your aim was then be creating content for this particular company to help help them get attention on social media and on blogs and elsewhere? Absolutely. So tell me about what happened from there.
Tara DeZaoDezao 11:02
So within four months of being at the newly formed Oracle Data Cloud, we acquired Datalogixdata logics., Datalogixdata logics, had a very established marketing team. And the marketing team at the newly formed Oracle Data Cloud was only three people. Okay,
Robert Berkeley 11:18
Okay, so we sort of we knew fitted into the, yes, to the, to the, yes, team as a content
Tara DeZaoDezao 11:25
Absolutelyaggregator, and we acquired them, but really, from the marketing side that they acquired us. Okay. So we had to support a much bigger business with way more people. And I started building a team out to support those needs. Where do you get the budget from for that? Well, um, you know, the cons, our content team operates on a very small budget, I have to say,
Robert Berkeley 11:50
if you have to build out a team, if you're just saying one person, I mean, in a large company, yeah,that's not an easy thing to do. So you had to sell this to somebody or
Tara DeZaoDezao 11:58
Yeah, the cool thing about acquisitions is that they're sometimes duplicative roles, and you get people that are interested in moving in to other roles. So we were able to say, Okay, this person's doing this over here, that fits in with what I'm doing. I wonder if they'd be interested in doing this? Got it. Okay.
Robert Berkeley 12:17
Got it. Okay. All right. Yeah. top tip for anyone. Yeah. being acquired, or
Tara DeZaoDezao 12:21
any marketer knows that, as a marketer, you wear many hats. So there's a lot of different capabilities of people in various roles. Right.
Robert Berkeley 12:31
Right, right.. So, so then you were, were you put in charge of this whole new, sort of pulling together of two teams?
Tara DeZaoDezao 12:37
pulling together of two teams? No, but um, my manager kind of said, Hey, I really need someone that's going to make this a priority, make it more strategic. And she sort of built out an organisation not just for content, but demandgen, and events, that was much stronger than what we had originally had. So the focus was, we're going to take all of our best talent and put them in the right roles and make sure that we have a great marketing team.
Robert Berkeley 13:08
Okay. All right. So does that bring us more or less to the present day then Oracle Data Cloud are their stages, Yeah, before? Okay, so where are we?
Tara DeZaoDezao 13:14
where are we? So there are way more acquisitions.? Of course, yeah, yeah. Acquired, grapeshot and add this and moat and crosswise. Okay. And that brings us to where we are.
Robert Berkeley 13:25
So they all have their separate marketing teams, or where they can really be brought together.
Tara DeZaoDezao 13:30
Yeah, we had some separate marketing teams that we brought into the fold. We brought people into the fold
Robert Berkeley 13:35
drops of mercury, it's sort of, Yeah, coming together totally. And
Tara DeZaoDezao 13:38
totally. And we start, we sort of got the best of these. I mean, all the companies were pioneering great companies. So we were lucky that we got these great.
Robert Berkeley 13:49
Yeah, yeah, folk, and a lot of kind of enterprising spirit along the way can do and all that. So So now bring us to the present day. So what are we looking at with, with the Oracle Data Cloud? There were associated businesses, it's quite a complicated setup and trying to explain it to me.
Tara DeZaoDezao 14:06
Yeah, so we're a business unit within larger Oracle, but we have a very specific audience, and that's the advertiser.
Robert Berkeley 14:14
So in fact, some of the listeners to this podcast might actually also be potential customers. That's right with your services, right.
Tara DeZaoDezao 14:20
That;s right, aAnd we also have partnerships with the walled gardens of the world and all kinds of technologies throughout the ecosystem.
Robert Berkeley 14:30
Okay. So your aim is to help brands through social advertising or through through internet digital advertising, reach target audiences with the right message.
Tara DeZaoDezao 14:41
Yeah, we're trying to help advertisers, reach audiences that are relevant to their business. And in safe environment is a
Robert Berkeley 14:51
hygiene approach to this, yeah, as well, right,
Tara DeZaoDezao 14:52
if you're brand safe, yeah, because it's a crazy world out there on the internet and then measure the results. So Who's seeing your ad? Is it a real person? You know, how long have they interacted with your ad?
Robert Berkeley 15:06
So your role then is to market that your people to whom you're marketing are marketers? They're marketers. Oh, savvy. Yeah. So you can't you can't bullshit them or can you? I don't know, you can't, they'll call you immediately on it and try to. Okay, so tell me how that affects what you do, though. Actually, before you do that, just describe the the marketing operation that you've got. Yeah. Now, Oracle Data Cloud, just give some context, yeah where you've got themen?
Tara DeZaoDezao 15:30
where you've gotten? Well, because our audience is very specific. We, Oracle corporate has been wonderful about letting us kind of take the reins on how we go to market with our marketing. And this is Larry Ellison as well, right. He's, you know, I'm, I'm personal friends,
Robert Berkeley 15:49
personal friends with Larry just kidding talking to him on his boat, just, I'm sure.
Tara DeZaoDezao 15:53
So essentially, we had these outside agencies that we were working with small boutique agencies, and it iswas my job to manage those relationships with them. And we just were not getting what we needed from those agencies. I think one of the in terms of what? I think one of the chief concerns was that they didn't understand our business.
Robert Berkeley 16:20
And these are creative agencies you're talking about.
Tara DeZaoDezao 16:22
They were design firms with high capabilities, but they weren't an agency that you think of in the world of like a W PP or JWAjaida.
Robert Berkeley 16:32
Strategic agent, no more tactical. Okay, so go on, you were saying they didn't really one of them didn't really understand your business. Yeah,
Tara DeZaoDezao 16:39
Yeah, there was no, you know, getting your hands into the mix to really figure out what we do and what would make sense from a creative perspective. And I think we just knew that, inherently, if we built something internal, we would under, you know, the challenges and the opportunities would be understood, stood so much better.
Robert Berkeley 17:04
So to build an in house agency was a decision that was obvious from within, you didn't need to go out and see which way the winds blowing in the market as a whole. It was very obvious that if you you needed to understand your market, the only people who really answered your market, were yourselves exactly was that would that be a way for an external agency to get as under the skin of the market? As you were? Would
Tara DeZaoDezao 17:24
Would I do think that there would have been a way, you know, we, we still have to have these external agencies, because the sheer volume of the work that we do is so high. And at the time, I think we said, we're going to get a designer and see how it goes. And see if this is something, you know, that works. And immediately, the quality of the work was just through the roof. Because we invested the money and the time to get a senior person who knew our business and could see the trends and was really on top of it. It
Robert Berkeley 17:57
It wasn't a cost thing for you. You weren't you weren't squeezed on costs. And that's why you did it. It really was get to get quality. Oh, yeah.
Tara DeZaoDezao 18:04
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I mean, obviously, any business mind will tell you this, once we brought in our own talent, we obviously started reducing the volume that we use the external agencies for from a cost perspective, but it was not financially motivated the decision at all.
Robert Berkeley 18:21
Okay, all right. Interesting. So, did you have a model to build this from after this first designer? And where did you go? And how did you? How did you frame that? What reference reference did you use? Yeah. To define where you were going?
Tara DeZaoDezao 18:33
We kind of felt our way through the dark a little bit.
Robert Berkeley 18:36
And I know you were on a journey even or did you just take it one day at a time,
Tara DeZaoDezao 18:39
just took it one day at a time and then we started to realise pretty quickly that if we brought the right talent in that we could bump up the quality even more so we started staffing up our content team and really staffing up the design side, we brought in an art director, and then working together that marriage started producing Awesome work.
Robert Berkeley 19:03
Well, okay, so you this is working responds directly to marketing and marketing requests?
Tara DeZaoDezao 19:09
Yes. From inside our organisation. Were
Robert Berkeley 19:11
Were you mandated by the marketers? or could they come to you for ideas or they could go externally and spend their money where they want is so they can't
Tara DeZaoDezao 19:17
So they can't they? They can't really spend their money where they want and I think that's more of a corporate thing. You know, Yeah. Oracle houseMourinho has very specific partners, and very specific reasons for working okay with people. So
Robert Berkeley 19:30
but there are externals, they could go yes, they have a choice.
Tara DeZaoDezao 19:33
Yes, absolutely. And one of the things that we did, which was an interesting experience is that we brought in a project management software because the volume of requests were becoming so large, that the Excel spreadsheet was no longer viable. Yep. And so we even brought marketing ops in to build this out and then created a whole operations process around our creative.
Robert Berkeley 19:57
Rright. Okay. So from where you are now. What challenges generally you you're facing?
Tara DeZaoDezao 20:03
Well, I think the main challenge and what my role mostly is, is bridging the gap between the business side of the house and the creative side of the house. Anyone that's ever managed creatives knows that you know, the most m. Most of the time, you have people that are highly creative, highly specialised, and experts in their field, and then you have the business side of people that don't always jive. They don't always jive together, you know, we have creative is so subjective. And it's almost like an eight, when you have an external agency that comes to the client, and they pitch it and they sell it. It's not quite like that in an in house environment, right? you iterate together, you collaborate together with your own team, your own team is your client. So I think keeping that gap between the business side and the creative side, harmonious is crucial.
Robert Berkeley 21:07
Okay, so you're kind of a good box. Is that the right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So clearly, everything you've said about your career, from when you stop being a team player in rugby was to be an in between a liaison? Yes, you know, relationship, person relationship. Huge. And you are perceiving your role here at Oracle Data Cloud? Primarily, it appears as someone who facilitates relationships, yeah. facilitator Absolutely. How big a marketing team you're interfacing with? How many people could be loving at work to you? Yeah, so talk to you,
Tara DeZaoDezao 21:44
we have about 30. Okay, um, but what ends up happening is our go to market teams work with our brand marketing team, to identify the highest priority needs from a marketing standpoint. And so then they put in requests, but we're looking at hundreds of requests, coming through from copywriting, to video production to digital advertising, blog posts, and the needs come from everywhere. And the needs are very diverse. And you have account
Robert Berkeley 22:17
And you have account you have account managers facing them, or do you have project managers? Or what how does one really
Tara DeZaoDezao 22:21
Really the brand marketers that interface directly with our go to market folks. So, you know, we sort of separate things by ecosystem, we have some people that are working on, you know, content for publishers, or some people are working on content for brands, or maybe we have people who are working on content for walled gardens. So you have subject matter experts that need to activate, you must have campaigns that require a bunch of these a team of people. Absolutely. So you don't put a producer in front of that you
Robert Berkeley 22:52
So you don't put a producer in front of that you will build a team tactically based on the need of that. Yeah.
Tara DeZaoDezao 22:55
Yeah. So we we actually put our we have creative project managers that do do that. Okay. And then we actually put our marketing, our brand marketers in the role of managing their campaigns put brand, we put the brand marketers in the roles of managing their campaigns. Okay. It helps because they get so involved in the brief. And they have a stake in getting the brief, right, yeah, and really having to stay on a timeline. And so we do have that project manager that they partner with, to make sure that you know, everything gets through the system and whatnot. But they really are the ones that have the stake in whether or not this interesting
Robert Berkeley 23:35
Interesting idea and quite radical, Yeah. I have to say, I know I've spoken to a few other people, and that it's not that they don't believe in account management, but they don't have account management. Yeah. Yeah, this is a great example of that.
Tara DeZaoDezao 23:46
And we all collaborated to create this process. So it wasn't just me designing a process and saying, Hey, this is what we're going to do. It was me getting with brand marketing demand Gen events, sitting down and saying, how does the campaign process have to work from start to finish? And we built this out, it took us six months, we work together. Sometimes it was hard. Most of the time. It was great. And we got through what a great experience that Yeah, do you have SLAS? We do have SLAS as a matter of fact, we're getting to the point now we're about to publish them externally, which is scary.
Robert Berkeley 24:22
That's one thing to have SLS that you keep to yourself and not tell anyone about it's quite another thing to share. Well, that's fascinating insight into the agency at Oracle Data Cloud. Now, if people want to get hold of you directly, what's the best way to do that? So you can go to our website, which is www.oracledata.comwww dot oracle Data Cloud comm that's to see the product.
Tara DeZaoDezao 24:42
Yes. And if you want to get in touch with me, my email address is Tara T a r a . dezao.Ta ra. dot desierto d e z a o ZA o@oracle.com. Okay,
Robert Berkeley 24:53
Okay, and you're on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn, social media user. I love Instagram. I like this. pictures of my cat kid and my dog. Tara, thanks so much for joining us on the Inside Jobsinside jobs podcast. Really appreciate your time and thanks for hosting me here in London. Thanks Robert. It's awesome. Tthanks to Tara de Zaeo for taking part in Inside Jobsinside jobs but also Emily Ffoster of IHAF have and my producer Prateek Srivastava are making all these things happen. Also the Express KCS crew for handling the podcast editing the website at insidejobsinsight jobs podcast.org and also dealing with that crackly mind. Iif you do enjoy this podcast and I'm assuming you do if you're still listening then do please do yourself and me a favour and recommend us to a friend. Or if you get the chance just take a second to post a comment and review to iTunes. It really helps other people discover this fount of information about in house agencies. Also, you can Don't forget find all the previous episodes that we've recorded listed on Inside Jobsinside jobs podcast.org. And there you can also sign up to our exclusive listeners only email. See you next time.