What is Global Business Marketing (GBM)?

We are the Global Business Marketing team, an integral part of the Global Marketing Solutions organisation which creates business marketing to Facebook’s business audiences such as advertising clients, media and creative agencies, publishers, developers, gamers, and all businesses large and small across the world. We listen to the feedback from our customers, and our brief is to create solutions to help businesses grow their customer base. We do this by using customer insight to design beautiful, meaningful and engaging communications and experiences. We strive to help people get the best of the advertising solutions that Facebook can offer, and help connect people and communities to products and services that they want.

Our mission is succinct and crisp.

We Inspire Business: Drive Growth. Our vision is to ensure that every business on the planet understands the value which the Facebook family of apps and services can bring them.

Consumer marketing sits in another organisation, and we work hard with them and as closely as we can – the tools which a company uses to reach consumers are very powerful – often they use broadcasting vehicles such as TV to connect and land messages – but people are people, consumers own businesses, and co-ordinating these messages is a challenge.

We have central teams that mostly sit in the US – an events production team, an internal creative agency team, a product marketing communications team, and a business education team – all of these functions are global and create services, or content and programs that scale across the world. Then we have regional teams – North America, Latin America, Asia Pac and Europe Middle East and Africa. These are marketing functions that use and take all the great work from the central services and scale them and localise them to use in their own country marketing strategies.

Global Business Marketing Events is the events arm of the Global Business Marketing Group as a whole. I spend my time working to bring our marketing solutions to life to Facebook's business audiences through live events. The team here is based out of the London office in the UK, but we operate on an EMEA wide basis and consequently often travel throughout the whole region (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) to activate and bring our messages to life on the ground. Our team work very closely with local event agencies on the ground to help us produce the events and bring that local flavour and knowledge when required.

There are a number of different event teams within Facebook - some have a focus on consumers, others look at recruiting and the GBM events team focus is on running events for businesses. There are a wide number of different types of Facebook audiences that we try and reach through our events, including advertisers, media and creative agencies, publishers, developers, gamers, and all businesses large and small across the world. For this reason alone, the types of events we run are just as varied. I've worked for Facebook for over 3 years now and in my time here, I've been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to have worked on almost all the different types of events GBM are involved in.

These have included large scale industry events that take place over a couple of days or a whole week in some instances, where we partner with the event organisers and have an exhibition space. These events can range from 2,000 to 20,000 attendees and give us the opportunity to showcase our Facebook products and solutions to a wider variety of business audiences. We are very lucky that we can use our exhibition stands to demonstrate examples of great work using our platforms; and of course we also like to throw in a bit of fun in the form of a cool or inspiring photo opp.

Other events I've worked on have included Facebook led summits or conferences. These are events that we put on ourselves and can sometimes take place in our offices or at external venues. These tend to be on a smaller scale than the industry events mentioned above, with audiences ranging from 100-600 people at each. These events can focus on the full Facebook family and all of our offerings, or are sometimes focused on one particular product or marketing solution.

We also work closely with the vertical marketing team and sometimes run much smaller and dedicated events focusing on one particular audience - financial services, gaming, automotive etc - these events can be really fun as they allow you to dig deep into the audience and tailor the look and feel of the event to fit. For a recent gaming event I managed for example, the whole theme centred around the film 'Bladerunner' and allowed me to go really far into the cyber punk, dystopian future concept which was super fun!

We also run events for key moments in market or key moments globally - so for example, along with the larger marketing campaign focusing on the World Cup or Christmas, we would work with the teams to bring the campaign to life in the form of a live event. These events usually take place over a half or a full day and tend to be for around 100-200 people.

Other events can be much smaller and focused on bringing a small group of people together in an intimate setting, over a dinner or a roundtable.

I run about 25 large events in the course of a year (and a fair few smaller scale ones too) and I am usually working on at least 5 events at any one time - which can make for a very interesting working week. Here at Facebook, they encourage a very flexible and autonomous way of working so we are all encouraged to manage our own time and I feel trusted to manage my own projects.

Depending on where I am in my individual projects, my working week usually consists of being briefed on new upcoming events, ensuring that everything is on track and up to date on the events I'm already working on and managing an actual event that is taking place that week. It means that each week is busy and different. I absolutely love the varied nature of my job as there's never a chance to get bored and always the opportunity to work on new and exciting projects.

Due to the nature of our role and the region that we work in, there is always a-lot of travel - whether it be for site visits or recces or the actual events themselves. Travel is something that I really love and was one of the main reasons I wanted to work in events in the first place so it's a huge plus for me. I feel very lucky that I am able to get to see the world through my job and bring our amazing brand and mission to clients all over EMEA.

Due to the volume of work and the large amount of travel that goes hand in hand with my job, I find it really important to focus on taking care of myself too. I only come into the office from Mondays to Thursdays and try to work from home as much as I can on Fridays. Facebook place a huge importance on work-life balance and personal development, and part of this offering includes three free yoga classes a week, which I also always attend if I can. I find that a regular yoga practice really helps to set me up for a busy working week. Finally, I try to always spend my weekends seeing family and friends - last weekend, I went camping and it was such a pleasure to be in a peaceful forest after the hustle and bustle of London and the daily commute! I left a day early though as I had tickets to go and see Beyonce with a friend which was an equally excellent way to end the weekend!

Before joining Facebook I worked as an advertising strategist in New York at BBDO on consumer brands such as CVS, Starbucks, DirectTV, Quaker, Tropicana and Barbie. I conducted consumer research, dug for insights, wrote creative briefs, and told the stories of big consumer brands in new and unexpected ways. I loved my job, the skillset it required and while I had considered the possibility of working for a brand as opposed to an agency, I had never thought Facebook as my next step.

At the time, I hadn't seen much advertising by Facebook targeting consumers and while I had seen some of the work targeting advertisers, I never thought I would work on business to business marketing until I had my first conversation with Doug, my manager at Facebook.

It wasn't until I asked questions around the SMB Brand Marketing Manager role that I saw a promising opportunity. Yes, I was a consumer marketer at heart who was used to working on big brands but I quickly realized B2B marketing at Facebook would be different than at other brands.

With small businesses as my focus I could tell their stories in new and unexpected ways. Everyone loves an underdog who succeeds against the odds, a story of hustle and determination, or their local bakery, art studio, or gym. Today, I get to tell the stories of businesses that make-up the character of the communities they are part of and how those stories intersect with Facebook, arguably one of the most relevant brands in my life.

When people think of Facebook they think about sharing with family and friends, they think of the product experience. I get to shine a light on a completely different aspect of our product namely how small businesses now have access to one of the tools my “big” clients at BBDO had and how they are using it to grow their business and strengthen their community.

Today I’m mostly focused on driving attendance to a program we launched this year called Facebook Community Boost – a community event that offers free training to small business owners on how to use our tools to grow their business. We’ll be visiting 30 cities across the US in 2018.

I very quickly got to take ownership over my work, see campaigns through from brief to execution and get to have an impact on my team. During my first nine months at Facebook, I launched a digital campaign for #SheMeansBusiness, Facebook’s initiative to support female entrepreneurs, have expanded the program to include a group on Facebook and have planned for 12 networking events across the US in 2018. I’ve produced attendance driving creative for eight Facebook Community Boost events and I’m in the midst of planning a larger campaign focusing on small businesses.

Successful small businesses build stronger communities. Not only do they add to a city’s unique character and charm but they create an estimated four out of every five new jobs in the US. By connecting them with their customers and helping them reach people they couldn’t reach before, Facebook is helping small businesses grow and compete against the big guys. My team focuses on making sure small businesses have the resources they need to be successful on Facebook.

We are looking for people who are ready to work in a fast paced environment and are comfortable with change. As marketing continues to gain importance at Facebook we want creative people who are willing to push the boundaries, know what makes a compelling story, are not afraid to take initiative and lead the charge.

I believe a key aspect of my professional history is its diverse blend. With an academic background in Business Administration, IT and Marketing, I’ve built a good part of my career within Financial Services companies in technology, digital channels, marketing and communications roles. I’ve invested 18 years in that industry because I truly believe that it is uniquely positioned to improve people’s lives, by helping them to manage their finances wisely, and by supporting them to achieve their goals.

My focus in digital marketing and analytics opened up opportunities in agencies, and later in tech companies, where I could experience a different and valuable view of the trade when applied to other industries. Quite often I saw a connection with my past experience in Financial Services, where the combination of people and technology bring great ideas to life. And I brought that perspective to Facebook.

A Regional Vertical Marketing Lead here represents the intersection of industry knowledge and data-driven marketing expertise, which is reflected in the ability of designing and executing impactful programs that support Facebook’s leadership position among advertisers. We are builders at heart here, and cross-functional teams are open to collaborate and build with you along the way.

Our 10-year roadmap shows our view connected to our mission of giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Which in turn unfolds in many exciting developments ahead for this year and beyond in the Global Business Marketing team.

Still, millions of businesses, big and small, use Facebook’s apps and services (such as Instagram, Messenger and Audience Network) to connect with real people on any device. Within the Financial Services industry and its needs around efficiency, scalability and profitability - and in many other industries out there.

My role as a Vertical Marketing Lead in Latin America is even more exciting when I’m helping internal teams to serve our clients in this context where the way people communicate evolves fast. And at Facebook, we move fast too.

Disciplines in business marketing are known for seasoned marketers. At Facebook, the unique scale and reach of our family of apps and services also mean business opportunities. This is the first time in our history where people and business connect in a personal, meaningful way; and translating this into possibilities as strategic partners to our clients is truly rewarding as a GBM team member – from developing industry-focused narratives to running audience-specific activations.

We look out to the market, and there are many opportunities to help businesses to evolve. As we use to say here: this journey is just 1% finished. And I’m thrilled in being part of it.