ESSAYS
SARAH WARMAN, SENIOR MARKETING PROJECTS MANAGER AT BREWDOG
What does your role as Senior Marketing Projects Manager involve? SARAH WARMAN: At the moment I’m getting stuck into some exciting projects that we’re working on for 2015. We’ve got an awesome little group of designers and content managers making up the core of our marketing team. It’s a very fun and inspiring bunch to work with.
What qualities—personal, professional, technical or creative—does a role like this require? SW: Militant organisational skills, unfl appability, an eye for detail, and the balls to go hard or go home. At a brand like BrewDog, you can’t sit back and watch a billboard campaign do the work for you. You have to be totally on top of current trends in social media, as well as in the UK beer scene. You also have to surround yourself with people who challenge you. You need to learn how to be highly engaged
with your audience. The BrewDog brand is built on passion, openness and community. We brew the beer we want to drink, so we need to show people why that’s a good thing. This can come across as stuck up if interpreted incorrectly, so our message and tone of voice is critical. The best way for us to communicate our ideas is to involve our community in everything we do.
What’s likely to be the most signifi cant challenge facing BrewDog over the next 12 months? SW: We’ve been growing rapidly over the past eight years, so we’ve learned to adapt quickly; we’re exceptionally agile. However, our international expansion makes that a tougher task as we’re dealing with time zones and language barriers. Ensuring we have the best people to convey
our message is super-important. Luckily, we’ve got a mega switched-on team that work internationally. Adding to that and ensuring cohesion across communications becomes more and more important as we grow.
Where do you fi nd inspiration or insight in the fi eld of digital media/marketing? Are there any writers, speakers or thinkers you particularly admire? SW: When I started at BrewDog, James Watt (Co-founder) told me to read Simon Sinek’s Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action. So I did, and it was like someone had shown me the light. It was a massive eye opener; something totally clicked for me, as though everything I’d learned up until then made sense. It became infi nitely easier to formulate effective creative ideas. Personally, I love
At a brand like BrewDog, you can’t sit back and watch a billboard campaign do the work for you
everything that Victoria Coren-Mitchell writes. Although not directly linked to marketing, I relate to the way she thinks and her outlook on life.
What was your fi rst job in the marketing industry and how have things changed since then? SW: My fi rst job was in PR and marketing for fashion events, working as a three-way partner for the business. As it was a small business, I got very hands-on with a lot of different jobs. I now work across PR, social media, events, project management, copywriting,
some design direction, and line manage a team of two to three people. I struggled with making mistakes at the start.
I once made a major boo-boo when contacting potential sponsors; in the process of copying and pasting emails, I accidentally named a competitor to a sponsor. I lost sleep over it and cried—I was mortifi ed! I think it’s good to have that much attachment to your work, but I
39 issue 24 may 2015
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