Our Industry Profile takes a look at some of the professionals working across the advertising, adtech, marketing and media sector in Australia. It aims to shed light on the varying roles and companies across the buzzing industry.
Liam Shaw: co-founder and co-CEO at Wrappr
Time in current role/time at the company:
5 years
How would you describe what the company does?
Wrappr helps brands cut through more effectively with our unique, high-impact, measurable Out-Of-Home format.
What do you do day-to-day?
I stare at a screen, tap on a keyboard and talk to people mostly! My dog thinks I’m very boring between 9 and 5.
Define your job in one word:
Evolving
I got into my industry because:
I love building things and bringing new ideas to life, and it just so happened that one of those ideas was for marketers.
What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role?
“Climbing a mountain in the dark” is the shorthand way my brother Jonte and I think about the challenge of creating Wrappr. Established categories have proven ways that they grow and operate, but when you’re creating a new category with your startup you have to find that way for yourself. So when you start out it’s like you’re trying to navigate your way up a mountain in the dark without a torch. As time goes on, your path forward becomes clearer because your eyes adjust, then clearer still because you find a torch, and after some time the sun rises and you can sprint your way to the top.
What’s the biggest industry-wide challenge you’d like to see tackled?
The time that it takes new media to get onto the plan. We’ve got lots of amazing partners now, but in the early days it was a slog and the time-delay that it takes for new media to build partnerships is to the detriment of great campaign possibilities.
From the agency side, they are incredibly busy and have hundreds of media owners who want their attention so I completely understand why it is the way it is. And then from the client side, there is always a hesitation to be the first person to try new media because the risk seems higher. So I understand why it’s the way it is currently, but if I had to identify an industry issue it would be that one.
Who is/has been a great mentor to you and why?
Konrad Feldman from Quantcast has been a formative mentor for me, and I’m forever grateful that he was open to guiding us as we got Wrappr off the ground.
Words of advice for someone wanting a job like yours?
Iterate and build the idea of what your company does and how it does it before actually building the product. You can quickly figure out whether you’ve got a good idea by having coffee with ten potential customers or industry people and seeing what holes they poke in your idea.
After every conversation you can iterate and then when you have coffee with the next person you’ll be pitching your updated idea. After ten coffees you’re going to have an idea that’s way better than your original one and will have saved yourself years of pain caused by slow feedback cycles. Don’t worry about people ‘stealing’ your idea, share it widely and freely and get as much feedback as possible.
If I wasn't doing this for a living, I'd be:
I’m super motivated by our mission at Wrappr, so it’s likely I’d be doing something similar. But, the high-level answer is that if I wasn’t building Wrappr I’d be working on another idea.
My favourite advert is (and why):
Purely for entertainment value and for their ability to be brought up and laughed about to this day, Carlton Draught’s Big Ad and Telstra’s Great Wall Of China ads are my favourite. You can tell I haven’t watched linear TV in a while!
Music and TV streaming habits. What do you subscribe to?
We’ve got most of them, but I spend most of my streaming time listening to podcasts and audiobooks.
Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?
I grew up on a farm in country NSW and used to play a horse sport called Polocrosse, which is like Polo but without the price tag. For 12 years I rode our horses nearly every day before school so it was a big part of my life, but when I went to uni in ‘the big smoke’ I couldn’t play anymore, and I haven’t played since!
In five years' time I'll be:
Older, wiser and embarrassed about the answers I’ve given to these questions.
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