Dr. Andrea Rubik has successfully led marketing and strategy initiatives for companies and products from various industries throughout her career in advertising, marketing, and tech. She is a marketing leader with expertise in building brands and products and working at the intersection of marketing, strategy, and business development. Andrea’s unique approach combines change management and data-driven growth principles to craft marketing and communication initiatives. She was recognized as an outstanding independent marketing consultant and was honored with the Women in Marketing Global Award. Presently, she works at yeekatee – on a mission to change the future of investing. As the President of Women in Digital Switzerland, she is dedicated to fostering diversity and excellence in the digital economy.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with Digital First Magazine, Dr. Rubik shared her professional trajectory, the mission and vision of Resyfy, insights on the impact of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on marketing today, future plans, pearls of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Dr. Rubik, could you please tell us a little bit about yourself? What inspired you to pursue a career in marketing?
Over the past two decades, my professional journey has been a dynamic fusion of advertising, marketing, and strategy, driven by my belief that marketing is an innovation-driving engine. What truly inspired me to pursue a career in marketing was the opportunity to shape and steer the narratives of international brands, working at the exciting crossroads of marketing, product, and business development. Besides, my approach to marketing is somewhat unique, blending change management with data-driven growth principles. Working with diverse industries, including consumer, telecom, healthcare, finance, and advertising agencies, gave me great experiences and achievements.
With a strong academic foundation in Marketing, Organizational Management, and Business Economics, I’ve always been committed to a research-driven, data-centric approach in my decision-making that is now essential for growth and product marketing. Currently, I work with SaaS and technology companies, focusing on growth and product marketing, leveraging brand development, digital marketing, demand generation, customer acquisition, and monetization. That is why I am grateful that my work and endeavours to make a positive impact in marketing have been recognized and rewarded with the Women in Marketing Global Award.
What is your favorite part about working as a Marketing Principal at yeekatee AG?
At yeekatee, I lead marketing and growth endeavors in the FinTech startup – where we are on a mission to change the future of investing. I am taking part in building a new solution at the intersection of personal wealth management and financial well-being.
Investing is an important financial strategy that can help individuals grow their wealth over time. With the right tool, as yeekatee, wealth management and investing can provide financial security and enable individuals to achieve their financial goals. yeekatee was built to provide you with an all-in-one solution for tracking your wealth at all times.
Since I joined yeekatee, I believe more than ever that technology plays a critical role in addressing our financial well-being and social challenges. Therefore, I’m focused on innovating and reshaping opportunities for people not just to help grow their wealth over time but also to ensure better lives.
What is the mission and vision of Resyfy? What problem are you solving?
Through my Ph.D. research, I started to think a lot about changes in our working lives and the longevity of our careers. My doctoral dissertation on change management and innovation brought me clarity for solving the problem of change and multistage life. This research enriched my knowledge of multistage life and led me to my project of building products for the future of working life: Resyfy, careerOS.
The future of work is about longevity, changes, and uncertainty. Therefore, I believe in non-linear careers and multistage life. For the future of work, we will need to be people with multiple interests, skills, or even jobs. Hence, crafting a career portfolio and managing your career valuables is essential for long-term employability and career growth. Resyfy is your AI-powered career operating system, which will help you build your career portfolio and manage life changes. Remember, your career is a journey; with a strategic approach, you can navigate it confidently and successfully.
Managing your career portfolio can be exhilarating and overwhelming in today’s dynamic job market. The abundance of opportunities and industries can make choosing the right path challenging. However, taking a strategic approach to your career is crucial, ensuring that you remain employable and continually add to your career valuables. Your career is a marathon, not a sprint; a well-thought-out strategy can be your secret weapon for success.
What do you believe are the top three marketing challenges in the post COVID-19 era?
In today’s world, marketing stands at the forefront of the growth agenda for the entire company. Marketers balance art and science, leveraging technology and creativity to apply advanced analytics and product marketing. Data is our fuel, but storytelling remains our craft, driving genuine human connections and communicating the solution to the customer’s problem. We straddle the line between brand and performance marketing, mindful of our bias toward quantifiable metrics. Marketing today highlights the confluence of strategies, operations, and technologies required to drive growth.
Today, the concept of marketing is less specific and more distributed than in the past. From the organization’s perspective, everything is marketing, and everybody in a company is a marketer. A business strategy has to converge with the marketing strategy and permeate everything from the business model and go-to-market strategy to brand positioning and consumer engagement.
Challenge #1: “Your brand stands behind great products.” Marketing today: Your brand stands behind great values.
Challenge #2: “You are competing with your competitors”. Marketing today: You are competing with your customer’s last best experience.
Challenge #3: “Customers must sit at the heart of your marketing strategy.” Marketing today: Customers must sit at the heart of your customer journey.
Marketing today highlights the confluence of strategies, operations, and technologies required to drive growth. Hence, one unwavering principle remains: prioritizing the customer’s perspective, now and always.
Could you please throw some light on the impact of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on marketing today?
The impact of AI on marketing is expanding beyond text and image generation, with Video AI and Music Generative AI emerging as the next frontier. This technology opens up innovative possibilities for creating unique audio experiences that captivate audiences, providing marketers with new tools to engage and differentiate their brands in the evolving marketing landscape. In the coming years, we can anticipate AI-driven short videos generated on demand from prompts, marking a shift that will demand advanced AI principles and significant computational power, offering marketers new avenues for creative and engaging content creation.
Also, I would like to mention the need for serverless AI. Serverless AI provides a streamlined and abstract approach to development, reducing the time and resources required for infrastructure management across various application components. It enables efficient burst computation and scaling for AI tasks, allowing for selecting preferred frameworks, model fine-tuning, and inference without concerns about underlying infrastructure, making it an attractive option for organizations seeking simplified development processes.
Are you currently satisfied with the status quo regarding women in tech? What specific changes do you think are needed to change the status quo?
Although some progress has been made, there’s still a lot of work to be done to improve diversity in the tech industry and in tech-based roles and professions in other industries. Diversity in the tech industry is crucial for companies to maintain relevance with their customers and remain competitive in the talent market. An inclusive work environment offers opportunities for growth and achievements in a broader range of work.
A diverse workforce can be the key to unlocking a company’s ability to better understand their customers. Consumers today have higher expectations of products and services that meet their specific and diverse needs and preferences. At the same time, employees have higher expectations for workplaces that are inclusive of their needs and value the diverse perspectives, skills, and experiences they bring to the table.
When businesses consist of people from the same backgrounds, they often leave diverse ideas and perspectives behind. Having a more diverse workforce means diverse opinions, backgrounds, and perspectives. With a team of diverse employees, you will have access to more creativity and a broader skill sets. Moreover, more diverse ideas for solving business problems will help your company grow.
In your opinion, what makes for a good customer experience? What advice would you give brands to improve/maximize their CX offerings?
Customers’ expectations continue to evolve, requiring businesses to redefine their values when it comes to customer experiences in both B2C and B2B contexts. Modern consumers anticipate seamless, proactive, pertinent, and interconnected interactions. Their primary concern is obtaining what they desire precisely when they desire it, without any hindrance.
Organizations must integrate data and technology into their core operations to meet these evolving demands, often involving machine learning and artificial intelligence. The rationale behind this is clear: data empowers the creation of more tailored experiences within the four Cs framework: content, commerce, community, and convenience.
Traditionally, businesses have employed generic approaches across these dimensions, but leveraging data and intelligence becomes essential as personalization gains prominence. This shift allows companies to enhance decision-making and establish more meaningful connections with their customers, fostering brand loyalty and satisfaction.
What are your predictions for the MarTech space in 2024?
In 2024, marketers have a big challenge: they need to cut through the noise of countless messages and give each customer personalized content in real time, exactly when they’re interacting with a brand. The key to getting and keeping people’s attention is all about being relevant. It means making sure the right message goes to the right place at the right time, so it adds to the customer’s experience instead of bothering them. Here are marketing predictions for 2024.
- AI and machine learning will continue to be pivotal for marketers and consumers. Marketers will rely heavily on AI algorithms to meticulously analyze customer data, enabling them to deliver highly personalized, real-time content.
- The dominance of video content will persist, reshaping marketing strategies. Short-form video, live streaming, and interactive video formats will be key to engaging audiences effectively.
- Automation tools and AI will revolutionize content creation and distribution. Investing in content automation platforms will be essential for maintaining consistency and efficiency, making it a must for marketers and one of our top marketing trends.
- Marketers will have more advanced data analytics than ever to derive actionable insights. The emergence of Generative AI will also facilitate chat-based insight discovery, reducing the complexity of data analysis.
- Customer experience will take center stage, with CMOs investing in technologies and strategies to enhance the end-to-end customer journey. The focus must be on technologies and strategies to enhance the customer journey, leading to smoother, more personalized, and satisfying brand interactions.
- Ephemeral content will be a powerful tool for marketers, particularly for time-limited promotions and real-time engagement. Marketers must adapt to this trend to stay relevant and effectively utilize disappearing content for promotional activities.
- Sustainability and social responsibility will continue to be paramount. Aligning with these values isn’t just a choice; it’s a strategic imperative, offering brands a competitive edge.
Which tool in your personal tech stack can you not do without and why?
I love tools, and moreover, I am trying a few new tools each week. Daily, I use dozens of them, and they really help me organize my tasks, be more productive, and collaborate with the teams I work with.
Productivity: Canva– easy to design anything; Wix – for building websites; ChatGPT – AI chatbot; ShareDocView – for leads, analytics, and branding via doc links; Milanote – for organizing creative projects; Benchmark Email – for email marketing; Planable – for social media management; Manychat – for building my own chatbot.
Smartphone Apps: yeekatee – all-in-one wealth tracking solution; Google Keep – for taking notes or shortcuts; Artifact – a personalized news aggregator; Superlist – all my lists in one place; Thoughts – inspiration manager; Buddhify – to turn around my mood.
Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
I see the next five years as an exciting period of growth, leadership, and impact. I’m eager to embrace new challenges, contribute to the industry, and inspire others in their marketing endeavors.
I aspire to take on more significant leadership roles, possibly in executive positions, where I can influence and drive innovative marketing strategies that shape the tech industry’s future. I want to continue pushing boundaries and leading teams to achieve exceptional results.
I’m passionate about mentoring emerging talents in the marketing and tech fields. In the coming years, I see myself playing a more active role in nurturing the next generation of marketers through speaking engagements and educational initiatives.
I plan to make Resyfy available globally and help millions of people manage changes across their careers and lives. I believe in the power of entrepreneurship to drive change and innovation, and I want to continue fostering that spirit.
I’m committed to advancing diversity and inclusion in the digital economy. I see myself intensifying these efforts within and outside the tech industry to create more inclusive workplaces and inspire positive change.
Based on your experience, what advice would you give someone who is starting their journey as a marketing leader?
Today, opportunities and competitive advantage can disappear in a blink, and we must adopt new ways of working on the future-readiness spectrum. Young people are entering the workforce without the skills necessary to succeed: critical thinking, problem-solving, empathy, and collaborative management – not to mention traits like resilience and emotional intelligence.
As a marketing leader, I would advise someone starting their journey to embrace a mindset of continuous innovation and value creation. Challenge your perspectives and explore new possibilities. Focus on adding value to your brand and society, emphasizing a customer-centric approach and prioritizing helping people over just selling products. Never stop re-evaluating and generating fresh ideas, no matter how unconventional they may seem, and celebrate curiosity, empathy, and creativity in your team. Balance planning and coordination, recognizing that adaptability and innovation are key to success in the dynamic marketing industry.
Don’t expect a linear, direct climb if you want a great career. Instead, move between companies and industries and, more importantly – manage change and life stages.
I firmly believe that before we can have healthy organizations with thriving cultures, we need to focus on creating healthy and thriving individuals.