Criteo Accelerate EMEA in Barcelona. Top row (from left): Manon, Margaret, Charline, Daryna, Elisa. Middle row: Colombe, Camille, Magdalena, Silvia, Doru, Lorena, Antoinette, Gizem, Nienke, Mert, Sonia. Bottom row: Nasko, Amandine, Noémie, Murat, Ibrahim, Maya. Not pictured: Ekaterina, Dina, Ilya, Roberta, Adrianna, Matthieu, Tobias, Michela
In today’s fast-changing world of advertising technology, our clients are looking for support on how to seamlessly integrate Retargeting into their global strategies. Criteo Accelerate teams across the globe were created to help our clients best leverage Criteo’s tools and platforms to get the most out of their campaigns.
Introducing Criteo’s Accelerate EMEA team!
Originally a small team of six, Accelerate EMEA, based in Barcelona with one team member in Moscow, has now grown to a robust twenty-one people in less than a year. Each member helps our clients across Europe maximize their Criteo investment by providing insights, vertical-based recommendations, technical optimizations, and friendly support. Together, they speak over 10 languages (English, French, German, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Turkish, Spanish, Polish, and Russian), and have consumed over 100 tapas on various team outings.
Here, three account strategists share their individual perspectives on their work with Criteo Accelerate EMEA:
Charline Willig
Tell us a little about your background.
I was born and in Alsace, France within a Franco-Italian family. This might be where my love for discovering new cultures and need to travel came from, as my region is right in the middle of Europe, sharing borders with Germany and Switzerland. Thanks to my studies and the unconditional support of my family, I managed to live several years abroad before obtaining my Master’s degree in Intercultural Management of International. My first steps into the digital world happened in Dublin, Ireland when I joined Microsoft to become their new Associate Search Account Manager for their Bing Ads branch. It was a first and revealing experience into the Tech Industry; where innovation, openness and fast-forward thinking is really at core. It’s been two years now that I joined Criteo Barcelona as an Account Strategist for the Accelerate France team.
How does Criteo build a strong culture?
The culture at Criteo is very strong. Since the first day you join you can feel it: everyone is really open and willing to help. You work alongside great minds and can take part into different projects bringing together several departments of the company, such as Sales, Analytics or Creative Services. There is always something you can do, aside your core job. For example, you can join the Criteo Cares Champions squad and take part into great initiatives and internal projects related to diversity & inclusion or environmental issues. If you’re more of a lone wolf, then there are tons of options and trainings available to achieve your personal development.
What would you like our clients to keep in mind about Accelerate and you?
What I would like my clients to know is that their fights are also mines. I am a fixer and client satisfaction is essential to me. This is why I really enjoy developing strong relationship with them and finding the best strategies to help them growth their business thanks to Criteo.
What challenges does Accelerate face now?
I would say the main challenge for our team is to constantly remain innovative and to adapt very quickly to changes. Keep being curious. This is essential: we must be experts in the digital world in order to best support and advise our customers. Indeed, we are fortunate to deal with a fairly large client portfolio, all verticals combined and counting with all typology of clients (from SMB to bigger brands). In addition, it is a double challenge since a market team consists of several AS and CERs. It is therefore necessary to be able to coordinate altogether and define well priorities and actions to be taken. It is a real work of leadership, unity, organization and execution. A kind of beautiful frenzied dance!
What are differences amongst clients in different locations?
Since we are an international and multicultural team, it is very interesting to compare our working methods and market trends according to the market for which we work. For example, a solution that will work very well for France might have no impact at all for another market facing the same issue. Another example could be that a new Criteo product is not yet available for an emerging market. Thus, it is very important for all of us to share our experiences, our successes and our failures as a great learning experience, where we can find new “Best practices” or alternative that could potentially suit everyone’s need. The beauty behind all of this is that we continue to discover new trends, traditions and specificities linked to each market!
Silvia Belardinelli
Tell us a little about yourself.
I was born and raised in Ancona, a small Italian town on the Adriatic coast. Since I was a teenager I have always been curious about new cultures, new landscapes, and different ways of living. So I travelled a lot during the university to find my own way. I have never been scared about learning from mistakes and so, after graduating from university, got my Master’s Degree in InternationaI Economics and Business in collaboration with the Ohio University.
How did you start your career?
My interest in the digital and tech industry started immediately after university, so I focused my career on advertising technology. I changed several jobs before finding my way, but all of them had something in common: I had to find new opportunities to help the company grow. It could be investigating a new marketing for business development, finding new clients, or setting up different marketing strategies.
I discovered my passion for the digital marketing while at a conference in Italy. I was impressed to see the entire “world” behind a normal online sponsored message. So after working as Facebook Marketing Expert for more than a year, I decided it was time for a new challenge. Is there anything better than working on an international team of a fast-growing company with smart and stimulating people? I didn’t think so, so I joined Criteo as an Account Strategist (AS) for the Accelerate team.
What are differences amongst clients in different locations?
The team’s diversity is something I love. It is curious to see the different approach each colleague has with clients: there are some markets which better work with emails, other such as Italy still need a lot of phone support to better understand the differences between Criteo and other technology providers. But there is nothing more stimulating than learning something new every day.
What projects/achievements are you most proud of?
Seeing how fast the Accelerate Team has grown has been awesome. And, thanks to our never-ending collaboration with Criteo’s awesome data analysts, we’re now able to generate and send weekly reports to each client that help them evaluate and improve their campaigns’ performances.
What would you like our clients to keep in mind about you?
My main focus is client satisfaction. I truly enjoy working with clients to help them find the best strategy for their business and really strive to create strong relationships with all my clients. I want to show them that the Accelerate team is real people working really hard to help their businesses grow.
Colombe Huret
Tell us a little about your background.
I was born and raised in France, I moved in 2016 to Spain and I haven’t left since then. I have been living in Valencia, Madrid, Bilbao and now Barcelona. I have four younger brothers so I like lively situations and families and I’m not afraid of defending my opinion if I have to!
I have always been curious about different cultures and developing myself. I like challenges and learning, so after some time working in an emailing company, I joined Criteo in 2018 for a new adventure.
How does Team Accelerate differ from region to region?
I will seem cliché but I have to say it. The Turkish team is very different from the Nordics team in term of noise that they are making in the office ! Other than that trivial remark, even if we are covering all EMEA region we are united and we often see that our clients are facing the same challenges. That is what makes our team strong, we can share ideas that we tested in different markets to replicate in others and keep on improving the service that we are able to provide to our clients.
How does Criteo build a strong culture?
Criteo is nurturing talents and cultural differences between the employees which gives us the opportunity to learn from each other. There are number of trainings available about soft and hard skills. Furthermore as the company is constantly adapting to the market evolutions, there is always something new to learn. It is also very easy to share our knowledge and experience with both internal and external people, internally by giving trainings when we spot a need and externally with our clients directly. Finally helping and supporting each other is a value that is demonstrated every day in our company, not only by managers but also by same level colleagues.
What would you like our clients to keep in mind about Accelerate and you?
The Accelerate team is here to support you to help you get familiarized with the platform to get the most out of it and to help you grow your business. Having the Accelerate team as support team is great because as we are covering all EMEA we can get data from our colleague from other countries very easily and share trends, ideas, improvement. Also as we are a big team, there will always be a specialist of a client’s question to help to find the best answer.
As for myself, I am French as said before, in charge of the Spanish and Portuguese clients. I feel lucky everyday to be able to help them expand.
What challenges does Accelerate face now?
As we are writing this article we are facing the COVID-19 situation. I guess it is not easy for anyone. As a team of more than 25 people, we are all spread apart and we have to maintain the connection. It is much easier to have a connection with that many people when we are all sitting together in the same office. When all of us are at home it is more complicated to keep in touch with each of the team members but we are having regular meetings not only to discuss business situation but also to share about our favourite hobby or favourite Disney character for instance.
