James Koefoed is the Digital Strategy Leader at one of the public broadcasters in Australia, SBS. Since he started the role 18 months ago, he has only been to the SBS office five times. The remainder of the time has led his team of 5 members from his home office. His role is split between performance marketing and optimising the marketing budget and thought leadership and innovation for the SBS digital strategy.
More broadly, James has been a career marketeer and conversion rate optimiser. He has worked at Fuji Xerox, in agencies, Disney and the Australian public broadcaster, ABC.
He has worked as a marketing lead, sales, producer and freelancer.
The rise of digital marketing as a driving force has been significant during his career, but the overarching fundamental of marketing remains the same.
The underlying passion for James has been delivering results. He loves coming up with business cases and scenarios and measuring the results.
SBS has one of the best cultures in Australia. It’s the best culture that James has worked in. The charter at SBS is based on Diversity, Inclusion and Equity. The charter forms the impetus for the culture. SBS is one of the few services in Australia that provides a broad range of services for the migrant and Indigenous communities in Australia. Jame’s boss is on the multicultural committee. Diversity and Inclusion are about caring about people and their well being.
The most significant change for leaders has been working and collaborating with the whole person and just the employee.
The second aspect of Jame’s leadership is the rapidly changing technology around digital marketing. Intimate knowledge is required for marketers.
Advice for young professionals starts with making sure you have a passion for marketing. Don’t worry about titles or compensation. Challenge yourself on why you want to go down the marketing career path. If you are sure, go in and test through an experience. University degrees in marketing have little correlation with the actual marketing roles available.