Campaign’s Media Faces to Watch 2021 —Nicholas Ashkar, Media Manager, Spark Foundry
Age: 30
Nominated by Abeer Lizzaik, Associate Business Director, Spark Foundry
Nicolas has joined my team at the very beginning of the pandemic and I worked with him throughout 2020 to help shape his new role and onboard him on a challenging business that like any other business was sceptical to survive during COVID. Coming from a hardcore CPG business and mindset, Nicolas has embraced change beautifully and upskilled his digital knowledge to become the go-to on Amazon Advertising solutions for his clients and internally. His hunger to learn and great client servicing skills helped him grow the business 3X more in a tough year like 2020.
Bio
Been with the Groupe for 7 years, totally grateful for all the learnings and exposure that had on different fronts whether from simple media executions to building strategies for different entities. Worked on several entities from FMCG: Mondelez International, Cafe Najjar Automotive: Impex Tech: Samsung Retail: City centre Banks: Bank Audi. throughout the years, we’ve activated several award-wining campaigns with Cote D’or and Trident. The Exposure the Groupe granted me was more than enough to expand my knowledge on each industry and try to apply it across different practices. Moved a year ago to the Dubai office, handling Lenovo and MAF Malls. With Lenovo the achievements keep on coming as the client is eager to expand and hungry to explore new products whereby during Covid, we managed to establish an important partnership with Publicis Commerce, activating Lenovo on Amazon allowing us to use previous knowledge in order to achieve a staggering ROAS. This partnership has strengthened the relationship with the client and established a new form of trust and approach.
Guiding principles
We’re in a constant battle on how we improve ourselves day in day out, with all of the external factors happening, it’s always nice to take some time to pause, assess and reflect on ourselves. With the past 7 years in the media industry, the experience on several fronts had definitely a positive impact on my growth, however at the end, we are human beings, we go through ups and downs in our daily life, whether personal or professional, in the midst of all this we need to always find whatever trigger us from within and channel it towards a specific objective that keeps us motivated. Always remember the people who you are working with (colleagues and clients) are also human, they have different loads that they carry with them, and made them who they are, always remember that as this will set your dynamic approach towards any conversation being handled.
How has Covid changed your job?
2020 was definitely a good year from my perspective regardless of the pandemic taking place, it has been tough to adapt to, however, it has been proved throughout the pandemic people can adapt to anything that comes in our way. Our previous motto in the company was “Embrace Change”, having this embedded in your mindset and applying it day in day out, would change your perspective and act as a stepping stone on how you approach any challenge. Applying this during the pandemic was hard, specifically moving to a new country along with all the factors in place, once the determination is there we are bound to achieve anything we set our eyes upon, we just need to chin up, look ahead and improve.
Side hustle
Stay humble, stay hungry while having a positive mindset, most importantly stay alive exercise (mental and physical).
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