The second in our interview series, we caught up with Jonathan Atter, Senior Account Director – Data & Insights, to talk about everything digital and his role at Battenhall…
Hi Jonny! Tell us about your role at Battenhall and what that encompasses?
My role is a hybrid so it varies, and I can often be out meeting new or existing clients, but mostly I’m found in the office where I spend a lot of my time developing comms strategies. A large part of that also encompasses training the team on all things data, which I love doing and getting them excited about it. A typical day can include reputation management, working with our Design team, proofing team work on audits, contributing to running of the company, checking on social advertising, interviewing clients to find out how their processes are organised, and trying something new to keep myself on my toes.
How did you get into the digital arena and what was the journey to getting to Senior Account Director – Data & Insights at Battenhall?
If we go way back to the early noughties, I guess you could say I got my first taste of my future job when taught myself basic html to add images into a Harry Potter fansite post – there was no easy add image button in those days! I’ve always been inquisitive about how to do digital things, and when I graduated in geography at the height of the recession I was lucky to find a work placement with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust helping with marketing and populating their new website. That was only 3 – 4 months long so I was always on the lookout for a full time job, and as the world had it, I got to know someone on Dailybooth who worked at Edelman New York, so I kept an eye on the London office. Then one day I saw a tweet advertising for an intern to work in the digital department. I gave them a ring, and went to interview on the Wednesday, they said yes on the Friday, and could I start on the Monday! I jumped at the chance, and scrambled from Worcestershire to London sleeping on my friend’s lounge floor for 2 weeks till I found a room to rent.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always been one to try things for myself and at that time I used my YouTube channel to share my artwork and I’d managed to use it for exposure attracting about 3 million organic views and selling work around the world from it. That definitely helped me get the internship and from there, I worked my way up at such an exciting time as social media was brand new back then. After 3 /12 years I decided to change things up, and found Battenhall on YouTube when I was doing VEDA (Vlog every day in April). I got the job as Account Manager at the young agency and it’s one of the best moves I did for my career. There I’ve continued to try new things before solidifying my love for data & insights and helping create the hybrid role I’m in now.
“I predict Messenger Marketing will continue to grow as people want easy to find information tailored to their interests”
You recently spoke at Social Media Week London, about your predictions for trends in digital for 2019 – can you give us a summary of that?
Yes, there is so much data available now, we need to find ways to bring it all together that bit better and that’s starting to happen. We predict that we’ll see more and more companies using multiple data sources together to inform business planning as a whole, rather than just one area. Those data sources will include social media but also other sources such as customer data and with predictive analytics and machine learning we’ll be able to use the data much more effectively to create communications strategies.
I know Battenhall prioritise innovation and agency development and this is something that we mirror here at Crowd. What do you think about the traditional agency model and how this needs to adapt in such a fast-paced world given the speed of progress today?
The comms world moves so fast we have to be flexible and that is easier to say than done for many companies. A new social media feature can launch one morning, and a client will expect us to know how to use it straight away. An agency has to be nimble, have time to innovate, educate itself, and most importantly be open to collaboration within itself. One in five hours at Battenhall is spent on experimenting and innovation and we all learn from each other and share our knowledge. We do this because it is the best way to keep our skills at the bleeding edge, so that we can stay a step ahead of the curve and pass the knowledge we build up on to our clients.
What are your predictions for Messenger Marketing and utilisation of chat bots?
I predict Messenger Marketing will continue to grow as people want easy to find information tailored to their interests. Chat bots will become more integrated and intelligent and will be able to seamlessly complete a task for you in in the place where you are, even if you’re on a company’s Instagram and you’re asking it about an issue you have with an order on their website. They’ll be able to give the information you shared to the right person without you having to repeat it all. They won’t replace humans but will help us to get to one quicker, or get us the info we need that bit speedier.
Finally, which channels are your preferred hang-outs personally and do these match your preferences for business too?
Every day you’ll find me on Instagram the most, followed by YouTube and then WhatsApp. Instagram certainly matches what many clients need, YouTube can be a trickier one to get right as it really relies on the “You” and not all brands can put a face to a company on a regular basis, but there are some great examples out there which do it so well. Lastly, Whatsapp can certainly be a big winner internally or externally for businesses getting your message directly to who you want to reach.
Thanks to Jonathan for his time!
We hope that you found the chat interesting, and if you’d like to chat with us feel free to get in touch