Sydney, October 5th, 2021

Jaywing is an agency based in Sydney, Australia that “help clients establish concrete foundations in a world of shifting sand”.

It’s a team that prioritizes balance so it works deeply powered by data and maintaining a fully integrated team. They have many offices, including Sheffield, Newbury, Leeds & Sydney. The agency deploys its creative capabilities across several disciplines.

Working in Sydney’s office, Ben Farrar is Jaywing’s Head of Paid Search. In an interview with TIA, Farrar highlighted the main things keypoints to stay ahead in today’s world of perpetual change and innovation. 

He also went through the most crucial skills any paid media technologist should process, among other topics.

To kick things off, what do you love the most about your country?

So, I’m actually from the UK – I moved to Australia 4 years ago. I think like lots of Brits, I came for the weather. What I didn’t expect was how beautiful this country is. It is built for outdoor activity – public BBQs were a nice surprise! Sydney is a great place to live, it’s the perfect mix of hard-working professionals, and beautiful scenery.

Tell us about your personal journey. How did you find yourself being Jaywing’s Head of Paid Media?

I think I’ve been very lucky in my career so far. For many people wanting to work in digital marketing, the hardest part is getting your foot in the door. I was fortunate enough to be taken on as a graduate at an agency in Leeds, UK called Zeal. Here I learned the foundations of performance marketing under the management and mentorship of Dan Lawrence. I quickly moved from graduate, the executive, to manager and finally head of department, working closely with the CEO Jane Rutter. This was over the span of around 3 years.

Around the 2.5yr mark, I got an interesting (and now I know life changing) message on LinkedIn, asking if I’d ever considered moving to Australia to take up a role in a large independent agency called APD. The role was a step down from my current role, but I knew this was a big opportunity. I told the recruiter to give me a year to organize myself and I would take them up on it. 6 months later I said I was ready, and soon enough I’d packed up my life and was on my way to Australia.
My time at APD (now GrowthOps) was my opportunity to learn the industry in another country, to make contacts, and to work out how I wanted to continue my career.

I soon found myself in more of an account management position, as a client advisor, my key client being Lendlease. I love working with clients. Once you know your craft well enough, to be able to translate the sometimes technical and jargon-y world of digital into language they will understand is critical. I strive for that moment when your client understands what you’re trying to convey, you can see it in their eyes.

After a few years with GrowthOps I was approached about a role working at Media Lab as the Search Director. Media Lab (was) built to look after a single client, Westpac. The role was new and was created to align a team of 9 search professionals. This was the largest team I had managed and was a huge opportunity for learning. I loved this role, it was the perfect mix of perfecting my search craft through a team and explaining paid search to huge teams at Westpac at all levels of seniority.

Unfortunately, Media Lab lost a pitch to maintain the business, and I quickly found myself absorbed into Wavemaker, again as Search Director. I think it was this unplanned move which resulted in this role not really gelling with me. Not long after starting, I found my current role at Jaywing as Paid Media Team Lead, and soon after, Head of Paid Media. Anddd breathe.

Could you describe the agency in a few words?

Amazingly talented, hardworking, close knit, fun people.

Smart team drives agency growth. What efforts are key for companies to thrive in a world of perpetual change and transformation?

I have worked in a mix of different type of agencies. Independent, groups, small and large. The most important way to stay ahead of this crazily steep curve is through flexibility, openness, and testing. I think we can all agree that change is accelerating, what worked even a year ago may not work today (especially with things like Covid changing the world). I remember when I started in the industry back at Zeal that I was given a book; ‘The fundamentals of PPC’, I’d love to see what’s in there now – imagine, a book about how to run paid search, it’d be out of date in 6 months.

Teams need to be able to adapt and learn. If you are not consistently testing new things, then you’ll always fall behind. All you need is the willingness to take risks, the ability to take clients on that journey, and a rigorous testing process.

Please name some steps that you have put in place over the years to encourage innovation at the workplace.

Yet to be fully launched is the ‘Search Top Tip Exchange’ – this will be a session where everyone shares their top tip in working more efficiently. We all have them!

Working alongside the SEO team, we ran the first SEO & PPC quarterly debate, where we shared common statements about how organic and paid search should (or should not) work in conjunction. Everyone contributed their point of view and we had great actions off the back about how we could work with our clients better. Was a lot of fun.

The ‘Search Wall’, where we would print and stick interesting things we have found, group arguments on best practices backed by data, and just random ads we would find we thought were just awful.

In your opinion, what’s the most important factor that leads companies to create successful digital campaigns?

For me its knowledge from both sides. The team executing the work needs to understand the product or service they are advertising at a minimum, but the truly successful campaigns happen when the team understands the business. It is easy for digital marketers to get lost in the reeds of performance metrics; CPC, CTR, CPA. What matters to the business is far more real, what value are we driving, how are we communicating with potential customers and offering a good service? Similarly, our clients need to understand the basics of how a channel works. This is not to say they need to know how to implement, but foundationally what is the channel doing? I always explain Search for example as a conversation with potential customers; someone searching for a keyword in reality is someone with an intent to find something. If our clients understand this, they are able to contribute to our ad copy, for example, drawing on their real-life experience dealing with customers with similar requests. This is how you get success out of digital campaigns, knowledge brings it to life.

Of all the recent projects your agency has produced, which one are you most proud of in terms of media strategy?

This one has to go to the work Marie-Serre, and team, did for one of our larger financial clients on YouTube. I’m sure many people reading this will agree Google can sometimes be…generous with promised on what a platform can do. A carefully constructed and planned YouTube campaign utilising True-View for Action drove INSANE results. We obviously can’t go into it too much details, but combining Google’s technology, with smart strategic placements and rich creative was a recipe we saw results matching our SEM metrics in terms of CPA. This was a good example too of a client who came along on the journey. Amazing work, amazing results.

When looking at the technological landscape today, what makes you think “wow”?

Big data – data lakes, ingesting a plethora of data, connecting pipes for reporting, for automation. We all know data is the key to success, but how do we work with walled gardens like we see with Facebook VS Google VS Apple. The work people can do to connect the dots is nothing short of magic.

Do you use external tools to analyse data or do you have one of your own at the company? Is it different among clients?

Yes, this differs across clients. One of Jaywing’s assets is our data tool called Almanac. Built in house, this allows us to combine data from all corners of the ecosystem, including offline, to gain a clear view of customer behavior – its pretty neat.
A tool we use across some of our search clients is Adthena, which I’ve always loved using to gain valuable insights into the wider search ecosystem.

What metrics do you track on a daily basis and how do you evaluate results?

The team will ensure we’re pacing correctly, there are no strange fluctuations in CTR, or cost, and performance metrics to ensure we’re gearing our client dollars as effectively as possible. In the world of automation, we rely more and more on bid strategies to do a lot of the lever pulling for us. As we should – as skilled and experienced that we are, there is no substitute for powerful automation working off of mind blowing volumes of data we will never match. Our time is spent on insight, strategy and forward-thinking.

Is it possible to think outside of the box when you need to rely on thick data?

Can’t say I’ve heard the phrase thick data haha. Data provides you the science, it’s the reality of the situation. Thinking outside the box influences the data, so absolutely.

Can you outline three of the most crucial skills any paid media technologist should possess?

1) Willingness to learn – all levels, never stop learning. The moment you stop you will be left behind.

2) Ability to communicate – you can’t ignore the trend towards automation. Pulling levers to run campaigns will become less and less important, partnering with your clients and taking them on the journey is the future value.

3) Passion. The hardest thing to quantify. To me, this means given the opportunity you can talk about a given subject endlessly. Passion means you want to learn more, explore all opportunities, keep up to date with industry news, look at case studies; this is what is needed in this fast-paced industry.

What advice would you give to a new non-profit startup that is looking to build a smart digital strategy?

Understand your end-user fully first; where do they spend their time online? What are they looking for? How can your startup help these people? Do your research on channels, but remember every industry and business is different. Make sure your data is connected properly and learn from your own data.

What do you think is currently the biggest issue facing the digital and tech industry in Australia?

Talent. The borders to Australia have been closed since March 2020, with many skilled migrants having no route to PR, and therefore forced to leave the country in huge numbers. According to an inquiry into Australia’s Skilled Migrant Program, 77,000 skilled workers are set to leave in 2021/2022 – our industry is heavily impacted by this.
Closely followed by Google’s Monopoly, but I will not go into this here!

In this industry or in life, have you had any particularly influential mentors?

Everyone I’ve worked with has taught me something, to name a few: Daniel Lawrence and Jane Rutter at Zeal taught me the foundations of everything I know in digital – I owe a lot to them both. Chris Sinclair at GrowthOps taught me client relationships and strategy. Mark Lawson and Nicholas Chin taught me enterprise level client management and process. I’ve had many, many drinking mentors, too many to list.

Can you name a fun-fact people would be surprised to learn about you?

I have an identical twin, also in marketing, back in the UK.

Thanks Ben!

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