Nominated by Rami Hmadeh, CEO, Serviceplan Middle East
“Virginia is one of the exemplary new talents we have witnessed growing in our agency. She currently runs the corporate communications and business development function. She organised and ran Serviceplan Group Middle East’s International Roadshow, China Insight, where she had to book and coordinate the content and logistics for our guest speakers from Tencent and Serviceplan China. She has done a great job with building up the overall presence and marketing for Serviceplan in the region across digital, social media, PR, events and sponsorships. At the same time, she has supported the sales process in getting more contacts and leads from the industry. She has constantly shown the right mix of charm, wit and brilliance in her role and has delivered great results throughout.”
Career path
“After completing my degree in marketing from the University of Westminster, London, I had the opportunity to move to UAE and start off as an intern with Serviceplan, the largest independent agency network back home in Germany.”
“What I expected to be a small role soon turned out to be a career-defining prospect as I was pulled into the wider world of understanding clients, their pitch processes, the agency selection criteria and how the agency brand is built, keeping all these things in mind. I was trained and guided by my seniors here to step up to bigger challenges and define my own scope based on market demands.”
“I have, over the last two years, worked with both the business development directors and the corporate communications manager, and developed multiple strategies and initiatives to move our agency’s position in the market forward. We have landed and converted multiple new clients from leads. We have managed industry events like Ah-Pe-Ro and Marketing Society conferences that brought industry leaders together, we have sponsored Dubai Lynx programmes and CMO meet-ups; we have managed the Serviceplan social media and PR accounts, turning out multiple new pieces of thought-leadership and internal campaigns.”
“In the future I would wish to turn our corporate communications into a client-business division and grow more transformative business for Serviceplan.”
Guiding principles
Happiness is the key to doing great work. You have to be really content with what you do. Otherwise, it’s punch-in-punch-out and life will just pass you by. Greatness comes from outdoing yourself – you have to exceed your own expectations and not really care about how satisfied others are with the status quo.
Likeness is what brings us together – everyone you meet is more similar in so many ways than they are different. Advertising, after all is about “getting” people. And then getting them to like you.