• Can you tell us about your career?

I was part of the 2015-2016 class of the Media & Digital Chair and graduated from ESSEC in 2017. I then joined the management consultancy Sia Partners in 2017, where I worked for 4 years. I was part of the Marketing, Sales and Customer Experience BU. During those 4 years, I carried out several assignments with clients in different industries (insurance, energy, hotels, etc.).

• What is your current job? What are your main tasks?

Before joining ESSEC as an AST, I studied cultural project management at university and I've always wanted to return to the cultural or media sector. I jumped at the chance to join Cultur'in The City as Marketing Director in September 2021. Cultur'in The City specialises in the sale of gift packs in the cultural sector (theatres, museums, concerts, etc.), and is also developing new offers. 

• As Marketing Director, my scope mainly covers the following areas: 

• Communication, positioning, branding 

• E-business management (acquisition, SEA, SEO, website animation, customer journey, etc.) and sales development on reseller websites

• Design, development and launch of new products (B2C and B2B) + diversification 

• Customer relations and experience

• Management of certain digital projects

• How did you approach this job coming from a consultancy?

At Sia Partners, in addition to my consultancy work, I've been involved in developing offers on marketing issues for my BU.

I also trained myself independently on several other subjects in my current scope by following online training courses, or by contacting different marketing directors to get their feedback. 

Finally, I think that the company was looking for a fairly versatile marketing manager who could quickly grasp a new context and develop skills in a variety of subjects, which is what my job as a consultant helped to train me for.

• What do you like about your current job?

I'm passionate about the cultural sector and Cultur'In The City's mission really makes sense to me. I particularly enjoy developing products that make people want to go to the theatre, museums or concerts, especially in the context of the recovery of these activities following Covid, where certain habits have changed and new challenges have arisen for these sectors. It's an environment where you need to innovate, and it's important to me that my current job allows me to do that, especially in a structure with a lot of agility. 

Working in a small team, I also like the fact that I have a job where I can see quickly and concretely the impact of what I'm doing, on both short-term and long-term issues. Finally, I really like the variety of subjects in my scope, especially as it includes not only purely marketing and communication aspects, but also the development of products and new offers, diversification (and therefore the issues linked to the company's transformation), and e-business.

• What drew you to the chair and what did you get out of it?

Given my background prior to joining ESSEC, the Media & Digital Chair seemed to me to be a perfect fit. The leisure and culture sectors have always been an important part of my career plan. The Media Chair gave me an approach to these sectors that was different from and complementary to the courses I had taken before, which tended to focus on cultural institutions and public policy.

One of the advantages of the meetings and courses offered by the Chair is the emphasis that is placed on the evolution of several leisure and cultural industries, as well as on the innovations that certain players are putting in place to develop their model. All this is done with a 'decompartmentalised' approach, since we are studying sectors as different as music, audiovisual, video games and cultural institutions, which allows us to contribute to a more global reflection. Meeting people from all these sectors is also a real opportunity.

I also found it very enriching that the Chair brought together students with a wide range of backgrounds, not only in terms of their preferred sectors (you meet people who are passionate about working in film, music, literature, video games, etc.), but also in terms of their skills (marketing, finance, entrepreneurial projects), all of which creates a very rich collective dynamic. 

I also really liked the way in which the research dissertation is approached within the Chair: working on a specific issue with companies, while benefiting from their support, seems to me to be an excellent way of tackling concrete issues and meeting professionals from these sectors. In my case, I wrote my dissertation with TF1 and then decided to do a work placement there. 

Finally, the Chair's trip to Silicon Valley was of course an extraordinary experience.

• What's your best memory of the Chair?

I'm thinking specifically of this trip to the United States. Having the opportunity to go to California and meet players like Netflix, Paramount, Samsung and Criteo is an extraordinary opportunity. And, of course, the trip also helps to strengthen the bonds within the class!

• What advice would you give to students in the Chair or those interested?

The main advice I would give them would be to be curious. Often, when you join the Chair, you have a project in mind, a sector that makes you dream, and that's a good thing. But you also have to take advantage of this opportunity to join a gateway to a huge number of sectors linked to entertainment, culture and the media, and there are points in common and interesting things to learn in each of them. 

What's more, I'd advise them to be curious about the encounters they can make thanks to the Chair: other students, professors and professionals... In short, to make the most of this environment.