This whole area, the Internet and e-commerce, is mushrooming so fast it's as if someone put some sort of mutant fertiliser on it. Even the departments here are growing so fast it's chaotic at times. But I love the freshness of it all - I like the feeling you have of working in something so new and dynamic.
I work in what is known as "fusion marketing", which means coming up with marketing solutions which fit a range of contexts. A company comes to me with a brand it wants to get out there and I come up with a plan on how to do that, using Yahoo as the medium.
There are a number of ways people can advertise online: banner ads, keyword advertising and targeted advertising. Keyword advertising would be, for example, where someone typed in "flowers" when doing an Internet search, and the Interflora banner advertisement will come up on the screen with the categories found.
Banner ads - the ones that are strips at the top or bottom of your screen - have been around a while (by the standards of this industry) so people want to "go beyond the banner" now. There is an argument that people's eyes glaze over a bit with banner ads because we are so used to seeing them, but there's research which shows they do still work.
New ideas come on-stream all the time. The industry is moving at such a fast rate and people want to be ahead of the game. So going beyond the banner would be something like target advertising, whereby you target, for example, women of a certain age group with a certain interest, working in X industry, living in Y country - people who, you can strongly conclude, may be interested in a particular product. This is permission-based direct marketing - we only email the information to people who have clicked on a box stating they want to receive it. "Spam" is what we call cyber junk mail, but we would only send promotional material to regular users who have given us permission.
The aim with Yahoo is to become the most popular destination with users. A few weeks ago we launched Yahoo Shopping - a service which helps shoppers locate, compare and buy thousands of products. It's going to be a huge traffic driver. It's one of those win win situations - the retailers buy their space from us, customers come on board and generate revenue and Yahoo is the platform. At the moment you can only buy advertising if you have a shop on the site, but that will change.
I get in between 8 and 8.30 a.m. every morning. I check my e-mails and plan my day. I have to spend a certain amount of time looking through various publications and any relevant e-mails for the latest research on this whole area. Nearly every day new products are launched with Yahoo and I've to keep on top of all that.
I spend a lot of the day meeting clients and discussing new ways of doing business. There is a certain amount of reluctance to get involved in what is essentially the unknown to a lot of organisations. But most people see that it is inevitable they will have to embrace e-commerce. It's a big change, and we all find change daunting, but this is the medium set to dominate business so people realise they just have to get their head around it.
I'd deal with online advertising agencies and liaise between the client, an agency (if there was one) and the various departments here. I have to schedule the ads, and check all the creativity is to spec. My job is to liaise with the clients on what they want to do, present them with the options, and bring the decisions to the creative team. Then I have to chase them and be sure they are coming through.
On a good day I'd finish around 7 p.m. I suppose that's the only bad thing, you've never enough time for R&R - but that's life these days!
In conversation with Jackie Bourke
