It was such a privilege to not only attend Advertising Week Europe, but to deliver a live interview in front of such an amazing audience of advertising professionals, especially after years of restrictions on in-person events!

AdTonos’ Digital Marketing Manager, Nida El Amraoui, delivered an inspiring interview about what it takes to be an inclusive leader fit for the modern day, and able to respond to the demands of ‘building back better’. Throughout her decade-long career in Digital Marketing and various leadership roles, Nida has advocated for refugees, people with disabilities, women and under-represented ethnic groups and other protected characteristics during her time at ESOL Tutoring Young Refugees, Ottobock, Person Centred Software, and Guider before joining AdTonos.

The session explored how leaders should communicate and motivate others, the difference between leading and managing and what strategies can be adopted to get the best out of everyone in a team, especially remote workers, with colleagues in different time zones, and employees who work more flexibly than the rigid 9-5.

During her interview with Advertising Week’s Global VP of Programming, Michael Gewirtzman, Nida commented that non-intrusive in-game audio ads will continue to explode in growth, that interactive voice will continue to grow. This is where the future of digital advertising lies, and that’s where the technology is currently headed, so it is worthwhile for brands to explore how they could experiment more with these technologies to make their marketing strategies more robust.

“Mistakes companies are making include dictating down how someone will work without considering their circumstances. For example, with parents who need to do the school run, maybe don’t make all their meetings between school run timings – be considerate of people’s circumstances.” –  Nida El Amraoui, Digital Marketing Manager, AdTonos

This is particularly pertinent now, after hundreds of thousands of people have collectively experienced some of the most challenging years they have ever had to face. This impact continues to have on people’s mental and physical health today and should not be ignored.

“Empower people to make decisions and grow” she advised companies. Whereas before, more authoritarian forms of management and ‘being a boss’ was conflated with good leadership, today, good leaders are expected to communicate with authenticity, honesty and clarity. True leaders are respectful of their teams and bring out the best in them, and the way to do that is to be considerate leaders. Old models of management have fallen out of popularity, for a reason, they don’t work. People aren’t willing to be demoralised at work and nor should they be.

Reflecting on her experience as a speaker at Advertising Week Europe 2022, Nida said: 

“It was an excellent experience. The talk had a very good turnout, some great questions were asked and I’m so pleased that AdTonos were invited to the next Advertising Week conference in New York. This will be such an amazing opportunity to grow our brand and build our network in North America.” 

Missed the event? You can watch the interview on demand here.