Skills

Mara Dettmann Skills

Typing has ruined my handwriting but I’m still willing to help others and (generally) make deadlines.

  • Digital, including social - determining how to best use digital channels to achieve business aims

    Brand - 6Ps, efficiency vs. effectiveness, positioning statements, purpose, etc.

    CX - analyzing a brand’s touchpoints and seeing how they fit together

    Data - turning spreadsheets into compelling stories that make sense

  • Planning (What are are we doing over the next year? How do these plans ladder back up to the bigger business objectives, including financial ones?)

    Looking after team members, including roles and responsibilities, development, and mentorship.

  • MS Office suite (xlsx; pptx; docx) and its Google equivalents

    HTML, Javascript, C++; currently learning Python

    Digital insights tools, including Google Analytics

    Basic Adobe creative suite

  • Short form and long form, digital / social and print; from social posts to articles and awards papers and everything in between.

  • Native: English & German

    Proficient enough: French

    Meh (I can read and vaguely understand when spoken / make myself understood): Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish

Career

  • Title: Digital Content & Strategy Lead

    03/17 to present (former titles: Editor & Strategist)

    I’m responsible for BBH’s Digital Strategy & Content offering – providing the foundations, tools, and means to ensure we deliver outstanding results-driven content.

    This means overseeing social and digital activity for our clients and the BBH brand, from the initial insight to the final case study (and, ideally, award paper).

    My core client is Tesco (where our social and digital work won 2019 and 2020 Marketing Week Masters Awards), but I consult across the agency – recently I’ve delivered projects for Barclays, Netflix, and Wild.

    I’ve delivered projects and consulted across BBH clients past and present, including Brighthouse Financial, Western Union, Google, VW Group, Absolut, Barclays, Heinz, Next, and Virgin Media (and BBH’s own marketing).

    I’m also leading the internal education workstream to upskill the agency on all things digital, with weekly workshops (e.g. What are NFTs? What’s the Dark Web?), emails, and reports.

    Plus: I’m the co-editor of BBH Labs, the homeplace of zags for the creative industry.

  • Senior Content & Strategy Manager

    2013-2017

    Key tasks:

    Managing Something Big’s strategy and content department, including a team of 4.

    Leading the creation and execution of engaging multi-platform campaigns, from initial conception to performance measurement.

    Key clients:

    DHL, Hertz, Yodel, British Chambers of Commerce, McCarthy & Stone

    Educational institutions including the University of Surrey and University of Portsmouth.

    Small businesses including The Wedding Shop and Harvey Water Softeners.

    Key wins:

    The campaign I led for DHL (focus on getting UK SMEs to grow by exporting) won best social media campaign at the 2014 B2B Social Media Awards.

  • Title: Account Manager / Planner

    2011-2013

    I planned and managed London 2012-related marketing activities for clients including Rio Tinto and Siemens, as well as B2B and B2C activations for UEFA sponsor MasterCard across Europe. Parallel to this I wrote news articles for Octagon UK’s digital channels, client-facing and internal reports and presentations on industry trends, and Octagon’s ‘London 2012 Newsletter’.

  • Title: Project Manager

    2009-2011

    I developed strategies and creative proposals to win the business of London 2012 Olympic sponsors based on clients’ RFPs and business requirements.

    As a result, SportsMark gained new clients including British Airways, Cisco, Eurostar, Freshfields, and Nielsen, and retained the business of former clients Visa, Adidas, and Omega.

  • Publishing and Contracts Assistant with I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd (now part of Bloomsbury Publishing)

    Research Assistant with the Free University Berlin

  • London School of Economics: MSc in History / International Relations (Distinction)

    Free University Berlin: MA in Comparative Literature & American Studies (1.3 = Distinction equivalent)

Some other things about me

Like most people I know, I like food (especially the street food stalls of Soho), films, and travel.

Plus museums and taking photos of things (including London’s street pigeons).

I was an only child for 12 years, but have since acquired four sisters. I love them to bits but am too scared / old to get matching tattoos with them.

In first grade, I got a bunch of boys into trouble by writing James-Bond-related names (“007“ “Triple X“) against my scores for computer game tests.

When I was seven, a chimpanzee bit my left leg, just above the knee. I still carry the scar.

Otherwise, I write poems and novels (unpublished thus far), draw up designs for clothes, wrangle an AuDHD teen, and am starting to play around a bit more with writing scripts for simple games (partially because my kid is obsessed with Dadish).