Teiffyon Parry is chief strategy officer at independent ad tech giant Equativ, which has more than 550 employees in 16 offices in 12 countries. Parry first joined Equativ in 2021 as vice president of Global Demand and has since used his diverse insights and relationships to drive the development of Equativ’s media buying tools.
I must admit that I was quite intimidated when I was invited on a propeller plane by my boss, Julia Bowen, who was teaching herself aerobatics over the Blue Mountains in Sydney.
I joined Julia’s team at Cable & Wireless Optus in 2000 as an analyst. He was the general manager of programs, and I immediately became his chief of staff.
He is an extremely impressive person. She had a military background and was also one of the first female rugby referees in the world. It’s safe to say that Julia enjoys new challenges and always encourages her team to not be afraid of things they’ve never done before and to be bold in everything they do.
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In the sky, Julia explained to me all the tasks she would be doing before and during her maneuvers. Soon we were climbing and climbing until the engine cut out, the nose of the plane dropped downwards and it began to spin. But Julia’s soft-spoken communication was so reassuring, and I knew she was in control every step of the way.
It was so peaceful as he spiraled and looped. Julia talked to herself through the reboot mechanisms. The propeller fell over but cut out and so we went back to the turn and followed the same steps. The engine then failed to backfire a second time before prompting a third time.
I was still relatively calm considering we had gone through two misstarts of the engine. Julia told me that it was only when we landed that we were below altitude for a safe return. This could have happened if the engine had not been started a third time, she said.
But this entire experience has made me respect him even more for his cool, calm and collected nature under pressure.
When he returned to the field he was always focused on what he was doing, always with a smile and a strong nature.
He was also outstanding at aligning people around a strategic vision. He would approach the programs he oversaw not from a program perspective, but from a broader business perspective.
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Julia would seek out definitions of success that aligned with the key stakeholders who would measure the program. Rather than taking a bottom-up product approach, he would create a creative and coherent view of what needed to be delivered and break these down into a series of workflows. This was very eye-opening and has influenced me greatly throughout my career.
He understood the strengths and weaknesses of his peers, but his most impressive trait was his ability to easily delegate and build on this by empowering the people under him.
Julia believed in meritocracy and there was always strong and open communication in the team. I never felt like he had to be the most dominant person in the room. No one felt superior to the other and fostered a spirit of ‘we are in this together’. If we failed, we failed quickly and moved on.
He adhered to the Japanese mantra ‘Genchi Genbutsu’, which means ‘facing the problem’. He advised us not to hear about problems second-hand and not to understand something without seeing it ourselves. He always wanted to spice up statistics with colors behind the business logic, purpose or customer needs.
I learned all this during a one-year secondment at Cable & Wireless before returning to the UK to work at Accenture. Fast forward to September 2023, I have become CSO at Equativ, where we offer a global marketplace for programmatic advertising.
On the buy side, we help the biggest brands and agencies, the world’s largest digital publishers, publishers or app owners manage ad inventory and ultimately help advertisers maximize their investment in media.
Where we lead the market is by innovating in emerging high-impact channels such as connected TV (CTV), retail media and gaming, bringing buyers and sellers as close together as possible. We do this with a very direct, transparent and equitable model that drives Equativ’s growth.
The fight for eyeballs in today’s market has become increasingly competitive. There has been a much more concerted effort over the last 18 months to remember that the customer and consumer are at the heart of what we do.
It comes back to nuanced support in terms of how we value that moment when someone is on a media site and making the most of it in a way that doesn’t offend the consumer and is valuable to the advertiser. After years of focusing on scale at all costs, this appears to have experienced a renaissance.
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If a publisher stays true to their core DNA – a consumer who returns to their media regularly – if they maintain that focus, they will find there are more platform options that companies like Equativ can help them access to monetize their audience. on the right track. An ad that returns relevant ads that don’t leak data or impact user experience.
What helped me advance my career and get to where I am today was my early exposure to different levels of management on large projects, along with Julia’s strengths in team building and leadership.
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