 Where Data and Problem Solving Meet
In a world that’s become increasingly digital, Esquire Advertising is still showing the importance of brick and mortar shopping. Senior Executive Vice President of Program Management Lauren Strong is one of the members of the small team which is using data to drive traffic to physical locations in the home and furnishings industry.
Lauren started with the company in 2019, and was the seventh hire of the startup. Today around 30 individuals work there fulltime, doing everything from ideating and designing campaigns to client research and data analysis. Lauren oversees a lot of it, and has found joy in the problem-solving nature of her role.
We sat down with Lauren to learn more about her career, why she’s passionate about her work and what WithIt means to her. Read on to learn more!
Q&A
How did you find your way to Esquire Advertising?
I was really looking to make a career change. I was working at a grower, packer and shipper of fresh produce and I was doing a lot of tradeshow planning and creative design, packaging design, things like that. I loved the industry but was looking for something more challenging so I decided it was time for a change. I had a friend who worked at a recruiting company and she saw a post from the American Underground and sent it to me. It seemed really interesting.
In your own words, what is Esquire Advertising?
At our heart we are an advertising technology company. We’re really big into data and device observation and that’s the backbone of what allows us to run effective campaigns. Our specialty is brick and mortar, and our goal is to drive qualified traffic to brick and mortar locations. We deliver big company results with boutique level service. We’re trying to eliminate ad waste by focusing on our customers’ client base. Just because you share a market doesn’t mean you have to advertise to the same people, which is a pitfall in a lot of traditional digital advertising. We use a combination of online and offline data to find the perfect customer for our clients and drive them to the store.
What’s your favorite thing about working at Esquire Advertising?
It is kind of hard to pick because it’s such a fun environment to work in. I love that we have a pretty small team. Everyone is really accessible and hardworking and I think we all feel grateful that we can show up and be ourselves every day. No one has to fit into an arbitrarily defined professional box: our designers are themselves, our data analysts are themselves. I feel like I have actual relationships and friendships with coworkers. It is something very similar to having a work family. And we get to face really unique challenges and help our clients solve problems.
Everyone is really accessible and hardworking and I think we all feel grateful that we can show up and be ourselves every day. No one has to fit into an arbitrarily defined professional box: our designers are themselves, our data analysts are themselves.
Lauren Strong, Esquire Advertising
What does a typical day look like for you?
One of the beautiful things I love about my job is that no day is the same. I’ll have internal meetings, client meetings, every now and then I’ll take a sales call, and really just make sure that all of our processes are functioning as best they can to serve our clients. Everything is really custom for the client, so it presents a lot of opportunities to explore how campaigns are working, making sure we understand the story the data is telling us, and how we can use that to enhance our client’s business. My department is made up of three teams; our project managers who directly serve our clients on a day-to-day basis, then guide their own teams on how to set up campaigns, track results, optimize and make changes. The ad operations team is responsible for actually setting up and executing our campaigns, and then our design team creates all the ads and art for our campaigns. We do all of this with about 15 people. With all that, everyday is unique and fun.
What makes you passionate about your work?
I think it’s being able to make a measurable difference for clients. It’s really great to set up a campaign and see it have an impact in-store for our clients. If we have a month of results that are below target or not as strong as we’d like, it presents an opportunity to solve a problem. I love a puzzle and digging in to see how we can make optimizations to get better results. Especially when you implement changes and then see a campaign improve and do better than it was before, it’s the best. I love to solve a problem.
Why do you think an organization like WithIt is important?
I really like focusing on connecting with women in business. Having come from agriculture, it’s an extremely male dominated industry, and I think there are a lot of parallels to furniture. It’s exciting to see women highlighted in those roles and maybe taking over where you haven’t seen before. Esquire’s staff is more than 50% female, which I think is a really impressive statistic. It’s nice to have the connection with other people in the industry who understand what it’s like and have that supportive community.
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