Igor Uroic: Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I’m Igor Uroic, partner with the Alexander Group. I co-lead our media and consumer technology practice area. I’m happy to be joined here today with Rose Ferraro. She’s SVP of advertising at Rockbot and she’s a legend in the space. So we’re going to talk about her journey and explore sort of what’s happening next in media. So Rose, thank you so much for joining me.
Rose Ferraro: Hi, Igor. So nice to be with you. Nice to be with you all as well.
Igor Uroic: So let’s start with where you are right now. You’re involved in so many different things within the media space. Tell me what’s your next adventure? And when that started.
Rose Ferraro: Yeah. So thanks for asking. I’m currently at Rockbot. I am the SVP and GM of our advertising division. Rockbot powers on-premise and in-store media experiences. So anywhere that you’re existing in the real world and you experience audio or digital signage or TV screens – we are the facilitator of that technology and those experiences, and we help brands really bring to life the consumer experience they’re hoping for to inform, educate, drive behavior. And that’s our primary business. I then help those businesses and companies either connect with consumers within those destinations in order to market to them when they’re out living their lives on a daily basis, or I help those retail media networks enable the monetization or marketing of that customer footprint.
Igor Uroic: Okay. How has that changed in terms of your journey? You’ve done a lot of different things. This is a little bit of a different angle in terms of the media companies that you’ve worked with and things you’ve done. So tell me about the path to where you are now.
Rose Ferraro: Okay, great. So, I like to express my career journey to date is like always existing on the edge of innovation. So I started in linear television at CBS many moons ago, but really expanded into what I think is the first phase of the digital kind of transformation at a company called AltaVista, which was search before Google.
Igor Uroic: And so I used it.
Rose Ferraro: Nice. Amazing. I hope you remember the marketing campaigns. They were fabulous. But I feel like from that lens, the first phase of transformation and expansion was enabling people to access information. The second stage of my career journey was evolving from engaging in that enablement of access to information, which is really a 1-to-1, or a one-way communication, to a more of a participatory model. So I was very early at Myspace, which was the enablement of people creating a community. It was really laying the groundwork for the influencer and creator economy, and it was really a how do people participate in the experience that’s happening online? I think the mid 2000s were marked by like multi-platform expansion. It was really the birth of programmatic, but it was also the birth of programming to niche audiences on multiple different platforms. Next stage at Tastemade, which is a company I’m a really big fan of, was about programming and creating content that exists everywhere people can consume it. So it was like a mobile-first video experience. How do we leverage video to inform, to engage? And that’s localization’s global scaling of experience. And Rockbot now is really about how do we take all of that transformation and bring it into the real, everyday lives of people where they’re existing and where they’re living their lives to hopefully engage, inform, entertain and all the things that we can do – influence ultimately – but all the things that we can do in the real world. So I feel like my journey is so clear to me as like – how does media continue to evolve, but hopefully that’s helpful.
Igor Uroic: What’s the next sort of evolution that you see in the media space. We’re hearing a lot about sort of what’s happening in the streaming and the consolidation and the spin offs. What’s your what’s your angle of the next transformation in media and sort of how you guys might play into that?
Rose Ferraro: Yeah. Well, right now, like I think we’re in the next transformation. We exist in the digital out-of-home space, which is a partner in retail media.
Igor Uroic: And that’s hot – that’s a booming sort of area.
Rose Ferraro: It’s a growth area. As media evolves, there’s growth areas and there’s areas of constriction. And I would say what kind of attracts me to new opportunities is the need to build what this new media medium will be. So I feel like digital, out-of-home and retail media are partners. Digital home is really how do people exist in their everyday lives and experience the media capabilities that exist today? Retail media is how our on premise business and brands enabling and experience to leverage first-party data on site, but also have a very strategic omnichannel approach to bringing someone on site to in-person and in-store. And Rockbot specifically caters to that in-store experience, which is very nascent in this world. So when I say, like, where are we going? And where do I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity? It’s helping define ways that in-store plays a role. We need to explore ways to have better measurement and attribution for that experience. Like digital – there’s an expectation in what we can deliver in when someone experiences us and how we retarget. In-store, it’s a little bit more challenging, and I think we’re even taking a step back. Where are the screens or the signage placed? What is the content that’s being placed on them? When we’re not marketing to the consumers or when we’re not monetizing them, why is that experience being placed in that environment? So I feel like the next thing is enabling further connection in an omnichannel way with on site and in-person.
Igor Uroic: I think that on site in-person aspect is interesting because in some sense it’s almost coming back to, you know, 20, 30, 40 years ago, before everything went digital, multi-screen and all that. Now you’re bringing those into the brick-and-mortar areas, right? And trying to figure out – how do we monetize and attribute success there.
Rose Ferraro: The only way it’s really working now is because of that digital transformation, the fact is, we have the capacity to change in real time, the messaging or the experience. It doesn’t have to be an ad. We don’t have to be monetizing that communication to a user. We can just be purely invested in – what’s your experience right now? What are we hoping that this enhances? But there’s the ability to change that in real time. That has never been possible in an out-of-home environment until recently. And so that’s a big way to bridge like what happens on site and online to now what’s possible in store. I think the big opportunity is unification, and one of the challenges – like an opportunity and a challenge. So in-store media, the functionality of it can be a little bit inefficient. There’s multiple vendors that are specialized in different mediums: music, signage, TV. To me, the future is unification. It’s like when you’re thinking about wholistically delivering an experience to a consumer where they are and every possible way you can reach them. And it’s not meant to be disruptive, it’s meant to delight.
Igor Uroic: But now you have a coordination challenge, right? Between all those.
Rose Ferraro: You do, if it’s not unified. You know what I mean. If they’re if the strategy ahead of time is not unified, there’s less operational efficiency. The continuity of your marketing is diminished because each of those different experiences don’t have the continuity of brand. Your ability to monetize or build holistic campaigns versus be tactically oriented is inhibited. So I think our vision is where the future is going, which is like, how do we look at what an in-store experience should be and different brands should feel different? I think that’s the other thing that we specialize. We enable programming. So and expertise on programming for a specific contextual environment. So Target should feel differently than Neiman Marcus. You know it’s going to like Mercedes dealership is going to be different than a Honda dealership. Like where you are in certain hotel chains, that experience is going to be different. Defining who you are as a brand through that in-person experience is super important. Our number one goal is facilitating that uniqueness. How do we power what your vision is for customer experience, and then how are we flexible to help you kind of curate that, monetize that, leverage and make it more efficient.
Igor Uroic: But it still stems from the power of the brand and the image and the things that need to be congruent with that.
Rose Ferraro: 100%. And it’s unique to each different brand. Yeah.
Igor Uroic: Sort of the crux of the advertising and the relevance that we’ve always had or tried to strive for in some sense.
Rose Ferraro: 100%. You like what we discussed or what I mentioned earlier, there is a red thread through that experience of media has evolved to enable you to target to niche audiences in a really personalized, localized, data driven way. We’re trying to enable that same in-person ability. Localization of in-store is an opportunity. My daughter goes to LSU in Baton Rouge. So what a retail location in Baton Rouge delivers to someone on a daily basis, may be different than what it delivers to my son who goes to the University of Oregon. That is an opportunity. You know, that wasn’t possible before. I think the digital capabilities that we have now.
Igor Uroic: Yeah. Tell me about, Rose, how do you think about motivation for whether it’s folks executing the vision at a leadership level or salesforce out there to motivate? What kind of tools do you have to get people to sort of move in the direction that you’re describing here, or do you have a philosophy around it?
Rose Ferraro: Yeah, I think it’s a great question. I think setting a clear vision so that everybody is aligned around the same vision. I think that’s a leadership responsibility. Creating a culture of positivity. I believe everything can be said in a positive way, even if it’s a challenge.
Igor Uroic: So you mean an opportunity, right?
Rose Ferraro: Exactly, exactly. Everything is an opportunity is happening for you. Not to you. So I think coalescing everybody around that shared vision that we learn from the challenges, there’s an opportunity in each one, and we want to manage positively. We’re all in this together. We have shared goals and expectations. I think setting up your team for success so you understand what achievement and success looks like very clearly. I think fostering team collaboration, I think some of these things are so fundamental, so they feel simplistic, but I believe in them wholeheartedly. I want the people that come to work with me to believe in the same cause, to understand that I foster work life balance in the world. I believe in purpose. I believe in experience. I’m a learner and adapter, like I’m constantly craving what is what can I glean from an experience to enhance my own everyday life? I want to share that. So I think my vision and process is super simplistic and those are some of the key pillars.
Igor Uroic: Those are the easiest things to follow, right? If you don’t, if you don’t overcomplicate things, you’ve been involved in a number of things in the media. You know, as you shared with me today, landscape. Are you starting to think about your own personal legacy or sort of – is it too soon for that yet? How do you want to shape that?
Rose Ferraro: I hope I have many more years ahead, and I hope that there are many more years that I can’t even foresee. I feel that there are little opportunities that I’m interested in that I think like this will be something that changes the way we all exist. And I pay a lot of attention to those things that I feel like this is useful. Like being useful is a big theme for me. Search the very first digital company, AltaVista, as I mentioned, Search was a no brainer because it was going to make it was useful to every single person immediately. And so it’s like, how do we make this faster? You want this information, we’re going to deliver it to you faster. So I think my legacy is that I was like flexible, committed, positive. I have a thirst for knowledge and information for learning. I want life to feel purposeful. So there’s like a purpose in my every day, you know, like that is that is the truth of the way that I exist. But it’s like a purpose holistically, like, are we making a meaningful contribution? So, I don’t know. I want my legacy to be like I loved working with her. She was a smart person. She was such a great collaborator. She was on to something, you know, and I hope that continues for another, I don’t know, 20 years.
Igor Uroic: Well that that purpose – the do something useful, I mean those are, those are taglines that are prominent in your own brand, if you will. If you look through places where you put yourself out there and what you’ve done and what you stand.
Rose Ferraro: That’s true, you did good research.
Igor Uroic: Those things show up, right?
Rose Ferraro: So those are all my social handles. Be more useful.
Igor Uroic: So maybe close this out with it. It’s maybe tied to some of the things you mentioned here. You know what’s what’s led to success for you in business over the years and sort of some things that people can, you know, aspire to in terms of I need to develop that skill set or that type of resiliency or thinking in order to have longevity in a changing environment. Because we just talked about a whole bunch of different changes.
Rose Ferraro: So I am always evaluating people and product. You know, I think the product goes to what I was just mentioning – is this useful? People are really important. We all spend so much of our time in this professional capacity. I have lifelong friends in this industry. And it has been a pleasure navigating the evolution and changes that we’ve kind of experienced together. And to see counterparts and cohorts achieve such incredible success has been something that I feel so grateful to kind of have a window into. So, I don’t know, I think I would continue to emphasize what I said earlier, you know, in my almost legacy description. I feel like, how do we make an impact in a way that’s realistic? You know, that is actualizing the value of where we are in the world right now. Not to say media is not valuable, right? What we do is valuable. I want to do it really, really well. I want to be a leader in the class of people that are creating opportunities for brands to connect with consumers in a way to drive a behavior that enhances the consumer experience and drives their business goals. That is like, how do I do that authentically? But I want to have a great life outside of that as well. So I don’t know. That would be my mantra, connection to my be more useful.
Igor Uroic: Sure. I think they go together. Right? Rose, thank you for taking some time during this session today. I hope you enjoy the rest of the event and we’ll chat soon again.
Rose Ferraro: Thank you. A pleasure, and you as well.
