Alumni stories

Christine Deng

I’m a Performance Manager at Bench (a marketing technology company and media agency in Sydney). I work in programmatic—an extremely fast-paced and constantly evolving specialisation within digital marketing.

This is the working definition of programmatic I roll out at dinner parties:

In programmatic we use data, automation and tech to target the right people, at the right place at the right time and in the right moment—on the internet. And pay for the pleasure of doing so.

In other words, I put ads online. Just like the ones from the Iconic that follow you around on the internet.

Motto I live by

Play the game until you make the rules.

When you’re starting out in the workplace, it’s important to straddle the line between respecting the hierarchy and speaking up to bring new ideas to the table. I’m a firm believer that the most innovative organisations take ideas from all quarters and celebrate diversity (including diversity of age).

I wish office politics wasn’t a thing. But to get promoted, especially in the infancy of your career, you need to play the game until you make the rules.

Motto I wish I lived by at 19

Everyone’s running their own race.

When I was at uni, I was incredibly focused on setting myself up for success in terms of a full-time job. In my final year, I studied a full load while working two part-time marketing jobs—that added up to the same hours I’d work in a full-time job.

Straight off, I was lucky enough to get my dream job at one of Australia’s leading digital marketing agencies and worked my way up to programmatic trader.

Participating in a charity walk with my current company Bench, where we raised $12K for a school for kids with disabilities

Two and a half years in, it was no longer all roses. My mental health had a taken a turn for the worse and I ended up quitting my job with no back up plan.

I’d burnt out spectacularly!

At that point, I would have been happy to ‘start again’ in an entry-level job. All that prior hustle for nothing.

The lesson I take away?

Life is long. We have our whole lives to work. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

BATNA and how to negotiate your salary

BATNA: short for Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.

My personal experience with negotiating salaries has taught me to have two numbers in mind:

1. the top end of the salary bracket for my industry and given my years of experience; and
2. what I’ll be happy with and the minimum I think I’m worth.

Salary conversations can be awfully awkward and scary. Having these two numbers in mind can make the conversation a lot less combative.

Advice for women (in particular, but also men)

As you navigate daily life in the workplace, it’s important to have three sets of people to support you:

• mentors
• coaches
• sponsors.

At former company, Resolution Media, at the reconciliation action plan launch (far right)

The difference? Mentors talk with you, coaches talk to you and sponsors talk about you.

Another useful idea is the 10%-30%-60% guideline—where you allocate a certain percentage of your time to performance (working hard), image (how people talk about you when you’re not in the room) and exposure (senior people knowing you for the right reasons).

The sad truth is that silent achievers don’t always reap the rewards of hard work. In other words, allocating 60% of your time to performance is unlikely to get you promoted faster than your co-worker who spends more time playing the game and working on their image.

Women, in particular, have been trained to focus on performance often at the expense of exposure. Hence movements toward positive discrimination and reducing the gender pay gap. Studies have shown that if you want to get ahead, regardless of gender, the ideal proportions are:

• 10% performance
• 30% image
• 60% exposure.

Bonus tip

Read lots. As I mentioned upfront, the digital marketing and media landscape is rife with new developments every year, every month and almost every day. Programmatic in particular sits at the bleeding edge. I read trade press daily to keep up, and here is a handful of the blogs/publications I find most edifying:

• digiday.com
• adexchanger.com
• mumbrella.com.au
• bandt.com.au
• mi-3.com.au
• thinkwithgoogle.com
• kaushik.net.

By consuming podcasts, blog articles, whitepapers, webinars, training yourself with online courses and more, you too can work at the bleeding edge of digital marketing if you so desire.

Good luck!