Get up to speed with digitalbrief
Training company’s first public digital media sales advantage workshop program
The Australian media sales training business digitalbrief was established by corporate trainer Russell Easther after spending a number of years in digital media sales. “I found a lot of digital professionals had a challenge when it came to communicating the value that they have. Digital specialists were very smart people, but they just weren’t getting their message across. This led to lots of client confusion.”
“I got into the sector after the dotcom crash and then have ridden the digital wave”
From that initial observation, Easther carved out a niche business in digital marketing and media corporate training.
“From when I started in media agencies in the early days of digital we would spend much of our time teaching people about the growing sector,” Easther told Mediaweek.
Easther gave his first proper boardroom educational session when he was working at Carat.
Easther has worked in Dubai and in New York as well as in Sydney and Melbourne. He recalled his early days in the business: “I did it hard in New York cold calling people back in 2002. It was my first job in interactive. I got into the sector after the dotcom crash and then have ridden the digital wave.”
Russel Easther
In his digitalbrief training sessions, Easther said he uses a lot of analogies. “We use digital concepts that people are already familiar with in more traditional forms of marketing. We tie digital concepts to traditional marketing and media concepts. This approach is one of the best techniques we use to communicate the more complex digital media ad products to our clients.
“We have something we call the T-shaped marketer. We spend a little bit of time talking about a lot!
“At the top of the T we talk about social media, programmatic, and things in not too much depth. Then we look at the rest of the T and talk in more depth about a client’s products and strategies. We like to build T- shaped media sales professionals or marketers so they can engage in conversations with their products in a more confident fashion, knowing what’s going on around them.”
Easther said he is keen to make sure his sessions deliver digital marketing confidence. “We give sales teams the ability to talk and pitch digital to both an agency or a direct client. People leave with the confidence to pitch their product in the marketplace.”
As to recent training sessions, Easther said he has worked extensively with print and radio businesses. “We have also done some work with digital agencies.”
As well as working with groups of sales teams from one particular company, Easther said they do one-on-one with tailored private coaching sessions for senior executives.
digitalbrief limits the size of company sessions to around 20 staff. “Our most popular three-day workshop is staggered across several weeks, not taking people away from their roles for three consecutive days.”
There are workshop dates available in October and November this year.