Omnipresent’s Josephine Eyre: My Diverse Marketing Background Makes Me a Better Content Leader

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Sales consultant Amy Franko has a simple question she uses to gauge whether someone will be an effective sales or marketing leader: Have they worked on the other side of the wall?

A VP of Sales who’s spent time in demand generation or product marketing will be able to better empathize with marketing challenges and priorities. Likewise, a CMO who cut their teeth as an SDR will personally understand the pressures of sales.

Lived experience provides understanding and bolsters cooperation. It’s not limited to inter-departmental partnerships, either. Marketers who move within their business unit gain insight into each discipline, including objectives, demands, and challenges.

Josephine Eyre is a prime example. She began her marketing career at Opera, leading the company’s marketing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her next few roles added more and more responsibilities. She owned social media, communications, and design at streaming service iflix, and then led global marketing at Epic Games.

By the time she landed in her current role as Head of Content and Communications at global expansion partner Omnipresent, she’d experienced the entire marketing function.

“I can do my current role far better because I’m a well-rounded marketer,” she says.

I caught up with Josephine to discuss why working across the entire marketing organization made her a better content leader.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What drew you to your first marketing role at Opera?

I was first drawn to the company—Opera. I love tech. I love the mobile space, particularly in Africa. It was and still is dynamic, fast-moving, and a little chaotic. These things get me out of bed in the morning.

It was a challenge, but I enjoyed it. I benefited from reporting to our VP of Communications and our VP of Marketing. They were supportive and ensured I had a full view of all the different areas of marketing. I relied on their expertise in different channels. They relied on my regional expertise. We learned from each other, which was fantastic.

You studied linguistics and social anthropology at college. How did you develop your marketing skills?

By being best friends with experts and asking a lot of questions! In South Africa, we have the benefit of having a very beautiful country that people want to visit. When I went into the market to work with our telco partners, I’d invite someone from, say, product marketing to join me. I could learn from them and they could learn about the region. It was mutually beneficial for everybody.

After Opera, you landed a series of increasingly broad roles. You were head of marketing at iflix and global marketing lead at Epic Games. When you joined Omnipresent, you niched back down to content and communications. Does your broad base of experience make you a better content leader?

I've gone on my journey through marketing, picking up things along the way and realizing other things I'm not so comfortable with. I’ve grown my commercial muscles, too, learning how to support sales. I’ve also learned how to create a nice combination of great PR and valuable content on social media that speaks to our product and wider vision. All of those things help me in this position.

It opened my eyes. I can be a connector within the team. For example, I can see what support demand-gen needs and why they need it. I understand why our PR team constructs messaging the way they do.

That connector role is essential because content acts as both service and channel. Do you ever struggle to balance your colleagues’ objectives and your own?

It's part of the fun. I get insight into everybody's priorities, but I also need to know our own priorities. There’s always a lot to handle, but if you've got your North Star and you know your KPIs, you can start prioritizing better. 

You’ve just launched OmniAcademy, an online course on international hiring. A lot of the course content overlaps with Omnipresent’s services. Were you concerned about freely sharing information that customers pay for?

What struck me early on was how much expertise we have in the company. I wanted to find ways to bottle that expertise and provide value to prospects and customers. We're doing this in lots of ways, but for this project we decided to focus on educational content.

There’s always a weigh-up of how much we want to share. Don’t people come pay us to help them hire around the world? Why would we want to share that knowledge freely?

But in my head, beyond positioning us as a thought leader, this kind of content helps make the market bigger. We aren’t the only players in the space and neither should we be. We believe in global teams. For our vision to become real, we need other people to understand and champion the space alongside us.

We launched the first course in the OmniAcademy to educate HR directors on all aspects of international hiring, from interviewing remotely, to contracts, to global employment solutions like employers of record and professional employer organizations. More in-depth courses will be added to harness all of our expertise in one place. I'm excited not just for our customers, but also for the wider industry.

‍Perspectives is a weekly series interviewing the best marketing leaders. Subscribe for interviews straight to your inbox.