The Future of Communications & Landing that Dream job

Podcast Clip Below :

Welcome everybody to another episode of the Marketing & Digital Podcast, I’m your host, Kenneth from RGF Executive Search and every week, we’ll be inviting a Senior Marketing/Digital Leader to share about their career journey & some of the trends within their specific function.

Today, we have with us Ms. Belle Baldoza from Airbnb.

Belle Heads up the SEA Communications function for Airbnb and has worked with some of the top Tech Unicorns including Bytedance, Netflix & Spotify.

Q. Now Belle, you’ve had a very illustrious career and worked for some of the sexiest brands and names out there. Can you share with us about how you got here & your role at Airbnb?

Belle: I've been really, really fortunate, to have been able to have taken on very, very unique opportunities that involved pioneering, communications teams and initiatives, across Asia Pacific starting off when I joined Spotify in 2013. I've been a communications professional for almost 15 years now and I've probably touched on almost all of the various aspects of communications as a function, not just as a PR person, but also as an editor, as well as pretty much somebody who's specialized in the digital space, and content Management

I started out my career, back in the Philippines, almost 15 years ago, as an entertainment publicist. I really am very passionate about music, the arts and popular culture in general and I think that has really shaped a majority of the trajectory of my career. I came to Singapore in 2011 starting out on the agency side at Mindshare & Ogilvy.

When Spotify entered Southeast Asia in 2013, I found that they were looking for a PR manager for Southeast Asia. Despite me not having any tech PR experience and not speaking in Mandarin, which was also part of the job description advertised for the role, I told myself, why not and the rest is history. I landed the job. I spent almost three years at Spotify, building the foundations of their brand in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, driving communications initiatives, go to market launches, partnerships and supporting essentially our artists influencer relations and other initiatives.

After that, I received yet another great opportunity to pioneer communications for Netflix in Asia, in particular consumer communications, as the first PR manager for the region in 2016, shortly after, the service had gone global. At Netflix, I was one of the first employees in the region, really building the foundations, the communications infrastructure, leading go to market launches, educating people about, the diversity of content and Netflix, and really focusing a lot on brand building and product education efforts. After almost two years at Netflix, I actually came across a really interesting opportunity to join Uber and joined the central communications team, looking after Asia Pacific as the head of consumer communications.

I love the Uber story because it was such a disruptive force that changed the way how cities move and how cities are built, as well as how people are able to move everywhere. So there was a unique opportunity to humanize that story and to build the brand, through stories that really help people understand its role in daily lives beyond being a service, beyond being a utility. Unfortunately after close to a year at Uber, there was a merger with Grab, that was also the reason why most of us lost our jobs at that time, some of us went to Grab, but I made a conscious decision not to go there, because I personally believe that I only like to work for brands that I actually feel like I have a personal alignment with

Then ByteDance, which is the holding company for TikTok in Southeast Asia and India came knocking, seeing that I was familiar with Musically, which was the predecessor of TikTok; and as I said earlier, music and content are very close to my heart.

So I took on that role, as part of the global core team of communications, and was also among the first employees from the international comms team. I've been fortunate to be able to actually build the comms team at ByteDance from the ground up from zero, literally from me being by myself to managing a team 14 and looking after communications initiatives throughout Southeast Asia and India.

Then I came across, another interesting role, going back to Southeast Asia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and driving regional communications at Airbnb.

Airbnb has been on my radar for many years. Travel is also a key passion point of mine, and I told myself like you know, I think like this is also a really good opportunity for me, so why not? I am currently at Airbnb where I am part of the Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan leadership team. I essentially manage all our communications initiatives driving campaigns, across corporate policy and consumer communications, working with various stakeholders both externally and internally.

Q. Is there any pattern that you adopt when choosing your next career move? I've realized that all your moves have been in completely different industries from music to VOD to ride hailing back to music, and now in hospitality.

Belle: A lot of my career choices have been driven by personal alignment. I found that I really look up to brands that are either disrupting a certain category or the way people behave or introduce a new kind of behavior. If you look at all the tech companies that I've been fortunate to have been a part of; Spotify has changed the way we listen to music; Netflix has changed the way that we consume entertainment; Uber has changed the way that we move; TikTok has actually changed the way that people actually express their creativity, so they're able to express their creativity in short form video, and Airbnb has definitely changed the way we traveled.

So I love telling stories for disruptive technology brands that introduce a new behavior or change the way people do things that I can personally align with.

Q. What would you say is the secret sauce to landing that first interview, or getting that job in one of these top tech companies with these really big sexy brands? 

Belle: Yeah, that's a really great question. Throughout this period as we spend more time at home, I've had immense opportunities to be able to continue with my informal mentoring sessions with young people, who actually want to get in the industry. Most recently I've actually encountered the same question actually from a young lady, who's also part of these mentoring sessions.

What I’ve advised before you gun for that quote, unquote "Cool Job", is that you internalize and understand your motivation for doing so. It's very important that you firm that up and know:

• What is your story?
• How does this role align with you?
• How does the story align with the role that you're applying for?

It's very important that you have that conversation with yourself and you really look into it because it's not just about nailing the cool job, but it's actually about really finding an opportunity that aligns with what you really want out of your career. Why I say that is because I think going back to my experience of joining Spotify, I had an obvious lack of tech PR experience and Mandarin speaking skills as mentioned on the JD

However, what I did have was a genuine passion for music, then I proceeded to share my story with the recruiter and later the folks at Spotify. What I found out later when I landed the job was that there were several more senior people who actually applied for the role, people who were certainly more qualified and fit the JD better than I did. I would say dissecting that episode, there was something there in my personal story that really resonated with the recruiter and the hiring panel. Therefore, my advice is don't just gun for the cool job, try to understand and look inside yourself, why you are applying for that role and figure out what is your story and how it aligns with that role.

That’s also something that I really look for as a hiring manager and for me personally, what I am looking for is somebody who has a firm idea of their own careers story, and where they want to take it. I'm not looking for people who just meet the JD or are able to pretty much come up with specific bullet points about what they have achieved. So I think it's very important to look for somebody with a strong conviction about their own motivations for applying for the role, while at the same time, knowing where they want to take their career next.

Q. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand, communications is a set of activities that companies use to engage & interact with their internal and external audiences to create an overall positive experience and build upon their brand. Did I get that right? 

Belle: Yeah. I agree, I would say communications is a set of activities, but to me, we're more than that. It's actually the strategic process of building enhancing, and protecting the overall reputation of the brand by influencing various stakeholders from an internal and external standpoint. That is why communications requires such a multifaceted skillset because it is the business of both building reputation and establishing influence.

Q. Could you share a few examples of some of the more successful communications campaigns you've run over the years and the impact they've had on the business? 

Belle: Sure. I actually have been very fortunate early on in my career in tech to have been able to really be at the forefront of introducing the brands that I've worked for in markets across Southeast Asia. I'm really proud of my role as one of the chief architects for our go to market launches for Spotify and Netflix across different countries; and that is where I saw PR and communications really play a key role in really establishing the blueprint of how we were going to educate people and introduce a brand.

Some examples of that are the market launches that I've done for Spotify in the Philippines. Market launches that I've actually worked on for Netflix in the Philippines and Thailand. At Netflix, we actually installed various experiential points for media, so that they could understand the product proposition of Netflix at the time. For example, we staged experience zones, highlighting key elements of our shows, so that the media could understand the diversity of our content at that time. That's just one of the campaigns I'm really proud to have worked on. Other campaigns that really highlighted our objective were really aligned with the objective of overall product education. Those are also projects that I'm proud to have been a part of aside from the market launches, because during that time people didn't, know or hear of companies like Netflix and Spotify, or use these products yet in our region.

So I think product education through engaging the media and, and having them buy into it, like having them try out the product, having personal experiences with the product, and also sharing stories that leveraged data so that they can amplify that back to their own audiences were really integral. Having people have a more holistic understanding of what these platforms can offer and how they can actually change the way either we listen to music or consume entertainment. 

Q. As we're currently going through this COVID-19 pandemic, have you seen a shift in priorities or focus for yourself and the team? 

Belle: Yeah, it has definitely been very, I would hate to say, unprecedented because that's such as abused word. I would say that we are living right now in very, very extraordinary times. On Airbnb's front, travel has been very much impacted by the pandemic. Obviously we can't travel at this point yet, at least not across international borders, so I think that this has been a forcing function for us to accept that what was true before COVID-19 may not necessarily be true post COVID-19.

In terms of revisiting priorities and focus areas. I think what is still true though, is as communicators, we are still in the business of building trust, and that is very much aligned with the function of communications - to build, enhance and protect the reputation of the company. A lot of our efforts throughout this whole COVID-19 period has been really around building trust with various stakeholders. For example, keeping our hosts informed of our flexible cancellation policies, at the same time, seeing how we can help out various impacted members of the community. An example would be, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we launched this amazing initiative globally called Frontlines Days, where we offered free or subsidized housing for COVID-19 first responders. At the moment, I think that this whole business of building trust is still underway as we share how communities are recovering, and how we are seeing green shoots of travel, especially from a domestic standpoint. So that has really come to the forefront now more than ever.

Q. On a larger scale, how do you see this pandemic shaping/ impacting the future of communications as a whole? 

Belle: COVID-19 has definitely changed the game, and I think this has been a very rare and enlightening period, that offered a lot of learnings for communicators like myself. I think just going back to my point around building trust, as part of the strategic process of communications in general, it's very important to recognize that building and rebuilding trust in a post COVID-19 world is an essential, mandate, and a very important objective. Comms needs to be at the forefront of this, comms needs to champion this, and that being said, in order to build trust, I think it's very important for communicators to actually think about initiatives, that are nimble, that are authentic to the brand, that are heartfelt.

Especially right now, it's very important that communicators are able to keep this criteria in mind whenever they actually look for initiatives to launch, given that the future work has also been impacted with the emergence of virtual channels, there's also an opportunity, for communicators to really think about how they can craft authentic and heartfelt messages that cut across different channels. Those channels may not necessarily be like the traditional channels that we've had. We've had to be very innovative with experimenting with virtual formats. We've seen various campaigns harnessing the power of content through different channels, especially at this time, and I think, in a post COVID world that kind of, multichannel approach to communications and content will continue to be there.

Q. Would you say that there's a specific way to communicate with your customers? I've heard examples during these times of some companies who've been blasting emails to people in their CRM saying, “Oh, you've bought a product us two or three years ago. We care about you doing these times, stay safe.” 

Belle: I think what would be really, really helpful is for communications to work in line with different areas of the business and cross functional stakeholders, and really try to understand the priorities of the business at this time. As communicators we should not be making solo decisions and we should also be one of the important stakeholders in the decision making process when it comes to rolling out campaigns for external audiences. I think that's a very important thing. Especially now at this time, any communication needs to be nimble, need to be authentic, needs to be heartfelt because consumers can see through all of that fluff and they are especially paying attention in light of the times to the messages that we send across. 

Q. Going back to your personal experience, you've been on the agency side and the client side, and I think you're a very great example of somebody who's successfully made that transition. Can you share a bit more on how you made that shift as well as some advice for people looking to break into tech as an industry?

Belle: Yeah, absolutely. If there was a list of frequently asked questions raised to me, this would be one of them. It's also something that I love to share my learnings about as well. I would say that I've been very, very grateful for everything I learned on the agency side such as, embracing ambiguity, multitasking, client relations, stakeholder management etc. These intrinsic skills set me up for future success when I joined the brand side. My advice to people who want to consciously make the jump. First of all, I'd like to go back to my point earlier about internalization & understanding your motivation.

I think it's important for people to understand that joining the brand side may not necessarily work for them because there are people who are actually doing very well on the agency side and will continue to do so. So it's important that you have a clear understanding of your abilities, your motivations for making the jump. I think that when people are on the agency side and consciously want to make that jump, it's very important to embrace every challenge that comes their way, even if those challenges are not necessarily part of your job description.

While I was on the agency side, I consciously led, and put myself up for learning opportunities such as attending workshops, taking on projects that my team was not directly responsible for etc. I've actually kept this very open attitude towards learning because I wanted to learn so much. It's very important to have that open attitude so that you are able to really get as much as possible from your experience at the agency.

Q. As someone who has shifted industries multiple times, have you ever at any point of your career, felt like an impostor or have imposter syndrome where you felt you're moving to a completely new industry, and you might be up against some other candidates or colleagues who know the industry much better than you?

Belle: I would say that imposter syndrome is something that is hanging around all the time. It might come as a surprise for everybody, but I would say the more learnings or adventures you've had in your career, this is something that will always consciously be a thing, because you're moving more and more towards self-awareness as well, as you learn so much more about yourself, and this goes hand in hand. My feeling, whenever I am launching something, like right now, versus my feeling when I was just in my first PR job, almost 15 years ago, there's not a big variation.

I still feel like there's this whole, healthy amount of anxiety behind that. Like, is this going to be successful? Is this going to work? But I still do it anyway. I think like the important thing, that people need to realize is it is important to have a healthy amount of anxiety. It is important to have a healthy amount of that "Imposter Syndrome" and welcome that, but at the same time, recognize your own skills, your own motivations & what you can offer. So, yeah, definitely, I would say, I'm still learning as I going along the way.

Ken: That brings us to the end of our session today. Thanks so much for your sharing Belle. That was really insightful and eye opening.