Hey, it's Matt
Hey, it's Matt.
I'm a New Zealand born digital marketing professional with over a decade of my working life spent helping brands and teams increase sales, profits, and build amazing businesses.
I've worked with brands and teams of all shapes and sizes - From large banks like CBA, to high-growth start-ups like Ola cabs. From government, to not-for-profits, from global SaaS companies to husband-wife teams trying to build a legacy.?
I help my clients in a range of areas including strategy, performance marketing, positioning, data analysis, technology, marketing operations and new market growth. I also know just enough about accounting and finance to make me a little dangerous...
In 2017 I founded Gallantway , a professional marketing firm that is focussed on building winning digital strategies for commerce brands. Gallantway was founded to bring high-level strategy, clarity, transparency, expertise and reliable execution to brands looking to maximize their performance in an increasingly complex and connected world.
We started Gallantway because we found that digital agencies were full of poor promises, execution and were never quite aligned to the best outcomes of their clients.?Agencies felt a little like the doctor who only knew a few solutions - Instead of diagnosing the right problem, the solution was always the same.
Our founding principles were simple:
I didn't know it when starting my career, but along the way I found a simple passion for why I come to work each day.
I love helping brands grow and tackle new challenges, and I love the feeling of doing it with amazing people.
To further this, I regularly write and share insights and perspectives on the intersection of strategy, commerce and society. Where possible I try to spend a lot of time with leaders and entrepreneurs on education.
But honestly, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was at school.
I was always fascinated by technology and the creative arts - I liked the idea of working in a field that was value creating - Not destructive.
At first I wanted to be a rockstar, then a photographer, and then I wanted to build new technology. So naturally, I had a lot of questions growing up trying to find a career
"Can I sing and dance like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin?”
?(Short answer, no. Despite my best efforts my vocal chords never quite got there..)
“Can I be a photographer like Ansel Adams, will my work last forever? Can I even make enough money to live as an artist?”
(Well, I did find a niche in motorsport photography which allowed me to travel the world, but it felt really unstable at times as far as a career goes)
"Can I program and build a technology platform to solve some of society's biggest problems??
(Not quite, I did build a Parking Appeal app which auto-appealed parking fines. But I'd probably put that below climate change when it comes to society's issues).
Thinking deeply, being creative, working with incredible people, and a sustained interest in technology was always something that felt true to me.
For a typical New Zealand middle-class family, one could say my life was pretty humble. My dad’s work was probably best classified as an entrepreneur and his occupation always seemed to change. Mum worked in business as a financial controller, but also hustled a little on weekends and in other jobs - Selling clothing and things at the local markets in Auckland.
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Despite our family never having a great deal of money, that didn’t prevent me and my brother from living an incredible childhood. My parents invested a lot of time and love in helping us discover what made us happy, which i'm deeply grateful for - We played a lot of sports (my brother went on to be a pretty great athlete) and I was also very active with music lessons (Guitar mostly.? My singing, while dedicated, was never very good).
Our family values were always really simple - We were honest and hard working.
My first ‘job’ was mowing lawns, followed quickly by fishing lure assembly, then corporate BBQ’s, then computer assembly and on to working at a mechanic.
I think it was the technical nature of computer assembly and my time at a local mechanic that really fostered my interest in technology and understanding our world. I just loved taking things apart, working out how they worked, and finding a better way.
I moved onto a corporate role as a warehouse manager for a technology company before applying internally to work as technical support for their services business - Supporting retail POS systems.?
I worked 7-days a week for the company and it was through the out-of-hours support periods where I helped retailers solve technical issues with their POS that gave me a great foundation for working with people under pressure.?
There’s nothing like receiving a call from a busy store at 11am on a Saturday when they can’t make sales. Helping someone under stress, or in a difficult situation, is always incredibly rewarding.
I progressed within this company to a sales and procurement role where we worked with large customers like the New Zealand Defence Force. It was there that I found my love of working with larger enterprises and solving bigger business and technology problems.
During my time here I also freelanced as a photographer and was fortunate enough to travel to some amazing parts of the world. Sydney being one of them. It was in Sydney where I met some incredible people, one of them happened to be working at EA games as a Marketing Manager. Learning about how marketing was at the intersection of creativity, technology and business was fascinating.
It was at that moment that I knew I needed to explore this path.
My time in Sydney also created a pretty big impression. It was an amazing city, full of energy and opportunity. And as soon as I returned to New Zealand I was packing my bags and applying for marketing and technology roles in Sydney.
Fast forward a 7 year stint between two leading marketing firms and I knew it was time for a bigger challenge. I knew I wanted to mix the value creating side, my desire to help brands grow, and the financial responsibility with ensuring they stay focussed on efficient growth.?
So here we are today, I’m still trying to focus on helping our customers get honest, hardworking results. But I get to do it every day with an equally hardworking and ambitious team. We’re still learning new things and getting better - Still trying to allocate our time and our customers' financial resources responsibly so that we can achieve the best results.
To me, it’s still really cool.
We’ve been doing this for 6 years at Gallantway and today, as of writing, it really feels like a new chapter for our company - Which is incredibly exciting.
While the complexities in digital strategy and reaching customers online only seem to accelerate, some things just never change - We want to get the best results and we want to deliver the best experience for our customers.
Thanks for reading,
Matt
I’m always interested in meeting and learning from new people, so if you’d like to chat, shoot me an email: [email protected]