Rebecca Dykema, Senior Vice President of Clients, Partnership and Creative Transformation at CreativeX

Rebecca is Senior Vice President of Clients, Partnership and Creative Transformation at CreativeX, provider of an industry-first AI driven data platform to help the world’s most loved brands including PepsiCo, Nestle and Facebook achieve creative excellence. She has over 20 years of experience in online media, marketing, technology, and business development across North America and Europe and is passionate about inspiring her teams to make cool ideas a reality. 

What were you doing before CreativeX?

I spent 10 years at Google, leading teams and building $100M+ programmes across the global and UK businesses. Prior to working at Google, I was in a number of roles across marketing, business development and customer success companies. But while I’ve worked at both start-ups and corporate innovation hubs, my experiences all have one thing in common - I am always at the bleeding edge of digital marketing.  

Getting involved in Tech is still a hot topic for women, what was the motivation for you? 

I come from a marketing background but after graduating from business school, I was determined to land a role in the next big thing. I stumbled upon a California-based start-up, which sold a platform for content management and analytics across social media. Do you remember those days when marketers were wondering – what’s this social stuff all about? We were helping brands and agencies understand why having a candid exchange with their audience represented the next frontier in marketing…and as it turns out, it was. I was given an opportunity to literally define a new frontier in marketing, and as a hungry graduate, it was one I couldn’t turn down. 

How have you found your journey so far and what has been your greatest accomplishment?

I have always had a hypothetical destination about where I want to be, but navigating this has not always been smooth sailing. I have faced headwinds, tailwinds and huge waves along the way. 

I would look at female tech founders and think one day I would like to be in their shoes. But before I make that move, I have taken on other roles to learn from other inspiring female founders. I can now reflect on these experiences and recognise that they got me to where I am today and are a crucial pit stop to the dream destination. I always encourage people to think about the job they’ll take after their current job because that will get them to the next destination. If you’re not thinking about the next step, you’re letting the world determine your journey rather than taking the reins. 

Starting my role at CreativeX has been my proudest achievement so far. After joining the company, I reflected on all my experiences until now and realised that all the bits of the puzzle brought me to this point. All the steps on my journey have got me to where I am today, and I can honestly say I am passionate, energised and excited by the huge opportunity here. 

What has been the most challenging thing so far?

I identify with millions of other women who struggle to start a family and navigate a career at the same time. After many years at Google, I felt ready to bounce back into the start-up world. However, I had to put those professional dreams on hold to start building a family and I am so thankful I did – it paid off both professionally and personally. 

We now have two beautiful children and I learned to become a more patient person. I never planned to spend 10 years at Google, but the extra five years I spent there were hugely beneficial – I expanded my knowledge and capabilities, built my network, and worked with brilliant teams who challenged me. I left Google at the 10-year mark more enriched than I would have done had I made the move 5 years earlier. 

Who is your target audience?

Any business can benefit from achieving creative excellence at scale. Marketers are recognising their creative for what it is: a major untapped competitive advantage to drive media efficiencies and long-term brand growth. In fact, we’re seeing CMOs launching Centres of Creative Excellence and rebuilding their insights and production capabilities to scale content production in a data-driven way.

What plans do you have for the business over the next two years?

CreativeX has just raised $25M in Series B funding from Guggenheim Investments which showcases the appetite for this technology in the space. The likes of Google, Facebook and TikTok are all evangelising the importance and power of creative in the digital landscape, but advertisers just don’t know whether their creative is any good at scale. Are we doing the basic things that are asked of us? Are we hitting those creative quality ABCDs? Are we meeting brand guidelines in every piece of creative content? These are just some of the questions marketers are asking themselves - and it’s not surprising, given the speed, fragmentation and the complexity of the media landscape.

I am only 90 days into the role but there is so much I want to accomplish in the next two years. I want to help brands scale up on this opportunity to start to understand what their creative looks like today. Every brand is on its own creative maturity journey, but they all want to understand what’s the next level of sophistication. It’s up to us to guide them on those next steps.

Overview of how your business works:

The creative element of marketing is known to have the largest influence on sales uplift, but how it works is the least understood part of the marketing mix. 

Whilst CMOs have realised their creative work needs to do more as an effectiveness lever, until now, they haven’t had access to a confident and effective way to centrally measure, scale and improve creative work. 

CreativeX provides technology that empowers marketers at the world’s leading brands to define, measure and scale creative excellence across their global content. Used by brands like Facebook, Heineken, Bayer, Unilever, and more, CreativeX provides the first-ever creative data platform, which allows digital marketing and consumer insights teams to scale great creative decision-making with a single source of truth for tracking the efficiency and effectiveness of images and videos globally. 

Their unique tools and data set bring transparency to complex content challenges, providing a common language to improve creative work and deliver globally relevant learnings to power creative thinking and help marketers build effective and responsible brands with confidence.