The Wonder Women of MENA: Bloomberg Media’s Marsha Hofstee
About Marsha Hofstee
Marsha has almost two decades of experience in omnichannel media strategy & planning, data and analytics, client servicing, and managing teams at top tier media agencies, including co-managing an advertising agency – across the Netherlands/Europe and the Middle East.
Her client portfolio consisted of FMCG, luxury and automotive brands including L’Oréal (Luxe), Coca-Cola, Jaguar, Netflix, FrieslandCampina, Haribo, Ford, Lincoln and Mercedes-Benz.
She currently works at Bloomberg Media as Head of Client Solutions MEA, where she oversees the successful delivery of large-scale creative solutions in the region. Bloomberg Media’s custom content partnerships range from sponsorships of editorial platforms or events, to bespoke campaigns in the form of articles, immersive pages and video series – amplified across the entire Bloomberg ecosystem (digital, social, linear TV, OTT, print and radio/podcasts).
Marsha is a strong advocate for an equal opportunity, inclusive, collaborative, transparent, data-driven, and ‘human’ company culture – with empathy at the core.
About her thoughts for the industry
In 2023, we’re bombarded with thousands of ads every single day, across multiple platforms, and with no slowdown in sight. Brands are constantly competing to grab our short-spanned attention.
Having worked on media agency side for many years, the discussion with creatives revolved endlessly around what’s best – ‘short snappy videos’ versus ‘a minute long TVC’. Now working on the publisher side – at Bloomberg Media – we create custom content for global clients, across a 360 media ecosystem. Here the discussions focus on: how we create content that entertains, educates and inspires our audience all at once, and that ‘sticks’ across platforms.
For one brand that might mean taking its audience on a cognitive city tour through a long form animated video with short form cut-downs for social media, for another showcasing hidden tourism gems through a stunning 30 sec social-first video series. A ‘one size fits all’ approach for content no longer works; ads should be tailored to each media platform and audience. What works on Instagram doesn’t necessarily work as effectively on LinkedIn or linear TV, due to the different audience demographics, behavior, and consumption. Matching the right content to the right channels is critical to be successful in reaching our target audiences, now, more than ever when content and channels are in abundance.
To this day, a challenge in our region remains the use of data, but if you spend time understanding how to unlock relevant insights and make them actionable, it can reveal surprising intelligence, spark creativity and generate solutions for your audience. By connecting all data, from different sources, and digging deeper into data, provides more useful insights beyond viewing generic metrics in campaign reports. In 2023, investing in data should be part of any marketing budget – and a key priority.
When it comes to ‘trends’ for this year, let’s not forget empathy. To connect with your audience, showing a human angle and leaning into their passions and interests (through data!), is likely to work best. Empathy should also be a priority on the work floor, which is something that our region needs to further embrace properly. At Bloomberg, this is ingrained into our company culture and is ever apparent in our Dubai office. For agencies there is still more work to be done and 2023 could well be the year of empathetic overhaul.