Employee Spotlight: Bayden McCallum!

Q1. Introduce yourself!

I'm Bayden, and I'm the Senior Sales Manager based in Venatus' Australian office. My professional background is constructed from 7+ years in advertising agencies, developing my skills from offline (TV, radio, print, OOH) towards a more digital focus. I then started to broaden my capabilities to all digital channels (direct, programmatic, sponsorships, SEM, Social, etc.) before realising “I have achieved everything I can in agency”. This is when I joined Venatus to build my skills on the sales-side of advertising, and experience something new within the same industry. I immediately found that my agency background allowed me to excel rapidly in my sales role. Having a ton of connections across various agencies, along with understanding the foundations of how an agency operates and how they service their clients gave me an edge to communicate with contacts on a more personal level. I understand what they’re going through every week!

Working for Venatus has been a dream, really! We have some of the most exciting tech in the industry, we are in one of the largest media sectors to exist, and gaming as an advertising solution has had a real push since COVID — enabling me to grow with the company. The resources that Venatus offers really allows each employee to work at their optimal pace.

Q2. What attracted you to joining Venatus?

I was looking for a new role outside of media agencies and I showed Pat Mulroney (Head of APAC) a JD for Yahoo’s SSP. Pat and I have been industry contacts for a long time, so he asked me why would I stay at an enormous corporation when I could instead join a fun, growing AdTech platform like Venatus? I didn’t have an answer, so we talked through it and the sales role at Venatus seemed very attractive. I was able to leverage a lot of my existing skills, while developing new ones and selling something I personally believe in: gaming!

Here are a few key points that have kept me so happy in my role: 
1. I believe in gaming and my genuine passion shines through when presenting solutions to clients!
2. It works! The tech behind our solutions works seamlessly so there are no worries about a campaign not hitting its goals. This is also thanks to our amazing...
3. ...AdOps team! I’ve never seen a stronger AdOps team in my 10+ years in advertising experience. Geniuses.
4. The solutions and formats Venatus offers are innovative and consistently achieve great results, always meeting or surpassing benchmarks.
5. The leadership team is great. Our local leader at Venatus Australia, Pat Mulroney, really gives us all the tools and empowerment we need to succeed in helping brands reach audiences through gaming.

Q3. What are your impressions of Venatus’ culture and work environment?

In Australia we are a bit detached from the UK head office in terms of culture. We are a very small office locally but we have been able to leverage the resources of Venatus to be able to make a real splash in the APAC markets. The culture allows you work hard, expand your network, work flexibly when required.

The Australia office is currently sharing a space with another company, so it’s been good to have a lot social interaction despite our small AUS team. Traveling for work is also nice, expanding my network into Melbourne and NZ. Trust is key, luckily Pat is really good with letting me crack on as long as my work is getting done — allowing me to be pretty autonomous until I need a hand with something.

When it comes to company values, I think the DE&I committee is the strongest one I’ve seen during my 12 years in ad land. I’m learning something new every month, and we’re a truly global company so I've gained an understanding of the different values and cultures from our offices worldwide.

Locally, the values that stand out are:

• Self Starters: As the Australian team is so small, we need to be great independent workers.
• All In: We help each other, and our international teams support us even more.

Q4. What would your advice be to someone considering Venatus as their next workplace?

I love working at Venatus because it’s fun! You work on fun briefs and clients genuinely want to create engaging experiences for their ad campaigns — this allows you to be creative in your work and in your everyday life in the Venatus office. If there's anything I would have done differently along the way, it's joining sooner! ‍

BONUS: If you could have dinner with any three people, alive or dead, who would they be?

Donald Trump, Bob Marley, and Pauline Hansen. Imagine the chaos! 😂

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