Ellie Edwards-Scott (The Advisory Collective): Success is what we make it and how we choose to define it

Cristina Blanaru Business, Creativity, People, Women in Business

As March is a month when women are celebrated, AdHugger asked a few professionals with a remarkable career to tell us their views on developing their career as women working in the communication industry. Ellie Edwards-Scott offered us her view over the matter.

Ellie Edwards-Scott is co-founder The Advisory Collective, working with progressive businesses supporting their successful launch and growth strategies as well as digital acceleration projects. A champion for exclusivity in the industry she has recently co-created Digital Leading Ladies group to connect, support and provide business opportunities and networking for women.

  • What were the main obstacles to surpass?

I wouldn’t call it an ‘obstacle’ because it was actually such an amazing time in my life (being pregnant) but as it coincided with my move into a Senior Leadership position it did present me with some challenges. Looking back I feel that the business should have definitely supported me more, but my immediate peer group were all male so there was a lack of understanding and empathy – a lot of it unconscious! I was promoted whilst the company knew that I was pregnant, and even though there was an unspoken pressure of me needing to return back to the business within an ‘acceptable’ period of time, it was great for me to take that next step up.

  • How did you managed to achieve success?

At different points throughout my career, I have learnt to reevaluate what ‘success’ is – it can be very easy to assimilate to the cookie cutter version of success but since branching out on my own nearly 4 years ago, and then launching a partnership last year and building out a brand from nothing I’ve realized that success is what we make it and how we choose to define it. Success to me now is about the clients that I work with, and even those that I don’t work with but I learn something new by being exposed to them, it’s about the people that I get to connect with, and the initiatives that I can get involved with to try and make a difference within the industry.

  • What do you think today’s industry would need more?

We need more difference, we need more disruption, we need more people who will challenge the status quo and also ask questions, we need more independent thinkers. The best discussions and ideas are formed when you have people from different backgrounds and with different experiences coming together. If we want to evolve as an industry and ensure that we are staying relevant to the consumer it’s imperative that we can understand and reflect the culturally diverse melting pot that is the UK.

  • Top 3 things to follow during the current year
  1. Direct To Consumer – I’m interested to see how DTC will evolve. The way that consumers purchase has rapidly changed over the last few years (and unfortunately meant a high street in decline) but a lot of brands are having to rethink their marketing and messaging to tap directly into the customer mindset. Inevitably DTC should mean a bit of an industry shake up as some of the middlemen – who were adding little value are taken out of the equation, and hopefully it will mean that we utilise creativity and data more effectively to appeal to the consumer in the right way, at the right time, with the right message to illicit the desired response.
  2. In-Housing – This isn’t new but increasingly brands are taking elements of their business away from agencies and managing it themselves. This is no longer the threat to agencies that it was once thought to be but it does mean that agencies, and indeed media owners and tech companies have had to adapt more fluid business models to accommodate this.
  3. Voice Technology – I think that we will only scratch the surface of voice technology capabilities this year, and indeed over the next few years but I am interested to see how we will continue to use VT in both our daily lives and how we can incorporate that into advertising to enable brands to have a better interaction with their customers.