Smiirl Team Presentation : Simon – CMO

He made a triumphant arrival the 1st of July. Gauthier had been looking for a CMO for at least 4 or 5 months, and there he is! And now that I've decided to stay, he became my boss. He's taking the lead on something I've started to work on : Facebook Ads. His role is to make them relevant (well, they were relevant, but not optimized enough) in order to skyrocket our turnover, and develop our social media audiences. The legend says he can create 50 Ad sets, analyze our Google analytics data, make phone calls  and drink  coffee at the same time! Basically, he's the superhero Smiirl needed to take over the world (we're coming at you America, oh yeah).

Let's begin with his scholarship. As usual, because we freaking hate what's conventional at Smiirl, we've hired someone with a rather atypical background. During his high-school years, he admits that he never was a perfect student, some teachers often telling them he seriously lacked concentration and interest in what was happening in class. And, I quote "None of my teachers would have bet on me". Freshly graduated, he, as many of us, lost himself in the dark and narrow corridors of a university specialized in Foreign Languages, in which he only "survives" one full year. To sum it up, Simon joined at the time the very very long list of students engaging themselves in a path they will denigrate in the future.

But let's not focus on the negative aspects of his scholarship. After this useless year, he suddenly got it while discovering the world of marketing and communication. But, resentful of the traditional scholar system, he thrived for change and finally decided to go for a technical diploma in communication, in a block release program. He then began to sharpen his blade at Globe, a shopper marketing agency, as project manager, and left as valedictorian of the technical uni he was in (one hell of a silver line on his degree, which reminded badly of all the people who put barriers in his path before...).

Once again graduated, but this time from the university, he decided to stay at Globe in full-time contract for one year, in order to improve his skills. One year passed and his thirst for knowledge made him go back to studying (a reaaaal challenge when you had just spent one full year working). He applied and successfully joined the ECS Paris in the communication/digital marketing program, once again as an alternating apprentice. Strangely (in a world where professional loyalty has become something as rare as blackberry phones), he signed for a fourth and a fifth year at Globe, as Marketing Manager, under the administrative supervision of the Marketing Director. Aside from retail strategies he was working on there, he improved his skills in digital marketing (SEO, community management), vital skills for what he's doing today @Smiirl. In his spare time, he trained on more technical aspects of the digital world on his own, such as HTML/CSS and some programming on projects like Arduino  and Raspberry Pi.

Shhhhft, woob woob, transition :

After 5 years in a 100 people size agency, Simon wanted to discover something else, to be able to drive his own team and thus make good use of everything he had learned @Globe. Start-ups, he describes them as a lab, a lab for every single task, innovation being constant and essential for a startup survival and durability. The decision chain is there way shorter than in big structures, and that's what attracted him to the world of startups.

So, why Smiirl you may ask? Imma tell ya.  The big X factor Smiirl had for him was first and foremost a project he knew, in a field he loved (IOT). He wanted to play his part in the project, and to help the team build a solid and long-term increase.

What convinced him you may ask? Imma tell ya once again. The team. Simple as that baby. He immediately gripped with this human scale adventure. He first met Gauthier (CEO) and Romain (CTO), and saw in them the love for their work and the willing to be original. Needless to say that he was already seeing himself working for the project, and that he was totally agreeing with the team spirit. Banco.

His passions? Between sports and travels, his motto is constantly discovering. He's got 3 main sports in his golden book : still today, he likes to walk on the "green" of the suburb to go and swing a lil bit (we're talking about golf, for those who only know football and Zlatan). Before that, he spent some time playing rugby and navigating in row crews. As for travels.. Well let's say that he slaps on the face all the people trying to say that they're hardcore travellers : Spain, Switzerland, Swede, Norway, Poland, Belgium, GB, Maurice Islands, Maldives, Seychelles, Antilles, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, US, Brazil, Argentina, Emirates... Wow. Just wow.

Finally, when we asked Simon his projects for the future, we can immediately understand that this guy has great ambitions. To this question he answers : "I wanna develop Smiirl's notoriety worldwide". What else? "I wanna open the first Smiirl USA offices". Ooookay, alright, great. But what can be understood in his answers is that he associates "future" with "Smiirl", just sayin. But when you get to know the guy and you spend sometime working with him, we know that "Smiirl USA" might not stay a utopia.  AMERICA WE'RE COMING FOR YOU BRO !

Thanks for reading this article, we hope you enjoyed learning a bit about our new cash machine,

I'm out 😉