Meet the Lead: Jordan Abrahams
At Vivid, we’re obsessed with growth. Our mission is to grow your money, but growth can take on many forms, from the products we offer you, to the Vividians we bring to the company as team members.
So you can imagine, the Head of Growth and Marketing has an incredibly important job for the company. The man who holds it is Jordan Abrahams, who joined Vivid just a few weeks ago, and has already been taking the company by storm. We asked him a few questions about what it’s like to occupy this important role at Vivid.
Welcome Jordan! Tell us a bit about yourself
I lived in South Africa most of my life and actually relocated to Asia for a while, and from there I moved to the UK, where I did my higher education. I started my career in the tech space working for a small tech company in the partnerships followed by some time working for one of the world's largest FMCG companies. There is where I developed my interest and passion for start-ups and scale-ups. I quickly decided I wanted to experience the start-up life and quit my job to launch my own ventures, which gave me first-hand experience in growth, marketing, and exposed me to the start-up world. After a few years of going it alone, I moved on to work for a fintech startup here in Amsterdam which led me to my role at Vivid. On the personal side, I love to play sports, enjoy the outdoors and travel as much as possible.
What is your superpower?
Tongmaster! I barbecue throughout the year, and even with rain and snow! I actually have my friends coming over tonight, to barbecue even now in winter! In South Africa we barbecue every day, so I got a big barbecue in the garden here, where I grill some chickens and veggies.
Why Vivid now?
Good question! There are three main reasons that stand out for me, firstly our founders, Alex and Artem. Their vision to create a financial product that gives everyone the opportunity to manage their finances and grow their wealth the same, no matter your financial status or where you live, resonates with me as I truly see real life application and need for Vivid. Secondly, our shared ambition to be a truly local partner to our customers. We understand that no one person's financial needs are the same as the next, so how can we expect a product to meet all our customers' needs?
Thirdly, our ambition to grow and give back to our customers. I think this is something you hear bandied about by a lot of companies these days - “we grow your wealth”, but what I admire about Vivid is that we are relentless when it comes to doing what we advertise on the tin. True, we need customers that grow our business: that is no secret. However, we take our budget, work with our consumers who see and value our product and ask them to help us grow, because we want to reinvest in them. We empower our customers to grow their wealth.
What is your role at Vivid and your main goals for 2022 at Vivid?
At Vivid I am responsible for the growth and marketing teams, which are directly responsible for the growth of our product and brand across our key markets. My responsibility is to align our business, brand and growth goals and bring these to life.
What are my main goals for 2022? I cannot disclose too much detail, but what I can say is that it is going to be an extremely exciting year. I am almost jealous of our customers and what they are going to experience on the Vivid platform.
I have three main goals for this year: growth, brand and team.
Growth: We are a very ambitious company and we like to set our targets high and that is a KPI I am directly focusing my energy on. From adopters of our products and features through to growing our social media followers.
Brand: We have a great brand and even better story to tell. I want to get our brand and the story behind our brand in front of more people.
Team: We have a great team however we have a long way to go. My ambition is to build a leading growth and marketing team within the European fintech space.
On a personal level I want to complete my first half IronMan before my 30th! And learning Spanish, it’s on my to-do list.
What is it about marketing that you are passionate about?
I have always been fascinated about consumer buying behaviour. Essentially what makes customers tick. When it comes to day-to-day marketing it’s taking a vision turning into a strategy and activating on that strategy and seeing it come to life, from branding through to social and communications.
From a growth marketing perspective, the consistent pressure to deliver goals keeps me highly motivated and focused. With the knowledge that one small optimization or one off the wall idea could substantially help deliver our growth, keeps our team lean, innovative and on our feet. I enjoy that there is no right or wrong way to approach growth, it's a sequence of testing, learning, adaptation and scaling and this way of thinking fits my entrepreneurial way of thinking.
What trends in marketing should we keep an eye on in the near future?
The world is changing more rapidly than we could have ever forsean with early signs of mass market adoption of crypto, NFT and the metaverse things are likely to change even faster. This means that marketing needs to adapt to keep up with this change. Areas I believe all marketers should be keeping an eye on are:
Personalization. The old saying goes, market to everyone and market to no one. This year this will be more evident than ever. As markets become more competitive and customers are targeted more than ever, the message you are pushing towards them needs to appeal to them.
Brand has always been important but as it becomes easier and easier to develop or copy products physical or digital, it becomes harder and harder to stand out with product lead USP’s. That’s where the brand comes in, by creating a strong brand identity you can stand out from the crowd and connect with consumers on a personal level.
Video content: in line with the boom of TikTok. We will see more brands activating in this space; not like traditional high production video content, expect to see brands adapting a more organic lower budget format of content.
User generated content (UGC) is and will continue to be a key pillar in a marketing team's success. Think of it as word of mouth marketing but suited toward the digital era.
Interactive marketing. Think of it as content experiences. Interactive content has been a growing trend for a while now and we can expect this to continue as content becomes easier to create and distribute. Brands need to look for new ways to captivate and engage with followers with their content. Examples are Polls, quizzes, competitions, augmented reality and helpful education tools.
Metaverse. Brands will need to start exploring ways in which they can connect, and answer the needs of consumers in the metaverse. We are already seeing this adoption with leading apparel brands such as Nike and Adidas.
Community. Over the past year we have been given an amazing lesson in the power of community with NFT’s. These projects have been able to create huge demand and hype for their products before they have even been created by leveraging the power of their communities. Resulting in projects like The Bored Ape Yacht Club selling out in a matter of minutes and seeing digital pieces of art selling for in excesses of $2 million. The question is how can brands begin to understand how to create and leverage these communities.