Strategy Days 2021

On 26th and 27th May, we hosted the first instalment of our smartclip Strategy Days. Over the two-day period, our employees had the chance to gain valuable insights into smartclip’s company strategy and learn more about our business partners.

The first day began with a welcome presentation from our co-CEOs, Dr Oliver Vesper and Thomas Servatius, who kicked things off by explaining the idea behind Strategy Days — a spin-off of smartweek. Afterwards, the pair gave a detailed overview of the company strategy, drew attention to our most pressing business challenges and goals, and highlighted the importance of having a strong company culture to help overcome these.

“Everything we do happens while culture happens. Whether it’s planned or not, all companies have a culture, so why not create one we love?”
Dr. Oliver Vesper, Co-CEO smartclip

After the introduction, Julia Reuter, Managing Director Strategy, People & Culture at Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, explained the new RTL United approach and the underlying strategic rationale.

She went on to present the new branding that unites all RTL entities, along with the media group’s new purpose and culture.

In the afternoon, we invited former CTO of IBM Deutschland, Gunter Dueck, to join us. A recognised IBM Distinguished Engineer and IBM Master Inventor, he turned his focus to business philosophy after retiring in 2011. During his talk, Gunther spoke about his views on corporate culture in his own unique way and shed light on his fascinating past experiences. Moreover, he highlighted the importance of diversity for business success, offered some entertaining comparisons, and even stoked the long-standing smartclip dog vs. cat debate.

The second day began with a strategic overview of the smartclip markets in the Nordics, Benelux, and Italy. Halvard Kristiansen, the new Managing Director for smartclip Nordics, also took the opportunity to introduce himself to the whole company.

Afterwards, Arturo Larrainzar Garijo, Head of Strategy at Atresmedia, explained how ATV is transforming broadcasters’ revenue streams. Focusing on the partnership between smartclip and Atresmedia, he offered fascinating insights into Atresmedia’s strategy. 

Just before the lunch break, Tim Sewell, CEO of Yospace, took to the floor to explain his company’s business model and technology, and gave a detailed overview of their existing partnership with smartclip.

After lunch, Thomas Servatius explained the importance of data literacy. He began by explaining why data alone is not a competitive advantage in business — experts such as data scientists are always required in order to be able to interpret data in the most comprehensive way. Nonetheless, data scientists cannot process all data on their own. Thomas also used the time to introduce Servatius’ law:

“As the number of analytical problems grows exponentially while data scientist capacity grows linearly, there will never be enough data scientists to solve all data-driven problems.”
Thomas Servatius, Co-CEO smartclip

With this in mind, he advocated for all smartclip employees to reach a certain level of data literacy to enable them to interpret data on a basic level. His presentation was followed by Evelyn Münster, Managing Partner & Data Designer at Designation.

Evelyn shared tips on how to present data in a digestible way and demonstrated how the use of graphs can make for more appealing and comprehensive presentations.

In the afternoon, we held a fireside chat with James Gross and Matt Freidin from Microsoft Casual Games. Strong, long-term, and fruitful partnerships are one of the keys to our business success. During the discussion, they explained what Microsoft is looking for in a partnership, how they select the companies they work with, and gave insights into their existing partnership with smartclip.

“smartclip has always been very upfront with us about what’s happening, with the partners they bring on board and the challenges they see. They are extremely proactive in sharing information about the markets and, ultimately, in advising us how we can best work together to improve our monetisation strategy. For us, that’s hugely important.”
James Gross, Director of Monetization at Microsoft Casual Games

In the final Strategy Days session, Dr Oliver Vesper and Thomas Servatius abstained from using presentations and instead hosted an open discussion. Employees were free to ask whatever they liked and the two Co-CEOs took the time to answer all questions candidly and comprehensively. They closed the event by thanking everyone for taking part in the discussion, and in the smartclip Strategy Days as a whole.

Next up in the smartclip event calendar: the second instalment of smartweek. This company-wide event was founded on the principle of internal knowledge exchange and training employees in key areas.