Panos
the builder
About
Hello world! I’m Panos the builder. I build brands, teams and businesses. A cross-breed really. My mixed DNA – agency and client, entrepreneur and corporate, local and global, traditional and digital – keeps me restless. Have lived a few “lives” in the past. Brand Manager, Marketing Director, Agency Founder, Local Agency CEO, Regional SVP for Global Brands, Head of Brand. About to start a new “life” now. And I want to live this life to the fullest. With new people, new challenges, new skills, new opportunities.
Because life is the most exciting opportunity we have!
Skills
- Strategic Planning
- Brand Management
- Integrated Marketing Campaigns
- Go-To-Market Campaigns
- Brand Architecture
- CRM & Loyalty Programs
- Performance Campaigns
- E-Commerce
- Mobile Apps
- Creative Team Leadership
- Content Strategies
- Creative Innovations
RESUME
GLOBAL HEAD OF BRAND - Agoda (Booking holdings group)
Managing a brand, creative, and media buying and analytics team. Leading end-to-end localized campaign development in key regions in SEA. Measuring campaign effectiveness and optimizing media planning. Creating all storefront marketing communication. Collaborating closely with PR and Social team for amplification of campaigns, and with performance team for optimization of lower funnel communication.
UBER (grocery vertical) - HEAD OF BRAND AND COMMS
Led significant improvements across the customer journey through the end-to-end management of this brand and its global execution. Owned all agency relationships from PR to social media, content, influencers, and creative. Held direct oversight of a team of 50. •Facilitated precision messaging across multiple touchpoints by driving the development of brand architecture, brand funnel messaging, performance campaigns, research, CRM, content, and social. •Created a high-impact organic strategy for blogs, SEO, and social that seamlessly aligned with brand architecture. Cooperated with Uber brand team to create an overarching Uber Brand ladder for Latam, incorporating Rides, Eats and Grocery into a unified positioning. •Significantly decreased CAQ and elevated existing conversion rates by restructuring all communication strategies on performance and CRM.
ALURX.COM-HEAD OF MARKETING
Laid the groundwork for market relevance and world-class service delivery by building the entire brand identity from initial concepting to product development and e-commerce launch within 6 months. •Fueled business development by infusing the brand identity into product packaging, user experience, and web design. •Coordinated all marketing activations, including PR, Social, Influencer & Affiliate Strategy, CRM, Media, and Performance.
ANCESTRY - BRAND AND CRM STRATEGIST
Positioned Ancestry for sustainable penetration into the global market by transforming insights into full-fledged brand strategies via customized qualitative market research activities. •Produced a 9% increase in open rates and subscriptions by forging new brand positioning and communication architecture while redesigning the existing CRM customer journey and messaging. •Expanded Ancestry’s reach in the AMER and EMEA regions by leading customized agency pitches and briefings in 3 crucial international markets (UK, Germany, Canada).
MCCANN EMEA - SVP GLOBAL BRANDS
Oversaw all European MasterCard advertising across 22 markets and other channels, leading all agency partners (media, sponsorships, and social) and maintaining end-to-end brand governance. Coached a team of 80 cross-functional members. •Achieved a +24% revenue jump through the development of global and regional campaigns, championing brand architecture redesign and integrated campaigns alongside web and mobile applications. •Sustained critical partnerships activations with UEFA, Brit Awards, and Adidas e-commerce while overseeing all associated engagements with agency partners and handling the media, social, CRM, and experiential deliverables. •Managed highly complex stakeholder structures and coordinated the operations of 4 regional operational hubs in the EMEA region. •Elevated creative delivery as the manager of the European creative hub responsible for developing Global and European scale campaigns while training over 90 staff members across 22 markets.
MCCANN ATHENS - CEO
Transformed offerings as the MD for a group of agencies (McCann, MRM, Momentum, and Weber Shandwick) servicing Fortune 500 global clients such as Coke, L’Oreal, Nestle, GM, and Shell. Built and nurtured a creative team of 85. •Positioned the agency for growth within the first 6 months and reversed a negative climate survey by conducting a complete culture turnaround. •Achieved a +100% revenue growth in 3 years and elevated the agency ranking in the Greek market by 9 places, from #11 to #2, which ignited profitability after 8 consecutive years of losses.
WUNDERMAN - FOUNDER/MANAGING PARTNER
Founded and built the leading database marketing and digital agency in Greece. Managed 82 staff members. Achieved year on year growth of 20%. Went successfully through an earn-out selling the company to WPP.
PREVIOUS ROLES
DIAGEO/PEPSICO/PROCTER & GAMBLE
MBA
Kelley School Of Business - Bloomington Indiana
Bachelor's Degree
Athens graduate school of business and economic science
My Work
OUTSIDE WORK
POKER
BEACH BAR
SCRABBLE
PAPER BOOKS
INFLUENCERS
A few things about me, outside work.
Amateur poker player.
Been playing with friends (and strangers sometimes…) since my high school years. Love the excitement of observing people’s body language and trying to decode them. This game taught me also discipline, how to take calculated risks, how to win with compassion and how to lose with grace.
Ex beach bar owner.
One of my many entrepreneurial activities. Owned one of the most successful beach bars in Greece for 4 years. Learned how pleasurable it is to make people happy with your work/service. This business also taught me how to deal with all types of clients (angry, happy, irrational, demanding, loving, appreciative, etc.)
Crazy scrabble player.
My favourite board game. What I love about it is that is not about luck. It is about skills, creativity and grammar-language.
Book reader.
Enjoy immensely paperback books, bookstores, browsing through shelves, talking to other people in bookstore, exchanging opinions and recommendations. Whenever I want to relax, I pop into a book store and leave with a couple of new learning aspirations. Latest book I am reading is “The revenge of Geography” by Robert Kaplan, as I am particularly interested in politics and current affairs.
Key influencers.
- Isabel Allende – for her great storytelling, her great life attitude, and for empowering women.
- Adam Grant - for promoting empathetic leadership, and for recognizing givers vs takers.
- Brene Brown – for championing vulnerability.
- JFK – for his inspirational leadership and diplomacy.
- Mahatma Gandhi – for his activism and philosophical life.
- Greek philosophers – for teaching me life ethos.
Testimonials
I had the pleasure to work with Panos when he was the MD of Wunderman Greece. Panos was running one of the most successful agencies within Wunderman EMEA evidenced by a great product, a loyal and strong talent base and very happy clients (and, as a result, of course a strong financial performance).
Panos is such an amazing account man and a true partner. He is great in understanding and protecting a great creative idea. He is fantastic at orchestrating the integration between disciplines with a strong focus on digital. He's a relationship builder and a great team leader. Working together was a great experience, and I'm looking forward to this happening again in the future.
I had the great pleasure of working with Panos whilst in his role as SVP, leading Europe at McCann. Leaders inspire others and bring everyone on the journey, this is what Panos does so naturally even in the most complex situations and across many different cultures. His desire to make a difference and commitment is unwavering to delivering creative and innovative results.
A leader, a mentor and a team builder - effortlessly & authentic - that’s Panos. He has the capacity and the drive to motivate teams; to bring people together to develop amazing projects. He is a solution and results driven professional. It was by far my best professional experience to work with Panos and it’s a journey I would take again any time.
Had a pleasure of working with Panos on Ancestry’s creative in Germany. Wow. Very few people have the ability to take research insight, translate it into a crisp/compelling brief and then help the agency focus on executing it.
We meet many people over time, but only some leave the marks, and one of them is Panos. A brilliant brand strategist, great team player and an amazing human. It is always special to see Panos uncovering insights from data, orchestrating powerful brand stories across all touchpoints. Any organization would be lucky to have Panos as their Brand Strategist.
OTHER
Fluent in English, basic knowledge of Spanish. Hold a US and European passport.
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