Women in Business: Meet Michelle Frantino

Standing at a crossroads between business strategy and creativity, Marketing is an exciting world filled with passionate experts like Michelle. Anecdotes, strategy, day-to-day, challenges; She takes us behind the scenes of Marketing at Criteo. 

How long have you been working in Marketing? 

I have been in the marketing game for ten years now. I was a journalism major and a tech enthusiast before finding my way into advertising. I consider myself lucky to find my way into this profession. It allowed me to build a career around my love for writing and storytelling. I knew I had found my passion and calling right after my first marketing internship. 

What are your current responsibilities here at Criteo? 

I work within the Field Marketing team here at Criteo, leading the Americas and European Field Marketing functions. Field Marketing has a unique scope as it sits between marketing and sales. We support the client solutions team with activations that help them drive the business, touching activations such as event marketing, sales collateral, paid media, and account-based marketing to name a few.  

What do you like the most about your job? 

I love making complex things simple. A big part of marketing, in general, is to ensure that your messaging is relatable and timely. Every day, we find creative ways to tell stories about our industry and spread the word about Criteo. And those stories are never the same! We face constant innovation and change, which is every marketer's dream. As our industry and technology are constantly evolving, creativity is an always-on skillet you get to apply daily. 

Do you like managing people? How do you work with your teams? 

I love being a manager. There is no better reward than supporting someone in strategizing and attaining their career goals. It is a great privilege to be trusted with growing talent, so I take it very seriously. I try to build my team around constant collaboration, so no one ever feels alone. With a collaborative dynamic, you create those big memorable moments where you lift each other up during the busier periods and celebrate the wins together. It's a “lean on me” or ��I have your back mentality” that I try to lead with and cascade across my team.   

Do you have any anecdote of comradeship to share?  

I have plenty! But my favorite Criteo moments are the comradeship and friendship that develop among the team anytime we work toward a big event or activation. These often pull in teams such as product marketing, GTM and sales. This is when work becomes fun, and you get to seize what being part of a team truly means.  

Can you remember one great challenge you faced in your career? 

 One of the biggest challenges of my career happened during Covid when we moved all our marketing programs to be 100% virtual. Marketing appeals to our senses, like sight, smell, touch, and taste, and we use each of them to create a brand that will impact our customers and prospects. Without the live element, building impactful marketing took more creativity than ever! While challenging, it led us to think more strategically about the programs we pushed to market – it completely changed how the industry consumes content. We rose to the challenge and came out of this journey stronger than before!  

Can you tell us a bit about Marketing at Criteo, in general? 

Marketing at Criteo is a special team to be a part of, full of insanely creative people who love collaboration. Our department is built on innovation and fueled by the art and science that makes up advertising. Marketing tends to sit at the core of our organization as it touches all teams. From internal comms to industry insights and customer events, we deal with a plurality of exciting projects. What drives our efficiency is that we have teams sitting in local markets worldwide, making us a truly global function. We like to say we think global but act local when it comes to our marketing efforts. 

Any tips or tricks you use to make campaigns even more impactful? 

Keeping our customers at the center of everything we do creates impact and ensures that our messaging appeals to all our customers. Criteo is unique in that it sits at the center of the commerce ecosystem, allowing us to serve many different customers: Agencies, Brands, Retailers, etc. We learned to tailor our messaging to these specific audience segments long ago. This attention to personalizing our messaging has made our marketing more powerful.