Appi Camper is an interview series that shines a spotlight on today's mobile elite, showcasing their expertise and knowledge. Growth leaders share trends, strategies to navigate the current market, tips to overcome present challenges, and how they approach these impacts to successfully emerge as an Appi Camper.

Spotlight with Olivia Smith

Olivia Smith has spent over 8 years in growth marketing helping businesses of all sizes scale their brands and grow their presence. After working in fashion, technology, education, and transportation, she recently pivoted to an Operations & Marketplace role within Nike's Innovation wing. There she works on scaling new ideas from day one, strategizing across marketing, technology, and general operations. She is an LA native who currently resides in Northeast Los Angeles.

What are the trends you are seeing as a result of Apple's announcement regarding privacy and IDFA? Any notable effects, strategies, or workarounds you can share?

I think a big "trend" we're seeing is confusion. I don't think many growth marketers within the app space can really predict where this is going to take us in both the short term and long term, just have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. If we're using Apple's location privacy rollout and effects as an example, while calculating it to be a bit worse since IDFA is linked to PII, some brands are going to be hit pretty hard and will have to be prepared to pivot.

Something I am working through and testing proactively is making the advertising opt-in as friendly, seamless, and informational as possible. This is also a huge moment where brands should be examining their brand's positioning and seeing where the gaps are - if you have a loyal customer base, this transition can be a lot easier.

What are some of the challenges of mobile marketing during this time?

I think we're living in a time where brands are split pretty 50/50 - you have those who are pausing on growth and are figuring out ways to pivot and/or have had to go through a hibernation period where they lay off a majority of their staff.
You also have brands who are blowing up right now because of how accessible they are (Getaway House, TikTok, etc) and the benefit they have to just help people not think about what's going on right now.
I think the challenge for growth marketing is being on the right side of the equation and also being able to execute on growth while maintaining a social conscious of what's going on. We're no longer living in times of uncertainty, we're living in the new normal.

How are you adjusting to working as a remote team? Are there any tips you can share about how to make it work?

I have been fully remote for 8 months, which is 69% of 2020, and I am still not 100% used to it.
Coming from a standpoint of someone who worked from home part-time, I thought I would be easy to adjust, but there is the added stress of also starting a new job in the middle. With that circumstance, I miss being able to start a new position in a new office and meet my team in person. I've had to adjust to spending A LOT of time on Zoom just for the purposes of meeting people that I'd normally catch in the communal kitchen. With that being said, I've been able to make it work by being more informal with my team and holding space for everyone. Some weeks we consistently meet daily to talk priorities, other weeks we miss a few days being people are zoomed out. I've found that staying extremely adaptable is more successful than trying to be structured every single day - the people you hired know what they need to do to drive the business forward.

What are you doing to stay positive and balanced while working remotely?

While I'm less structured with my team around meetings, I'm very structured with myself as to not get burnt out. At the beginning of the stay at home orders, I was often working 12-15 hour days because, why not? Work is the only thing I have! I quickly discovered that it wasn't healthy nor was it really all that productive. Yes, I got a lot done at work, but it left other things undone around my house. I now stop myself at 8-9 hours and regularly take breaks to walk, workout, wash dishes, whatever I need to do.

Being at home has also allowed me to get out more and explore - I live in a beautiful part of California where I can take a short drive to the mountains, the beach, and many other places and experience nature while not being around other people. When I was working in an office, I wasn't able to do that!