In discussion: Charlie Patel on mentoring, customer-centricity and all things curation

In our latest episode of Life in Digital, we spoke to Charlie Patel, Revenue Partnerships Director (Global) at Multilocal, about her career to date, the importance of mentoring within the industry, and the future of programmatic media. 

As career moves go, Charlie’s first role was quite something. While studying for a computing degree, she secured a much-coveted student placement at Microsoft, which marked the beginning of a decade-long stint working at the software giant, both in the UK and Canada.

Now, for programmatic curation company Multilocal, Charlie is a client-centric salesperson, an active mentor (and mentee), and an empathetic advocate for parents returning to the workplace. Here, she shares her thoughts on what makes an effective salesperson, and how we can help one another navigate career progression through shared experiences.

Stepping into your customer’s shoes

“Working with anyone should always be about asking what they want or need, and then seeing how I can provide that.”

Charlie feels strongly that putting the customer first and asking the right, exploratory questions are the key factors in productive client-sales relationships - certainly in a global working environment such as Multilocal, with clients and partners from multiple different countries and cultures. Being successful in her role is less about geography and more about listening to the client to understand the nuances of individual businesses, she says. 

“Whatever country I'm pitching in, or our sales partners are pitching in on our behalf,  it's all about what the client needs, what they want, and how they work.”

The value of mentoring relationships

Having had a mentor throughout her career, Charlie is hugely supportive of programmes that enable people to pair up in these mutually supportive relationships. Her experience as a career professional and a mum returning to the industry after time out with her family has further confirmed her belief in the value of these networks, such as Bloom and others.

She says: “You have such a fear coming back into the industry, especially one that moves at the speed of ours. Even with support, I think it can be really difficult, so I want to give back to anyone in that situation. It's one of the best things I've ever done.”

What’s hot for 2024?

Charlie predicts that the trends seen so far in Q1 will continue in the months ahead, with evolution in the digital space focused on three main areas.

“I think curation is a key focus, and definitely AI too - which I love! And sustainability is always going to be there. We have to be smarter about what we're doing to our planet.”

On that note, with clients increasingly adding sustainability as a priority when choosing campaign partners, the kind of multifaceted curation offered by platforms such as Multilocal lends itself very much to efforts to reduce carbon. “Curation is naturally a way to be more sustainable,” she says. “It's picking the best of the best supply for that specific campaign - and therefore reaching the ideal audience for that brand - while lowering carbon emissions”. 

With very specific audience targeting, campaign performance can be increased and wastage reduced. New measurement solutions are also emerging to monitor reduction - for instance, Multilocal’s CarbonSmart solution.

As for what else lies ahead this year, Charlie also points out that while the wider industry is having to make quite significant strategic and technical shifts in the wake of cookie deprecation, Multilocal is in the fortunate position of having being geared up for cookieless advertising from the outset. “Multilocal has been built from the ground up for a cookieless world. So we're in a great place. We’re good to go!”

To find out more about the nuances of programmatic curation and the work of Multilocal, listen to the full story here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/ISS163kRwHb

You can find the full episode and more on our Life in Digital podcast. To find out more about programmatic curation on a global scale, visit Multilocal.