Marco Veremis, Co Founder and President of Upstream, puts the focus back on the consumer. ‘Speak less, more convincingly’, one of the top tips that Digital Marketers should take heed.

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Marco Veremis, President of Upstream, makes three predictions for the digital marketing industry in 2012. The volume game is no longer viable. Effective, relevant, personalised messaging through different channels will be the way forward.

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LONDON, 23 January 2012 – Global marketing technology and solutions leader Upstream has become a member of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in the U.K. IAB works as a non-profit trade association which promotes growth and best practice for technology providers, advertisers, agencies and media owners involved in online and mobile marketing. As part of its membership, Upstream will also become a member of the IAB Mobile Leadership Council, where it will bring to bear its ten years of experience in creating award-winning, revenue-generating campaigns for its international brand and operator clients.

The announcement reflects Upstream’s investment in its UK operations, including its move to new offices in Victoria and the hiring of more than 25 people in its Research and Development, Product Marketing, Sales, and Sales Management departments over the past six months.

The membership deal will give Upstream access to the IAB’s exclusive research, access to its regulatory guidance services and enable it to play its part in events including IAB’s noted Engage and Mobile Engage conferences.

Jon Mew, Director of Mobile at the IAB, commented: “I’m delighted that Upstream have come on board. They bring their experience and deep understanding of mobile and digital marketing, so they’re certain to be a valued contributor to both our research and events programmes.”

Marco Veremis, President, Upstream, added: “An intense focus on effectiveness, innovation that improves customer experience and an ethos of protecting consumers from digital bombardment – all of these are values we share with the IAB. The IAB is both a great supporter and representative of mobile and digital marketers and we’re looking forward to supporting the organisation and benefitting from its unparalleled resources and expertise.”

Upstream’s new addition, Richard M Marshall, listed as ‘Key Person’ by New Media Age along with other key players from Yahoo and Microsoft. Richard, apart from being a software entrepreneur, has founded four companies including Rapid Mobile Media.

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LONDON and SAN FRANCISCO, 17 January 2011 – Upstream, the global marketing technology and solutions provider, has appointed Richard M Marshall as Vice President (VP) of Technology and Engineering to support its expanding product portfolio and the business’ growth within the booming mobile and digital marketing space.

Bringing his vast experience as an inventor and senior technologist to Upstream, Marshall is responsible for scaling the company’s engineering and infrastructure teams to meet the rapidly growing needs of a demanding, global customer base. This includes the adoption of best development practices to ensure absolute quality, as well as migrating to new techniques such as cloud computing. Together, coupled with engineering excellence, these address the need to respond rapidly and creatively to new customer projects.

Marshall, who holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh, joins Upstream from his role at Reed Exhibitions where he held the position of Global Mobile Product Manager. During his tenure at Reed Exhibitions, Marshall was responsible for its new mobile platform, delivering mobile apps for all key platforms to support several hundred tradeshows and conferences globally.

A self-confessed serial software entrepreneur, Marshall has founded four technology companies, the most recent being Rapid Mobile Media where as CEO he led the creation of innovative mobile solutions and technology. Here Marshall also took on the responsibility of CTO, providing the company’s technical vision, while maintaining hands-on practical experience in mobile development. At Rapid Mobile, Marshall authored six patents covering mobile and marketing technologies.

Marshall’s IT career started at European Silicon Structures Ltd and has progressed to include an impressive range of roles covering all phases of product development, from initial concept through implementation, sales, product management and marketing. Of particular note was his role in creating and promoting DOORS, the world standard for requirements management now part of the IBM Rational portfolio.

Newly appointed Richard M Marshall said “Marketing opportunities in the mobile and digital sectors have yet to be fully exploited’ by joining Upstream he looks forward to ‘increasing the economic benefit of digital media campaigns with simple, elegant engineering.’

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Richard M Marshall joins the Upstream team and takes on the exciting role as Vice President (VP) of Technology and Engineering. Alex Vratskides, CEO of Upstream said “We’re very pleased to welcome Richard to the team, given his expertise and proven excellence in creating new technology and bringing it successfully to market.”

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Guy Krief, Senior Vice-President of Innovation describes how The Upstream Challenge attracts candidates who might have all the right skills but who aren’t attracted by traditional recruitment postings. “Our hope is that this type of engagement will attract a wide range of talent. It’s been said that you can learn more about a person in an hour of play, than in a year of conversation, so it’s going to be fascinating to see the results”.

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The Upstream Challenge proves a hit with candidates, attracting nearly 100 entries a day for the Marketing Campaign Manager roles around the world. The Challenge is fulfilling its promise of uncovering candidates whose resumés would never have attracted Upstream’s attention. Upstream’s gamification expertise it normally deploys for its clients is now being put to good use for its own marketing and recruitment drive.

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The position will be based in Athens and reports to the Legal Counsel. Our company is expanding globally at a fast pace. In this context, the Compliance and Legal Associate will play a key role in the creation, management and audit of the company’s global compliance procedures, whether these are internal or as required by the applicable regulatory bodies. He or she will need to apply strong administrative skills to manage such procedures in the most efficient and effective manner in order to ensure maximum compliance with minimum overhead.

As a Compliance and Legal Associate you will be responsible for:

• Running the day-to-day operations for our compliance programmes
• Compliance monitoring and reviews
• Assisting with policies and procedure updates in response to new/revised regulations
• Managing and modifying standard document templates for every-day use by respective stakeholders (i.e. NDAs, supplier agreement templates, etc.)
• Maintaining the company’s database of legal documents and ensuring the proper execution and filing of all contractual documents

You will assist with other compliance work of varying scope and complexity, and complete daily assignments that require independent judgment and decision-making.

Upstream has extended its expertise in gamification of mobile marketing campaigns to its HR department with the launch of The Upstream Challenge. The Challenge is an online ‘game’ that pits Marketing Campaign Manager candidates against seven intriguing challenges designed to identify the right people for the five open positions in London, Silicon Valley, Athens and Rio.

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The Technical Writer will need to work closely with the Director of Promotions Strategy as well as with the members of the Campaign Management team in order to thoroughly understand the details (processes, best practices, etc.) of each promotional format and document them. The documentation produced will support various internal teams such as Sales, Pre-Sales, Account and Engagement. As a Technical Writer you will be responsible for producing documentation and user manuals for Upstream’s promotions.

The position will be based in Athens.

• Providing high-quality documentation that meets applicable standards and is appropriate for its intended audience.
• Ability to deliver high quality documentation paying attention to detail.
• Ability to quickly grasp complex concepts and make them easily understandable in text and pictures.

• Degree in Engineering or Business.
• Demonstrable experience in technical writing / product documentation.

The Pre-sales Specialist leads the development of sales propositions, researching sales markets, creating sales plans that match specific market needs with Upstream’s solutions. The Pre-Sales Specialist builds up existing sales collateral, to present innovative commercial proposal to mobile operators. The Pre-Sales Specialist is part of the sales department and reports directly to the Head of Pre-Sales. The position is based in Dubai with frequent travel.

You need to be a passionate, proactive self-starter and excellent communicator who can operate in a constantly evolving team environment and have the ability to work effectively with cross-functional and remote teams. Performance is measured by the impact on sales engagements, smooth interaction with the position’s stakeholders and innovation to processes and materials.

As a Pre-sales Specialist in Upstream, you will have a unique opportunity to work with mobile operators around the world on some of the most innovative mobile marketing solutions. With mobile marketing spend poised to grow to $21.2 billion by 2012 (ABI Research), you will help Upstream to continue its rapid growth. The Pre-sales position leads to a potential career in sales, product management or account management.

• Interact with sales staff to support global sales activities
• Model the financial business case associated with each sales opportunity
• Create presentations that clearly communicate the uniqueness of Upstream’s solutions
• Attend sales meetings and present to prospective clients

The role exists to administer, maintain, support and develop the data centre and enterprise systems used by Upstream in the design, development, delivery and operation of its services.

The role adds value by providing the IT systems and services used in the provision of client services and for the collaboration and facilitation of Upstream’s employees in the execution of their specific tasks. Furthermore, such infrastructure and services are provided with the optimal balance of speed of delivery, quality, performance and security in consideration with the business needs.

The role is a member of the global IT team, delivering world class systems used in the delivery of products and services and in to support Upstream users in their execution of business objectives.

Ensure all systems are compliant and consistent with best practices and have the ability to scale and exceed operational and business demands, whilst maintaining unprecedented levels of availability and performance.

As a Microsoft Systems Engineer you will bring domain specific knowledge, skills, and best practices to a team of talented system professionals. You should be able to demonstrate your technical competency at the highest level, delivering mission critical infrastructure and systems and thereby gaining the respect of your peers.

• To contribute to the effective service provision of the Systems and Infrastructure Team.
• Install, configure, test and maintain operating systems, application software and system management tools.
• Proactively ensure the highest levels of systems and infrastructure availability.
• Undertake any ad hoc technical work associated with the planning, administration, installation and operational support of systems and services.

To administer, maintain, support and develop the Global IP infrastructure of Upstream and to design and deliver, in a timely manner, the IP based interconnections with Upstream’s clients and partners.

The role adds value by providing the networking infrastructure and services used in the provision of client services and for the collaboration and facilitation of Upstream’s employees in the execution of their specific tasks. Furthermore, such infrastructure and services are provided with the optimal balance of speed of delivery, quality, performance and security in consideration with the business needs.

The role is a member of the global IT team, delivering world class international IP network solutions used for the delivery of products and services and in to support Upstream users in their execution of business objectives.

Ensure all IP infrastructure and services are compliant and consistent with best practices and have the ability to scale and exceed operational and business demands, whilst maintaining unprecedented levels of availability and performance.

As a Network Engineer you will bring domain specific knowledge, skills, and best practices to a team of talented network professionals. You should be able to demonstrate your technical competency, perseverance, and logical systematic approach to maintaining mission critical local and wide area network infrastructures.

• Undertake specific network engineering tasks in the provision of services.
• Install, configure, test and maintain network devices and network management tools.
• Proactively ensure the highest level of availability for the network infrastructure.

The Project Manager reports to the Head of Project Management and is focused on managing the implementation of Upstream’s projects for major mobile operators in countries throughout the world. This role is ideal for a candidate with high potential who wishes to be rewarded for outstanding performance, while having the opportunity to gain valuable experience on large complex mobile marketing projects.

As a Project Manager in Upstream, you will have a unique opportunity to work with mobile operators around the world on some of the most innovative mobile marketing solutions. With mobile marketing spend poised to grow to $21.2 billion by 2012 (ABI Research), you will help Upstream to continue its rapid growth. The Project Manager position leads to a potential career in product management or account management.

• Coordinating internal resources and/or third parties for the flawless execution of projects
• Assisting in the definition of project specifications and client requirements, involving all relevant departments and ensuring technical feasibility and resource availability
• Tracking progress through a solid project plan
• Ensuring the on-time and on-budget delivery of projects
• Reporting and escalating to management as needed
• Managing client relationships and expectations
• Establishing and maintaining relationships with third parties
• Writing clear briefs for the development, operations and support departments
• Ensuring that all departments involved in the project operate as a united team
• Creating and maintaining comprehensive project documentation

The role of the Office Manager is to organize and supervise the administrative activities that facilitate the smooth and efficient running of the office. The Office Manager is the key ‘go to’ person for the Athens office and will be a key member of the global HR and Administration team.

• Develop and implement operational policies and procedure to ensure smooth running of the office
• Manage office facilities, equipment and provisioning of stationary and suppliers as required
• Manage the in bound calls and direct them in an appropriate manner and provide front-office and reception services
• Ensure guests are greeted and made comfortable while waiting in the reception area
• Scheduling meetings and coordinating conference calls as required and requested
• Provide personal assistance to the President and other key members of the Senior Management team
• Organizing and coordinating internal and external events and meetings
• Support HR in setting up induction days
• Any other suitable duties as required

• Experience in facilities and office management procedures

As a Statistician-Data Analyst in Upstream, you will be acting as a key point of analytical support for various departments in the company and your analyses will critically impact the decision making capability of other roles within the company. You will also, participate in development and application of new innovating statistical techniques in several business problems.

A Statistician in Upstream is responsible for the analysis and optimization of the performance of every running campaign. Using his/her statistical expertise he/she should be able to maximize the revenue for the company as well as provide insights for future trends and opportunities. The statistician will also participate in new product development projects where it is expected to provide statistical support to the rest of the team.

• Participate in management of marketing campaigns, applying your statistical expertise.
• Monitor the progress of Upstream’s projects through internal reporting tools.
• Build new tools and predictive models.
• Apply clustering methods.
• Get new insights in past campaigns data ; Use database queries and advanced data analysis to find patterns
  on current and past customers’ behaviour.
• Present your findings to management and provide advice in the decision making process.
• Contribute in product improvement and innovation.

Upstream’s Head of Latin America, Diego Benavides, celebrates the company’s success at the prestigious MMA Awards, held in LA. “To be acknowledged by the MMA and know that our mobile marketing campaigns for TIM Brasil have generated record levels of engagement and response is very rewarding.” Upstream’s clients in Latin America include Personal in Argentina and Comcel in Colombia.

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The Lead Architect (Research and Development) for one of key product lines will be responsible for the technical management and direction of the Marketing Communication Suite (MCS) product team, and requires a highly motivated and hands-on team player with a strong ability to drive progress, assess future risk and lead by example.

This role leads the MCS development team and reports to S/W director. The goal of the MCS SW development team is to build the campaign management product and the Upstreamization tools. In a wider SW perspective MCS should also provide Upstreamization as a service to other Upstream’s products. This role will lead MCS implementation, ensure that MCS product meets product management requirements and complies with interoperability standards with other Upstream’s products as they’re set from SW department.

• Responsibility for architecture and platform of the Marketing Communication Suite
• Lead developer of the MCS product
• Responsibility for identifying and delegating technical problems as they arise and following through to ensure they were resolved appropriately
• Working with client managers to help meet client’s needs
• Managing a team of developers, requirements analysts, testers etc. using agile methodology
• Contribute in setting up infrastructure for software development process

• Review code that was previously submitted to the versioning software system to ensure that all expectations were met
• Facilitate daily stand-up meeting with the team
• Review sprint progress, resolve blocking issues
• Review product backlog, design and propose to the team technical solutions during planning and design sessions
• Vet out bugs that are reported by testers / clients to determine if they are valid

London and Rio de Janeiro, November 22, 2011 – Upstream, the global mobile marketing technology and solutions provider, has been awarded the prestigious Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) Award for ‘Best Promotion in the Latin American Region’ for its work with TIM Brasil, the country’s second largest operator.

“To be acknowledged by the MMA and know that our mobile marketing campaigns for TIM Brasil have generated record levels of engagement and response is very rewarding,” said Diego Benavides, VP Business Development Latin America, Upstream.

“Brazil is one of the most competitive markets in Latin America, if not the world, so our strategy has been to harness our proven technology with our campaign creativity and expertise to devise the most relevant, targeted and exciting marketing campaigns over mobile to help enlist new customers and drive the highest possible participation among existing subscribers,” continued Benavides.

“Great creative and great storytelling are at the heart of all of our award-winning campaigns. Our winners are truly among the smartest in the mobile channel, and have set rigorously high standards for industry excellence,” said Greg Stuart, Global CEO of the Mobile Marketing Association. “Upstream’s work should serve as an enduring inspiration to marketers worldwide, and a challenge to next year’s competitors.”

Upstream recently announced the official opening of its new regional headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a hub for mobile marketing expertise for Latin American carriers and brands, including existing clients such as Personal in Argentina and Comcel in Colombia, as well as TIM Brasil.

As an Application Administrator you will be responsible for implementing the campaign structure of international mobile marketing campaigns utilizing the company’s proprietary platform. The Application Administrator reports to the Head of Campaign Management.

The position will be based in Athens.

This role is responsible for contributing to the verification of the technical feasibility of the business and game design requirements and proposing appropriate implementation alternatives. He/she works closely with the campaign managers to set up and monitor each campaign, configuring and optimizing both the structure and the content and reviewing the performance of the campaign.

• Configuring Upstream’s proprietary platform for each campaign with campaign structure and content
• Meeting with the all relevant teams to discuss client requirements of the campaign
• Assisting the campaign manager to design and implement the campaign by providing clear insights on the platform’s capabilities
• Assisting with campaigns from the design phase to completion, fine-tuning and optimizing the campaign’s modules
• Monitoring campaign performance
• Contributing to the infrastructure upgrade efforts providing proposals/feedback on automation mechanisms, tools and procedures
• Working on several campaigns at once, under pressure and tight deadlines – while being flexible when required

The Marketing Campaign Manager is responsible for identifying, designing, planning, testing, delivering, monitoring and enhancing cross-channels marketing campaigns in line with business objectives. Your work will ultimately allow for Upstream’s innovation to positively impact millions of consumers around the world.

This roles adds value as the end user of Upstream’s innovative technology to create and implement a program of campaign activity to deliver against business objectives. For further information on the role and to complete the assessment, please click on thechallenge.upstreamsystems.com

The Marketing Campaign Manager adds value as the end user of Upstream’s innovative technology to create & implement a program of campaign activity to deliver against business objectives.

• Develop and execute a series of integrated, multi-channel marketing campaigns to generate direct revenue
• Create test plans and undertake market analysis for each campaign where appropriate
• Prepare and deliver pre-campaign briefings, provide the necessary information to the international copywriting team and lead the creative process to ensure each campaign is a success
• Work alongside the statistical team to ensure targets are met and take decisions around continuation or adjustment of campaign activity
• Drive campaign data segmentation and list selection
• Ensure all campaigns are delivered effectively, to deadline and deliver against business objectives
• Monitor the effectiveness of campaigns, implementing changes where necessary
• Provide detailed analysis and reporting of each campaign, including interpretation, commentary and recommendations
• Have a solid grasp on the data selected for each campaign and fully understand how that data is being used to support campaign and business objectives
• Maintain effective relationships with internal stakeholders

Upstream’s President Marco Veremis makes a case for the ‘Perfect Pitch’ over mobile – one that respects the consumer and yet is so expertly crafted that it invites a willing response. His mantra, that mobile marketers must ‘communicate less, with more impact’ will be tested in the coming years with analyst house Forrester predicting that mobile marketing spend will rise to $1.25bn by 2014.

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LONDON, 4 November 2011 – Upstream President, Marco Veremis, took the stage at the 2011 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards in London last night to outline his vision of the future of digital marketing and to make his case that real effectiveness is all about ‘quality, not quantity’ of communication. The full speech can be viewed here.

Upstream is one of the world’s largest mobile marketing technology and solutions providers, with more than 10 years’ experience, working with clients such as Vodafone, Telefónica, Coca-Cola and Nestlé in more than 40 countries.

In his speech, Veremis looked at how consumers today are being ‘bombarded’ with digital advertising messages:

“If you look at ad impressions, they’ve grown from 127 billion ad impressions in ’96 to five trillion today. To put this in perspective, 16 messages per person globally per year then, 750 today. So it seems to be results through volume, through bombardment. And the question is, have consumers may be reached their saturation point? Can they take more than 750 advertising messages a year? We don’t think so. That’s why we are sponsoring these awards. Effectiveness is about quality. It’s not about volume and I think this is going to be a big thing in the next ten years.”

Veremis voiced his thoughts about how to solve the issue and what the current trend for communication bombardment is doing to response rates:

“So quality, where does quality come from? I think quality comes from consumer insight. Take that extra, extra care and understanding of what consumers want to hear. When they want to hear it? At what frequency they are willing to hear it? And it’s a tough job. It’s much easier to press the launch button and send billions of messages and billions of tweets or whatever else. But it seems to be working the opposite way.”

“Response rates in ’96 were 7% in the digital marketing space. Today they are below 0.1% average. Now I think that tells the truth, right? People are pretty much fed-up. So quality comes from consumer insight and we’re mobile marketers. We are essentially celebrating today the campaigns and the companies that took the care to identify these consumer insights and deliver quality campaigns that deliver effectiveness, true effectiveness. Not volume, effectiveness.”

Veremis wrapped up his address with a view about how he believes mobile marketing companies should be looking to the future:

As sponsor of Mobile Marketing Magazine’s Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, Upstream has strongly held views about how to put the best marketing technology together with effective consumer engagement and revenue-generation strategies to create compelling campaigns. Marco Veremis outlines his vision of the future for mobile marketing.

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The latest Upstream research amongst UK marketers shows that an overwhelming 87% are planning on increasing investment in marketing technologies over the next twelve months, prompting journalist Claire Weekes to ask: “Who will follow in Steve Jobs’ footsteps and emerge as the next icon in our digital marketing world?”

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As a Data Warehouse Engineer you will become part of a very competent software team who have created a world-class product and you will have to be able to contribute in all phases of high volume, mission critical data warehouse management systems engineering.

You will be responsible for managing Big Data and the business continuity process of extracting, transforming and loading pipelines. You will participate in research and development of systems to identify and automate identification of trends,insights and serve results to various platforms from different business units. You will also be requested to optimize, parallelize and fine-tune processes in order to ensure high availability with linear scaling performance characteristics.

Java EE development skills are required to develop scalable modules that interface with different platforms. You will need to have deep knowledge of SQL and/or NoSQL paradigm frameworks and be able to work and deliver using agile methodologies.

As a member of the team you will be in charge of handling and dealing with Big Data sets. As our company grows rapidly in a fast pacing environment, data management is crucial to lead on discovering trends and possible data related optimizations in our production systems.

It is also important and of tremendous value to every Business Unit to be able to rely and trust on our team for data extracting, transformation and retrieval in a reliable, highly available and structured manner.

You will be responsible for supporting business objectives while providing expertise in full software development life cycle, from concept and design to testing. Analyze, design and build component-based applications in an enterprise Web/Internet delivery environment, including introduction of an application layer, modeling techniques, component and object-oriented design, complex algorithmic coding, and systematic approaches to application integration. Perform hands-on coding, mentor junior developers and assist in architecting solutions. You should have an in-depth knowledge of working on high volume, low latency, real-time multi threaded platforms of mission-critical systems.

The position reports to the Head of Engagement Management in the Mobile Operator Business Unit. It is a key role liaising between the client and Upstream’s internal execution capabilities – ensuring the timely and successful delivery of complex mobile marketing campaigns throughout the world.

The position will be based at one our key customer hubs and either Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, New York and San Francisco locations will be considered, there maybe extensive travelling according to project and customer requirements.

As an Engagement Director in Upstream, you will have a unique opportunity to work with mobile operators in North America on some of the most innovative mobile marketing solutions. With mobile marketing spend poised to grow to $21.2 billion by 2012 (ABI Research), you will help Upstream to continue its rapid growth.

This role is ideal for a senior candidate with high potential who wishes to be rewarded for outstanding performance, while having the opportunity to gain valuable international business experience on large mobile marketing projects. The role involves:

• Partnering with clients to deliver strategic interactive solutions
• Managing client relationships and expectations
• Working with department managers to provide client deliverables
• Ensuring the delivery of key projects on time and on budget
• Developing technical and marketing concepts to meet client requirements
• Negotiating contracts with clients and suppliers
• Guiding strategic implementation of recommendations
• Identifying and stewarding client/brand objectives and needs
• Enthusiastically representing Upstream’s strategy and creativity
• Liaising with worldwide partners
• Preparing and defending business cases
• Assisting with RFP responses and proposal writing

Service Delivery Engineer takes on a key role with end-to-end responsibility for the technical delivery of assigned projects. The Service Delivery Engineer sets up, configures, and supports the various application components and integrations required for each project.

The Service Delivery Engineer will become an expert in Upstream’s applications and how they are used in order to deliver services and generate revenues. You will maintain overall responsibility for all operational aspects of a project from pre-launch through launch and ongoing support until the end of the project’s revenue lifecycle. You will drive the turnover process from development teams within Upstream and other parties, ensuring that proper infrastructure is put in place and proper procedures, documentation, and training are prepared. You will identify, document, and request operational requirements for tools and other features. You will serve as the point of escalation for any problems with your projects on a 24×7 basis.

• Technical delivery of assigned projects
• Setup, configuration and support of various applications components and integrations required for each project
• Responsibility for all operations aspects of a project
• Drive the turnover process from development teams and other parties
• Ensure proper procedures, documentation and training are prepared
• Identify, document and request operational requirements for tools and other projects
• Escalation point for any problems with a project on a 24×7 basis

• University degree in Engineering / Computer Science or similar discipline
• 3 to 5 years of professional experience in Information Technology

The Campaign Manager is in charge of all communication with consumers for Upstream’s mobile marketing campaigns, of which he/she is in charge.

The Campaign Manager is part of the Campaign Management Department and reports directly to the Head of Campaign Management. The position is based in Athens-Greece.

The Campaign Manager is responsible for designing, planning, implementing, monitoring and enhancing all elements of the campaigns, of which he/she is in charge, maximizing their potency and effectiveness. Campaign Mangers contribute directly to a campaign’s performance.

• Manages and implements the daily campaign plan across all campaign elements throughout it’s lifecycle, from the pre-launch setting up to its completion being accountable for the campaign performance
• Holds a thorough understanding of campaign objectives and background to contribute to campaign’s strategy and client requirements
• Comes up with enticing concepts, creates storylines and produces creative, clear, captivating and effective original messages
• Manages copywriting talent in an efficient manner
• Fast-paced decision making based on statistical input
• Proofreads campaign texts with special focus in spelling and grammar
• Monitors the performance of the campaign and works closely with the campaign intelligence unit to propose tactics and potential strategy shift based on strengths and weaknesses
• Liaises with Account Management, Project Management and R&D to communicate clearly campaign management requirements and recommendations
• Works on several campaigns in parallel, adhering to tight deadlines

LONDON, 17 October 2011 – Upstream, the global marketing technology and solutions company, has been recognised for its contribution to the mobile marketing industry, having been shortlisted for ‘Best Marketing Company’ in the Mobile Entertainment Awards and for two further categories in the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards.

The achievements reflect a year of success for the company, which has already included the opening of three new regional marketing hubs in the U.S.A, Middle East and Latin America to support and expand Upstream’s global client list; senior executive appointments to the business and significant updates to its Marketing Communications Suite.

“Marketers around the globe are searching for the right way to activate and engage their customers via mobile,” said Alex Vratskides, CEO, Upstream. “We’re singularly focused on effectiveness, delivering technology and campaign innovation that improves customer response rates and increases incremental revenue. We’re extremely proud to be recognised by both the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards and the Mobile Entertainment Awards and thank our client partners for putting their trust in Upstream.”

Upstream started its operations in 2001, launching some of the first global mobile marketing campaigns for blue chip brands such as Coca-Cola, T-Mobile, Vodafone and Nestlé. Since then the company has executed, through its Marketing Communications Suite (MCS) platform, 160,000 campaigns in over 40 countries for some of the largest companies in the world, engaging more than 500 million consumers and delivering conversion rates translating to over $500 million of incremental revenue for its clients.

Innovation chief, Guy Krief, believes that gamification can make a key difference to any marketing campaign, making it more interactive, engaging and exciting for the consumer and more profitable for the brand.

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Upstream research shows that the concept of gamification is increasingly on marketers’ radar, but that they are not yet confident about using it in their campaigns. Upstream can unlock the many millions of individual responses to marketing campaigns that are currently being lost.

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Innovation expert, Guy Krief, tells marketers how Upstream turns the latest buzzword into a powerful tool for boosting customer response rates and revenue. Upstream’s real-time personalization of its gamification engine on MCS powers mobile marketing campaigns.

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LONDON, 11 October 2011 – Research results from global marketing technology and solutions company Upstream, have found that despite three quarters (78 per cent) of marketers believing that customers are more likely to respond to game-based marketing mechanics, only a quarter (27%) have actually used gamification tactics in their campaigns.

The research, conducted at digital marketing conference ad:tech London 2011, questioned delegates about their understanding and use of game mechanics and dynamics in marketing strategies and found that two thirds of marketers (66%) did not fully comprehend the term gamification. Once respondents had been briefed on its definition, 64 per cent of marketers stated they felt game mechanics would improve relationships with their customers.

The findings also revealed that the jury is out over which rewards prompt the best response from gamified marketing campaigns. The most popular response from marketers was free products, which 34 per cent said would be most engaging. This was followed by cash (25 per cent), a high value single prize (24 per cent) and points (11 per cent).

The research also highlighted a rise in budgets available to marketers to innovate campaigns, with 87 per cent stating that they would be increasing investment in marketing technologies over the next twelve months.

Guy Krief, Senior Vice President of Innovation, Upstream, who gave the seminar ‘Gamification and Mobile: Press Start’ at Adtech said: “With customers being bombarded with promotional messages from brands on a daily basis, we need to help marketers make intelligent use of real-time gamification – moving it from the latest buzz word to the reality of influencing consumer behaviour. Gamification can make the key difference to any marketing campaign, making it more interactive, engaging and exciting for the consumer and more profitable for the brand.”

Two-thirds of UK marketers may not yet understand what gamification means, but Guy Krief from Upstream believes that it’s time they started to incorporate these proven techniques into their campaigns to fully engage consumers.

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TeleSemana interviews Upstream’s Diego Benavides, VP for Latin America, about how the company aims to help Latin American carriers generate an extra 87 million dollars by communicating better with their customers.

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