Our ‘Profile: A Day in the Life of’ feature takes a look at some of the global professionals working across performance marketing. It aims to shed light on the varying roles and companies across the flourishing industry. This week we head to London to speak with the head of partner marketing EMEA, Facebook. 

Name: 

Adam Harrison

Job title and company: 

Head of Partner Marketing EMEA, Facebook.

In one sentence, how would you describe what the company does?

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

What are the company’s unique selling points? 

People use Facebook to discover what’s going on in their lives and to share what’s on their mind. Businesses use Facebook to reach and connect to the people who matter to them.

Within the last six months/year, what stands out as the company’s major milestones?

Facebook has continued to grow its community, with 1.32 billion people now connecting on Facebook each month. If I look back, 2013 was an important year for Facebook. If 2012 was the year where we turned our core product into a mobile product, then 2013 was the year where we turned our business into a mobile business. And now 2014 will be the year where we begin to deliver new and engaging types of mobile experiences. One example is video: Video on Facebook was built to be mobile first, and now more than 65% of video views are on mobile.

Duration in current role:

4.5 years

Where are you based?

London. But I also spent 6 months in São Paulo, Brazil, to set up our marketing function there, which was a lot of fun. My degree in Portuguese finally came in handy!

Where have you worked previously:

I spent six years working at Google – both in Dublin and London – in sales and strategy roles focused on the agency market. Latterly, I helped launch Google Partners – their advertising accreditation programme – and spent a lot of time training agencies in best practice in Google’s performance marketing solutions.

What are your main job responsibilities?

I cover ‘Partner Marketing’, which means marketing to and for advertising agencies and marketing technology companies in our preferred marketing developer programme. My role is to help clients understand the value that our partners can add to their marketing efforts on Facebook, as well as ensuring our partners are as savvy as possible on our solutions. It’s a broad role, which keeps it fun!

Take us through what you get up to on a typical working Monday:

Monday starts with a triple-shot coffee. Then I can get started. As with most people, Monday’s about planning the week ahead. I meet with Natalie on my team to ensure we’re on track with our projects and then catch up with the broader marketing team to hear any headlines on what’s happening globally. I’ll also check in with the teams I support on key projects, such as an upcoming DR event, a piece of content we need to polish off or ideas for a future campaign. We’ve just run a DR Academy for our preferred marketing developers, which has been months in prep – it went really well and we hope to roll it out more broadly.

What top three websites can you be found browsing during your lunch hour?

I flick through the Irish Independent to catch up on what’s going on back home.  My clever friend, Gemma, just launched Settled.co.uk to help people sell their houses themselves, so I’ve been nosing around that lately. I have a food startup business, called Tart, and check my own page on Facebook.

Career-wise, where do you see yourself in three years’ time?

Drinking a glass of wine thinking about how lucky I’ve been.

What are your top three tips for someone looking to get their hands on a job like yours?

Get to know people in the role and company by networking, through them find out the most important skills needed for the role and then use your time at your current employer to gain the experience you’ll need.

Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?

Tough one as I share too much. I can sing the theme tune to the cartoon, “Dungeons and Dragons”, in Spanish … “Dragones y mazmorras, un mundo infernal… “ #MisspentErasmusYear