My story as a Former Google & Twitter Manager Offering Digital Marketing Services in New Brunswick
By Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo
Announcement! I’ll be coming to New Brunswick the third week of January 2019 and will be announcing talks in Saint John, Fredericton, and Moncton. To learn more, sign-up here.
So here’s my story: I left New Brunswick 15 years ago. Like many, I assumed I would never find a way back.
I left because I got a scholarship to do my masters degree in the UK. From there I got a job at Google in California. From there I ended up getting at job at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. Then my ex-boss from Google called and invited me to join Twitter.
My wife, who I met while studying at STU, had been living abroad for most of her adult life. We decided to move back to Ecuador and start businesses (I’ve written about the trials and tribulations of doing so for the Momentum Canada Blog here).
She founded a co-working business, and I started my own business, a managed marketing services company called Centrico Digital.
What is Centrico Digital?
Centrico Digital was founded on three core-beliefs: the first is that traditional agencies don’t understand digital marketing.
Having seen the disruption taking place in the advertising industry through my work at Google and Twitter, I knew that the stranglehold a few conglomerates held on advertising would soon be loosening.
Industries operate in moments of divergence (innovation and disruption) and convergence (consolidation). The advertising industry is in a moment of divergence of its own making.
Without wanting to dig too much into the details, traditional advertising firms often don’t have the knowledge, incentives or instincts to manage digital marketing.
Too firmly planted in the creative world of branding, they often disparage and under-value the role of analytics in informing strategy. The move to a more results-based type of marketing is a threat to their entire model (Note: that was my viewpoint in 2013. Nowadays, traditional agencies are waking up to the importance of data and digital, but not before having given birth to a whole slew of boutique and specialized shops, such as my own).
The second idea I held was that digital work can be done from anywhere, because doing digital marketing well depends on focus rather than distance.
Though our main office is located in Ecuador, which is more or less the same time zone as much of the US and Canada, we ensure quality by only working with 12 enterprise clients a time. Yes, we visit our clients frequently, but more importantly, we limit the number of clients we work with so as to not lose focus.
Finally, my third belief is that places that are overlooked often have an abundance of talent.
In Ecuador I have been able to bring together a team of talented people from the US, Europe, as well as Latin America, who have studied at universities such as Yale and Notre Dame.
In other words, talent is everywhere, and in the same way that manufacturing has globalized, so too will services. We want to be at the forefront of that movement.
Who Does Céntrico Digital Work for?
Our primary focus is lead generation and nurturing for clients with a regional or global outlook. With that in mind, we tend to work with B2B companies including software, services, etc., as well as B2C companies including education, insurance, tourism, etc.
For example, we help Canadian universities find students in Latin America.
We help a US-based E-Commerce site sell heaters throughout North America.
We help a cloud-based software firm sell Salesforce and Google solutions across Latin America.
We help insurance companies and brokers find local clients.
What unites these different companies is the fact that the purchasing process is rarely impulsive; instead, the purchasing process is considered and informed. Selling their products requires building a relationship and maintaining that relationship over time.
Our clients believe that great advertising is great content, and that modern marketing requires building trust through an exchange of value, not interruptive old-school tactics of the pre-internet era.
Our clients also tend to be willing to make decisions based on data and testing rather than instinct. To summarize, our client selection is more based on mindset than industry.
So Why Bring a Digital Marketing Agency to New Brunswick?
Despite being away since 2004, I’ve always kept an eye on developments in the province and I visit frequently. After all, my entire family continues to live between Saint John and Fredericton.
Over the past year I became particularly unnerved with the narratives surrounding the province, especially with articles such as, “New Brunswick is in a death spiral”.
Part of the problem with the image of a “death spiral” is that it gives the impression we are helpless victims, unable to save our present or our future. Repeated enough, the idea of an imploding New Brunswick becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I don’t accept the idea that New Brunswickers are not in control of their fate.
If we are to take back control of the narrative, however, we are going to have to think differently about our role in the global economy.
For example, we cannot wait for nor expect the government to swoop in with a strategy that will save us at the brink. That’s not likely to happen.
Second, we have to stop betting on large conglomerates to create massive infrastructure projects that inject revenue into the economy for the short term but do little for the long term.
If we’re going to create a future different from our past, we have to start seeing our potential to integrate with the rest of the world.
Given that global trade is more integrated than ever, we have to understand that we are our primary resource.
In other words, our value is not what we can extract from the ground or from the ocean, but what we can dream with our heads and make with our hands.
To do this, we have to see the thousands of migrants who have made New Brunswick home as part of the solution.
I, for example, need Spanish-language speakers in Canada and English-language speakers in Ecuador. Thanks to the fact that New Brunswick is a multi-cultural place, I am confident I can find them.
Migration itself is a major motor of entrepreneurship.
As soon as you travel somewhere else you’ll find things there that are missing back home and vice-versa. Things like language and culture are not barriers at all but speed bumps that can be overcome with a little bit of ingenuity. Because Maritimers pride themselves on being good people, they can take that attitude and do business anywhere. We need to get out into the world and see all the ways we can add value.
So Why Setup a Digital Marketing Agency in New Brunswick?
I want to create at least one job in New Brunswick in 2019 that is based on our model of exporting services throughout the world. I want to lay one brick and see if we can build a castle.
More importantly though, the Centrico Digital business model is based on helping companies that think like us, and that see their products and services as globally attractive and aren’t afraid to take the leap into foreign markets.
If we’re successful we’ll help companies in New Brunswick find leads and build brands beyond our maritime borders. If we’re successful, we’ll help change the narrative around the future of New Brunswick.
Eduardo Galeano is a Latin American philosopher who my Spanish Teacher at STU introduced me to many years ago. Galeano famously said, al fin y al cabo, somos lo que hacemos para cambiar lo que somos, which roughly translates as “we are what we do to change what we are.” Think about that: what we are is what we do to change who we are. It’s time to change what we do to become who we want to be.
Matthew Carpenter-Arévalo is a former Google, Twitter and World Economic Forum Manager. He’s a contributor to tech publications such as TechCrunch.Com and TheNextWeb.Com. Visit Centrico Digital here.
