Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Annick Vins, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Ubisoft. Read more about Annick in this interview:

Hi Annick! You are the Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Ubisoft in Dusseldorf, Germany. How did you find your way into the games industry?

As with many things in life, it was a mixture of work, serendipity and luck! I’ve been a gamer since my early childhood days. I started with Giana Sisters on my Amiga 500, my first console was a SNES. But this was a hobby among others with no job ambitions attached.
I graduated from school with A-Levels in German and French. When I came to decide on a career to follow, my teenage self wanted to be an archeologist or paleontologist. But my Latin was inexistent and the job perspectives were not very convincing. So I turned to my second field of interest, one that was came from the gaming world in some ways: “new media & internet”. In my mind, I was dreaming of VR technology to be combined with archeology! But during my studies, I discovered that becoming a programmer was not the ideal career for me. And back in the day, the VR options to really make lost cities come alive were very limited. Still, my “Diplomarbeit” was about the gamification of museums, a very interesting but rather narrow field. In the middle of the 2000s, it all was still at the very beginning…

As I could not really decide on a company or even a field to start my professional life, I decided to look for a job where I could do “internet things” and see a lot of different companies: I started at an online marketing agency. I played less games then during my student days but the hobby was still there! And then comes the crucial element of luck that is present in many careers: a friend had just applied for a Marketing Job at EA. He told me that during this research, he stumbled across a digital marketing position at Ubisoft and thought this might be something for me. It was the first time it occurred to me that I really could apply for a job at a publisher. Which I did, and here I am now, 13 happy years later.

My advice would be: Tell all your friends what you are aiming at in life, so they can think of you when they hear about an opportunity. And don’t feel forced to follow the straight path. Different ways can lead to your goal.

Almost 13 years ago you started working at Ubisoft as Junior Online Marketing Manager, since then you‘ve been promoted two times. What is your personal advice for people just starting out in the area of digital marketing who would like to achieve a career similar as yours?

Digital technology is a world in constant change, so my first advice would be: stay curious! Closely follow the latest digital trends, inside but also, more important, outside the gaming industry! Try out new apps by yourself, so you can have an idea about what the customer might feel and can develop ideas on how to use it best for your company. My second piece of advice is the same: stay curious! Digital marketing jobs have evolved a lot in the past few years. Be ready to take up a new project regularly. Embrace every new experience that is offered to you and be ready to dive deep into it, as long as the project lasts. But at the same time, don’t be afraid to let go of a project to start something new.

Digital marketing includes a variety of platforms such as Facebook, YouTube or Instagram. With the rise and fall of new and old platforms, what would you personally say is one essential thing that will always be important for the work in digital marketing?

It’s all about emotions! People, whatever platform they use, want to express their love for a brand, their passion for a hobby or seek admiration and support from their online audience. As a digital marketer, you need to find ways to tap into the positive emotions towards your brands and offer opportunities for dialogue for your devoted fans and fans-to-be alike.

Thank you for your time, Annick!

Annick’s Links: Annick’s Twitter | Ubisoft Germany’s Twitter | Ubisoft’s Website

WWW Feature by Anne Zarnecke