Anna Gruzina – Womenize! – Inspiring Stories
Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition, we talked to Anna Gruzina, Product Manager at InnoGames. She speaks about how following passion over fear, embracing curiosity, and staying authentic enabled her to build a dynamic marketing career while creating meaningful impact and encouraging others to trust their intuition and individuality. Read more about Anna here:
Hi Anna! You started your career in nuclear physics and moved into marketing, eventually building a leadership path across publishing, telecom, and gaming. What was the most pivotal decision or moment that shaped your transition and what did it teach you about choosing your own direction?
This story is not fully complete, and it should get some perspective. I was always drawn to marketing and advertising as an application of the psychology of human behaviour connected with analytical skills and logic, but my second love was and still is curiosity around how this world is functioning, so I chose Nuclear physics as the most unknown and still unexplained part of our science. After getting my first job, I saved enough money to pursue my marketing passion, and for the past 17 years, I have been in the profession in various roles. I didn’t pick the market very intentionally; I was rather drawn by interesting tasks and the impact that I can make. Telekom was the brightest brand on the market – and it taught me how to apply my mathematical knowledge to a business environment. Publishing was the most impactful work when I look at this after years. I see that our work was impacting people’s lives, and they grow, change and get happier, because reading has been made trendy and a must-have in the market. Publishing was the first time I made a switch to the product side, and it was an exciting journey to meet authors, to discuss the direction of the books, and, of course, how to market them best.
Gaming is the most complex digital entertainment you can imagine – you need to combine a lot of moving parts together, and they all impact each other. For me, it was an exciting transition that opened a possibility to explore a new market, especially as I was myself a gamer as well. I
UA side of it is also changing very fast. From the time I joined Innogames 4 years ago, to the recent moment, the landscape changed drastically: fat COVID years, ATT, rise of AI, and algorithms that rule us all. We switched from being pilots of a superjet to tamers of black boxes. And I am not sure what is more complicated.
Recently, I again switched to a product role to dive into the new world of how games are done. It was again driven by two main things: passion and impact. I moved towards projects that I feel would need to be done, and where I and my skillset could bring the most impact. These are two forces that drive me and also show me the direction.
As a Product Manager at InnoGames, you work in a highly competitive, data-driven gaming industry. What does “successful growth marketing” mean to you today, and how do you personally influence that success beyond just performance metrics?
Growth marketing for me is not possible without a deep understanding of your own product and audience, as well as connecting all the processes to the same goal. There definitely could be silver bullets that were not yet used and applied by this particular project. Growth could be unlocked in the numbers we never looked at, in the partners we never cracked, or in the organic opportunities we never pursued. Growth could be hidden within the company, in misaligned processes and goals that just restrict from moving in one direction at full speed.
My personal impact now, as I work towards bringing Marketing and Product closer together, to find a thread and a common ground that we can work together and stop playing a blame game, which is quite common among companies. This should work not only on the common goals or KPI’s, but also on the process level. Do we have space to talk to each other, to plan together, to look at numbers at the same angle?
This is a complex task that touches a lot of multi-disciplinary aspects of the game industry, from tech stack and knowledge to emotional alignment and motivation. It needs all of my toolkit: from an analytical mind os a scientist, to understanding of human behaviour not only outside of the company but inside as well.
At Innogames we have values that are actually followed through by the teams, and not only shiny pictures on the wall, and one of them is open information share and feedback, that are already great foundation for building collaborative relationships between teams.
Looking back at your journey from specialist roles to leading teams and building strategies from scratch, what advice would you give to women who want to grow into senior marketing or leadership roles but are still early in their path?
As in everyone’s journey, in mine there were ups and downs, lessons learned, and experiences gained. Most of my mistakes were made when I followed fear, and most of my wins, when I followed passion. Women have access to a wonderful tool – intuition, which, as a muscle, should be used; otherwise, it won’t work as intended.
What I found fascinating about women is that they are brilliant, vibrant, and powerful, not less than men, but we tend to change ourselves to the room. We think we have to fit in, but in reality, the room should adjust to help bring forward more of ourselves. What helped me on my path is being me, authentic, passionate, energetic, and with my own quirks. This is when we bring most of the value and not shrink ourselves to fit.
You can’t bring new value if you are blended in; only if you do you.
I remember a quote from David Bowie: “My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.”
So, go get selfish about yourself, your work, your spark.