Marija Hammon: From FMCG to iGaming: Marija Hammon on Building Brands, Leading with Empathy, and Career Evolution

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Every single person has value to add even if you are at the very beginning of your career even if you ever started your career and you're still studying you have value to add because you are a couple of steps ahead of someone else welcome to the igaming leader podcast where we interview some of the most inspirational leaders inside of our industry I'm your host Leo Judkins and today I'm joined by a true marketing Powerhouse someone who is transformed relax Gaming's entire brand from the ground up Maria Hammond Please join me in my interview with her where we talk through her journey from fmcg to igaming

and what it really takes to build strong Brands and strong teams hey Maria great to have you here on the igaming media super CH to talk to you out me told you for a long time because I've been super inspired by your journey and I really want to share your story with everybody here and all of our listeners so welcome to the podcast thank you so much Leo I am absolutely thrilled to be here and I'm super proud of you for starting your own podcast well done thank you much really enjoy that Maria I I just wanted to kick off with you like you've had

such a fascinating career moving different Industries and types of businesses could you come start with giving us a quick overview of how you started out and how you ended up in in gaming specifically of course yes so my educational background is in Communications and psychology and then I did a Jo master's degree between University of Malta and San Diego State where I got a master of arts and integrated marketing Communications and also master of science in Business Administration my first role was actually a marketing executive position for a company called e Leisure group from that I actually got asked to join a local agency in

Malta and I did brand strategy for them I moved into the fmcg industry and handled hair care and Duty brands for BJ slum and I got head hunted by ktina media I wasn't actively withing but they reached out to me because they were looking for somebody to handle their corporate brand at that point in time there wasn't really anybody specializing in branding within the igaming space so obviously they looked outside it and I was one of the kind of late blers I guess from new foreigners in Malta and I am still in the I gaming space of course from there I moved to rela and

they hadn't gone into the casino or the aggregation space yet so we really needed to build a corporate brand because there wasn't a strong one in place so that was a very big project including all the messaging all their corporate assets and images we built the entire image by the you see today on the website as well and then I shifted from there into a new department that focused on product packaging were not looking as polished so we really wanted to have a department that focused purely on those educational materials that went out to our partners and then I moved into the head of marketing

role and started to lead the marketing department and now I am currently marketing director leading a team of 15 and we have restructured along the way of course to adapt to the growing team and everybody's strengths and solidifying Rems and everything else that you need to do with a growing team and I can be part of um my career journey I think everything that you've done I've said it to you in person many times as well you're such an inspirational person the fact that you've just moved through every single rant makes you so much more relatable I'm I'm really curious that what were your first

thoughts when you entered gaming as an industry it must have been quite a significant change from the other industries that you've been it what were some of the things that you noticed about it and particularities and the weirdness of it I think at the point when I joined from a marketing perspective and especially from a branding perspective the intentionality behind it was not quite the same as proor in gamble or coachi that I was used to learning from and working with whenever we would have deployment we would get a really nice brand book and a thorough guide and a solid deployment session there would be

quite rigid parameters but necessary ones not ones that limited creativity but that outlined the Baseline fundamentals that we needed to follow that was something that I was surprised by when I stepped into ID daming that wasn't quite there yet of course the industry has matured so much since then yes I think that that would have been one of my biggest surprises at that point yeah makes a lot of sense and and what T did you feel okay this is an industry I want to be in this is an industry that I want to be part of and I can actually make a change is there

anything that happened or anything that yourself really hooked you into it honestly it was just being part of that growth I felt like I had so much to contribute from my previous roles even though they were completely external to the industry and that really motivated me I think that anytime you feel you can add tremendous value is a driver in itself that kept me going and of course as the industry evolved and matured I've been happy to be part of that growth Journey that's what Hooks me in and kept me there we also have such amazing people within the industry there are so many inspiring

highly ambitious incredible people in the space amazing communities superb events that keeps getting elevated but yeah it's a very easy industry to love yeah good thing is it's also really fastpac right it's fast grow you must have seen that leading your teams as well people that come through the ranks really quickly yourself make a really quick progress what was some of the maybe more difficult times that you faced your career around that progress and I'm thinking about things like feeling outside of your comfort zone poster syndrome things that we all struggle with did you have any of those moments or what would they be I'm

quite um intrinsically motivated I am very driven and I do tend to see the positive side of things anytime you're starting a new role taking on a new challenge I mean you do have those moments of self-doubt there is a new environment new people you'd have to adapt I guess that adaptability has always been a strength for me I was born in Serbia moved to bosano and I One grew up there in a very International Community then moved to Malta on my own for University lived there for 14 years then moved to jalter I think I'm just used to um adapting and making the most

of any situation I'm presented but yes everybody has those moments it's just about how you deal with them and work through them there are situations when you fail something doesn't go according to plan you have a tough conversation with a manager your client isn't happy with something you've produced your team doesn't love the pitch you've given when there's push back on an idea all of those moments but that's all character villain and you just take those lessons and you move on and you try to make the most of your next steps really like that approach you're really big for leading with the heart's philosophy and

I want to ask you a little bit more about that what does that mean for you and what inspired that to start with I think it's the way that I've been brought up I've been surrounded by love I've been really Lusty in that sense I've grown up in a family that's been very encouraging and supportive so I just love passing that motivation on to other people and it's always driven me from every position in my professional career I've looked at my managers for both the qualities that I like and the ones that I perhaps wouldn't take forward if I became a manager myself I didn't

know at what point that would happen it didn't actually happen for me until I became head of marketing that was the first time I started managing someone directly and I got a whole team at that point I was so excited to be able to help people learn and grow it's such a honor to be able to do that and I just think it's so important to have empathy at the end of the day people have their ups and downs everybody has a personal life outside of the office as well of course people are professional and sometimes they don't bring that kind of stuff to work

but if you know that they have something going on be Humane about about it and just say look take that day off go get some rest refresh come back they'll be grateful it's just a win for both sides so apart from the mentorship perspective which is very important to me I have also grown people within my team with very rigid and driving prere path I think that's also very important from Awards racial perspective but I've also helped people from my team to move into other department or other roles because at the end of the day it's also part of their career progress and we all

have our Ambitions if that's going to make somebody happy then I think that as a leader that's also something that you need to do as well so it comes from a lot of places really background learnings observations just being kind and understanding that makes so much sense I could underline that because I hear it some people actually worked for you as told you person as well you get a lot of respect from the people that work for you I just want to dive into that a little bit deeper when you think about the people that have inspired you or leaders that you've worked with or

people you perhaps know and not maybe not directly worked with what are some of the top qualities that you know stand out for you what is what's importance you know an inspiring leader as I said I've actually taken learnings and have a lot of gratitude to every single one of the managers I've had throughout my my career I've even done LinkedIn posts dedicated to them and given kudos to them as well I'm in touch with many of them to this day managers who have backed their team in the right moment and it's also something that I do with my own team I love to give

my team good remits solid remits everybody to have ownership of their own area basically treat it like their own business in that sense but then when I do need to step in to support them then I'm 100% there I've had numerous managers who have done that and it would be like even just a single moment in a couple of years that you work for a company but you remember that always so I think that's that's a big one knowing when to step in even if you give a lot of autonomy basically yeah I love that because it's not about what people say right it's actually

about how people make you feel that's what you get with them the for and I think that feeling supported nurses is so crucial yes and not everybody will ask for it so it's also about knowing how to identify when somebody needs it even if they don't request the support that's such a great point for Maria because giving full autonomy is such an important part of developing high performance teams and knowing when to step in is something that is really difficult it's something that is challenging for most leaders so if you're feeling that you're constantly busy you're always firefighting and you have to manage two levels

down all the time then more often than not that's more about how we delegate and how we develop high performance teams now if that's something that you want some support with please apply for the igaming leader Mastermind it's a program where we work with leaders just like you to help you live lead and perform in a way that you can achieve sustainable high performance if that's something that you want to join please go to igaming leader.com now let's go back to this episode hey you just mentioned L I want to talk about that a little bit because I had noticed of course that you have

uh recently really upped your um your gain on LinkedIn I absolutely love it you're sharing so much value and really speaking from your own expertise posting daily engaging a lot you're doing a great job and you're one of the few people in the industry including myself when I was still in gy are afraid of posting on LinkedIn because maybe you're seeing as looking for a job or perhaps they are worried about not having anything to share or to talk about or perhaps they feel that it's just a totally fake Place full of oh my God I'm so grateful for this thing so I'd not to

hear your thoughts on that and how your journey has been on with profiling yourself more and and getting yourself more out there because it's been really impressive thank you so much and see to you you have a very strong personal ranchu so it be bir ways but I am happy to tell you a little bit more about how I have treated Lon so like many people until recently I was pretty much posting when something big happened right if I got a promotion if I went to a great event if I got published in media in an article basically big Milestones won an award and so

on but at the end of September I changed that it was a little accidental at first because I was driving back from spame and I was a passenger and I actually had an opportunity to listen to a podcast and I love podcasts but in a busy schedule I don't always have the time to dedicate an hour and a half to listening to a podcast from start to finish I actually had the opportunity to do that and I loved it and one thing that I've always done is being a super Avid Note Taker I can write really quick notes it's a little bit of a superpower

even word for word quotes as people speak that's what I was doing while I was listening to this podcast as well and then the moment that it finished I was like you know what I'm going to share this on Lon because I think that other people need to hear these insights because they're amazing and I just wished in that moment that I had someone that I was following who did that so that I could have Recaps and ke take ways of things that I missed and not just two or three points like a solid shakeaway so I did and it got really good engagement and

it kind of motivated me to keep sharing that type of educational content so that's how it started really the more intentional side of LinkedIn for me and sharing education inspiration motivation and everything that I stand for so I don't know why I didn't do it earlier to be it but I'm glad that I started now and it's been amazing actually digging into all the lessons that I've learned over the years in my role I really loved sharing them with people and it's just amazing how many people approach you directly based on your content one example is the words of wisdom that I was invited to

at SBC Summit of Lisbon that was purely because of a post that I did I got a podcast invite again purely because of a post I had people reach out to me asking whether I would Mentor them appraise their CV give them public speaking coaching and so on and so forth and these requests would usually be on the back of a specific post that really resonated with people and in terms of people feeling afraid to start I think that is important because you touched on something that a lot of people feel and that's the thing they don't have value to add and that's something that

I want to squash and get people to remove from their heads completely because every single person has value to add even if you are at the very beginning of your career even if you ever started your career and you're still studying you have value to add because you are a couple of steps ahead of someone else and whatever you share somebody else can learn from and resonate with so that's what it's about it's actually the most simple things that create the biggest impact and that mean the most to people in the community so yeah get started share people are forming opinions about you anyway so

you might as well own the narrative could direct it write what you want to write understand what you believe in understand what you want to actually stand for and post that sometimes the gaining industry is a bit secretive sometimes it's a little bit about oh I don't want to give away my trade secrets so how how would you how do you feel about that I understand that because of course you don't want to be revealing any information about your company that you shouldn't be so of course you have to tread those lines very carefully but that is not a barrier to starting because your content

doesn't depend on that your stories are your own you don't even need to reference the company that you're working for at all you can just accumulate experiences into one post and share those insights you don't have to talk about a specific client or what your colleague did yesterday so I think people just need to understand that is not what it's about that's not what's necessary for your content to be interesting or to resonate with people you can tell stories from from your uni days if you're currently a CMO people will still want to hear it because that's what they relate to a lot of international

CEOs and SE level positions are the people that other people follow and that is how people decide to engage with a company or actually make a purchase if they resonate with that person not only the brand people want to follow people of course company Pages do well but it is about the people behind them yeah absolutely we we we talked about it offline a little bit right it's a person for person business people actually make decisions on who they do business with and uh the more that you can show face the better I think I want to dive into that personality a little bit because

one of the things I saw you do at SBC is I went to one of your talks where you had a round table discussion with with Nick and as soon you sat there with pen and paper making notes going through your notes then you came onto the stage and all kicked off I was super Gris about what you were doing because every time there was a question you were bringing it back to the points that you wanted to make that you probably had prepared beforehand i' love for you to talk about public speaking how you prepare for it how you get over your nerves and

how you approach it because it's a big thing it's something that most of people struggle with yes absolutely we've all heard the common fact that more people are afraid of public speaking than even extremities like death so it is a nerve wrecking thing of course and I think that a lot of that pressure is pressure that we put on ourselves at the end of the day we're usually our biggest finix and I think that's something people need to remember when they're actually going into a scenario like that there is nobody in the audience that's going to view you and what you're saying as critically as

you are thinking in your head so that's step number one they will not judge you that way so I think that's an important one to realize and then the other one that I always mention to people is that you need to remember that at the end of the day you earned that seat you were invited there for a reason you have knowledge and insights to share and people want to hear them so I think even just remembering that helps to eliminate that impostor syndrome slightly and actually on the note of of imposter syndrome I mentioned it even on my panel but on the panel that

I was on right before that CMO bronwin Greg shared an amazing mindset shift that she learned from someone else and that was actually to reposition impostor Syndrome from something that sounds very clinical and very serious and very permanent to impostor moments which we all have so it's just about working through that impostor moment and I think that there are so many tools that can be used to make that happen and nerves yes everyone has them everyone has them I can tell you I have seen very senior speakers before they went up on stage and even Bay feel the nerves so that is normal lean into

it remember that nerves often feel the same as adrenaline so just go up there be yourself and do your thing and when it comes to how I did my panel that was actually my first time on stage since high school so it's been a while like a solid 20 years of course I did feel nervous and stepping on to Europe's third largest indoor stage as that first moment back on stage was quite a big one when I went into the CMO room I had a little notepad because I only had 5 minutes between the two panel sessions it was just my way of regrouping my

thoughts a little bit so if I had actually shown you that note P it was super scribbly I was just jotting down my thoughts and some points that perhaps I wanted to mention of certain topics came up and then I genuinely just treated it like a conversation I was up on stage with people who were representing the operator's side and different areas of the industry I was just listening to what they were saying giving my take on how things are similar in the B2B space or how they differ and also just genuinely enjoying the process of learning about their world and their marketing functions I

was very interactive and I know a lot of people hold back on that and I feel like they shouldn't because often you go to panels and it's like moderator asks a question pass some mic person speaks next person speaks and there's not really that natural dialogue between the panelists that's unfortunate because at the end of the day it is a dialogue it's a conversation one of the things I lost about you as well is you sent me a few WhatsApp messages asking for feedback and we were very clear about also being very open to negative feedback right and it's one of the things that we

all do because we're polite or something that we don't necessarily address you know the negatives that we've seen or Improvement points that we've seen right so tell me a little bit about how you started that and and what you would advise to other people because is there's being nice and there's being honest right there's some people does two different things so tell a little bit more about your thoughts there I've always been very open to feedback and actually craved it because apart from saying yes to opportunities that you get honest feedback is one of the most valuable things that you can get and I love

any opportunity where I can get that and like I said this is my first time on first time on stage in a long time and I didn't want people to praise me if they wanted to praise me or give me some positive feedback amazing but I wanted a genuine appraisal and I wanted to know how the audience felt because ultimately that's what you want to know right you want to know that the audience enjoyed what you were saying that they enjoy your content it's the same thing on LinkedIn it involves a lot of experimentation you have to try different things until you understand what hits

The Mark with your audience so I think it's about that I'm very focused actually even from a marketing perspective on messaging that's something I'm always driving with my team we have to make sure the message is spot on super clear a lot of resonates with the audience I asked quite a lot of people for feedback and I was very impressed that I did get Bri to feedback in terms of things I could potentially do differently and things that people felt I did very well and the most interesting thing and actually something that I would love anybody stepping into the public speaking space to remember is

that observations from the audience vary dramatically dramatically so things that resonate highly with one person or that they think you're doing super well someone else might not and they might focus on something completely different so when you up there on stage don't try to impress everybody don't try to be everything for everyone because that's just not possible be yourself know that you're the expert in whatever you are representing and yes go out there and get feedback and then pick and choose which feedback you would actually like to implement and the biggest thing I'd say about how you were asking for feedback it's really hammering down

on the fact that you're very open to criticism it's I think most people actually don't realize that they never get that because they specifically asked for it yeah and I also love your point about this I know you and I specifically had very different views on things that we saw stage yes it's so true right it's fact is just a lens that we see things through and that's all okay I want to touch a little bit SP work life as well if that's okay for you we're both parents we're both GES right expats so tell me a little bit about balancing life and how that

it's difficult of course school holidays what do you do to find some toal balance between a very busy career and with being a parent as well and an exp and not necessarily having that family support all of those things are very real and the thing that I tried to do is to be present in whatever I am doing at that moment when I'm with my kids I try to be 100% mom mode and give them my all when I'm at work I do the same it is a juggling act in many ways and especially when you have a more senior role and a very busy

schedule during the day then of course you do have to overcompensate and often work outside of your hours one thing I have actually started doing this week and which I plan to do moving forward is to try and carve out desk time in my calendar but something that I didn't do before and what I was Finding was that I would have backto back calls every every single day I would be answering slack messages and trying to give everybody all the feedback and support that they needed because I tried to do that in super real time and as quickly as I can and then of course

if I had any bigger tasks I would be doing them at night usually once the kids are asleep or something like that so I think carving out some desk time is not a bad one because it's the only way to block it out in your calendar otherwise if it's a free slot people can book a meeting right T blocking is one of the most powerful things having appointments with yourself where you're actually doing that what you call deskt is so crucial even the running around and back to about to just frese you and then you turn up to the most important work with with a

in maybe not as energetic as you would be if you would have blocked out a little bit of distance so but I think yeah like I said it's about being present and it's about being flexible like you said there are school holidays of course you know that you need to plan out your leave to accommodate those times of love going on a holiday during those moments especially in summer time so yeah you just work around it it's a balancing act but I think again like with anything if you approach it with a positive mindset and a can do attitude you know that you can make

everything work right that's just what I do yeah love it really love it okay looking back at your uh your career what what's what are some of the what's SP the most pital moment that you've experienced a lesson that you've learned has really shaped like who you are today and how you show up for your team there hasn't been one moment I think it's been a series of moments that has compounded accumulated and made me who I am today and shaped the way that I see things and the way that I lead my team there have been numerous career highlights one of them was launching

Aussie hair in Malta is it I was still in my fmcg rooll that was amazing I loved Aussie and it was something that I was fighting for I was like look his fr's already in the company let's get it to M it launched and it was a tremendous success so that was a big highlight then of course getting an award like positive role model of the year at the women in gaming awards that was also a huge career highlight as well and actually the category meant a particular amount to me because like I said I've always had that objective like that's always being a big

why for me just being able to inspire and being able to be a positive influence for people in my team for people who I manage for my family so that was just really touching unexpected and incredible and of course being able to stand here and say that I manage a remarkably talented hardworking and driven team of 15 is just a massive win too so yeah there have been a lot of moments positive moments and of course there have been a lot of lessons like I mentioned earlier in the podcast too then you just learn from them and keep going you need to learn to say

no you need to learn to have tough conversations those are all parts of growth and I think they come with experience as well so learning to say no and learning to have tough conversations 100% true how can you practice these types of skills maybe as you come into a leadership position How would how do you help your team with it because very often somebody gets promoted gets thrown into a role and then good luck sink or swim how can you help and support managers progressing with those those difficult conversations with saying no with managing time with managing priorities how do you help play your team

with that usually when somebody moves into a more senior role there is a bit of handholding in the beginning of course it's part of that mentorship it's part of that support so there have been a lot of times when there's been a request for example for me to step in and have a bit of a harder conversation or push back on something be the bad cck and I super happy to do that for my team but then of course I do speak to each of them and I try to guide them and to empower them to believe in themselves because ultimately they know their area

and they're in a particular position because they deserve to be there and Al of course when you work in a service department like marketing you have stakeholders but those stakeholders don't always have visibility on what you are doing from a to zed your coms pipeline your budgets and so on if you are the owner of a particular remit and you have visibility on those things or you know how pressured your schedule already is and how unrealistic a deadline is then of course like you need to be willing to help because that's our job and that's what we want to do but you also need to

know how to say actually that's really not possible we need a little bit longer for that or you know what I'm not sure about that idea that's not actually something that's going to deliver much Roi and so on and so forth so I do try to coach my team to just believe in themselves trust their gut and be empowered to have those conversations too love it really love it okay you've gone from executive marketing executive all the way to where you are today super impressive if you could go back to previous few years back what kind of advice would you give yourself if you'd look

at threey year youngia what what would you tell you some I think the most important thing when you are starting out is to remember that everybody started somewhere everybody's been in your shoes before and you often look at people in senior positions or with 200,000 followers on LinkedIn or whatever you are focusing on at that point in time and sometimes you can beat yourself up or push yourself down and think that you will never get there or that there's blocker XY Z ahead of you those are the self doubt moments that we have and I think my advice to anyone would be that they should

just remember that all those people were there in their shoes at some point not many people go from uni graduates to CEO I mean of course there are exceptions and that does happen to some people but that's not a typic difficult career trajectory so you need to take small steps be consistent and those small steps will compound and lead to really big results everyone can do it I genuinely believe that if people apply themselves if they work hard if they act consistently if they deliver if they work passionately they have a positive outlook a positive mindset they can achieve anything love it thank you very

much AR been fantastic talking to you thank you so much for sharing uh sharing your story my pleasure wow what a great conversation with Maria Hammond I really enjoyed that and I think it left all of us with three key takeaways the first one is that it's so important to lead with heart and to give your team full remit and accountability for the areas that they're responsible for it allows them to feel ownership and create almost a business of their own within that remit so that we only need to step in and should only step in when we really need to support many of us

do that way too early or are way too prescriptive in how we feel the work needs to be done and that makes us our own biggest bottleneck right we want to step out and give a remit and then only supports when it's truly needed so that was a great Insight the second thing was how important it is to understand that every single person has got value to add I speak to so many people who feel this impostor syndrome or hamia ref framed it as impostor moments where perhaps we feel that we are the most Junior person on that table or we don't fully understand the

area that we're responsible for yet but that's true for everybody we're all kind of figuring it out as we go along and understanding that all of us have value to add regardless of where you are in your journey is super important in your journey to high performance leadership and then the third is about this personal branding right I love how she's turned her super power of making notes into adding tons of value on LinkedIn i' highly recommend following her on LinkedIn she's got some great content that we can all learn from but this is important for you as well right personal branding is such an

important skill to have as a high performance leader in today's day and age so understanding what to share and turning your superpowers into something that perhaps someone needs that that is a few steps behind you is crucial so those were my three key Tak takeways uh I'd love to hear from you what your takeaways were so if you have some feedback please leave a review uh on wherever you listen to this podcast it helps other igaming leaders like you find this podcast as well and it'll only take you about 5 to 10 seconds now next week we're speaking to Mike de who is the chief

compliance officer at bet comply he's got an incredible journey he had a stroke at 33 years old from working so hard and he's trans formed his life and he talks us through what some of his key non-negotiables are for maintaining high performance while also managing his health and well-being super powerful conversation so please make sure you listen to that next week and I hope to see you there take care

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