Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Alexandra Hinz, social media team lead at Victorinox:

Carlota Pico 0:14
Hi everyone, I’m Carlota Pico from The Content Mix, and I’m excited to be here today with Alexandra Hinz, who is Victorinox social media team lead within the digital marketing department, and has over 10 years of experience in marketing and communications. Welcome, Alexandra, and thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix.

Alexandra Hinz 0:36
Thank you, Carlota. I’m happy to be here.

Carlota Pico 0:39
Awesome. Well Alexandra, to start off the interview, I’d like to learn a little bit about your background and experience in marketing and communications.

Alexandra Hinz 0:47
Yeah, so I started my career within the B2B business, in the brand department, and later I joined a country organization where I was digital communication manager. And there I gained a lot of experience when it comes to digital tools, digital tactics, and as well, communicating to the right people on the right time, right channel. And especially the channel mix was very important before I joined Victorinox about four years ago as a global social media manager into the B2C business. And for this reason, yeah, I have a quite broad experience in B2B and B2C and also from a country perspective and global perspective.

Carlota Pico 1:47
Okay. I do want to talk about your global experience, because obviously now you’re taking care of Europe as well. And taking into consideration your global experience, what makes working in Europe particularly challenging or different from working in marketing elsewhere?

Alexandra Hinz 2:08
Well, I think Europe is quite special because you have so many languages in quite a small room, let’s say, compared to the US where everybody is just speaking English, you have different languages, different kind of characters. Of course, I guess, compared to the US you also have different kind of characters, but especially with the languages and different kind of humors, different kind of history and political systems. So I think that’s actually the challenge while communicating to Europe. I just think about last week, I think it was last week, we had Mother’s Day. And it is not, or we had Father’s Day, but also Father’s Day and Mother’s Day—they’re not in all European countries the same day. Just Mother’s Day is in March in the UK, in May it is in rest of countries of Europe. So you really have to have an eye on the specific locations and needs and yeah, regulations, let’s say it like this.

Carlota Pico 3:14
Absolutely. And now you’re in a B2C type of company, Victorinox’s target audience are consumers, but you also have experience working for business-to-business type of companies, and marketing as well, and communications. How important is it to localize your content when it comes to a B2C type of business?

Alexandra Hinz 3:35
Yeah, I think it’s quite important. I think the basis of the communication, like communication themes, need to be clear and the same everywhere, but you need to have specific local adaptation sometimes in Europe. It is so that, yeah for example, in Germany it doesn’t matter, for example, when you have a video in English because you can, they are fine with it. But in France, they really need a French translation to really watch the video. And I think for this reason, local adaptations to make it as easy as possible for the community, to get the content right, on right time, with the right asset mix. It’s very, very important because otherwise you can’t engage with them.

Carlota Pico 4:29
Right. We will be moving further into localization as we move into this interview. But just a little bit about background and advice and tips before we move into social media and content marketing. What’s one thing you would have wished you would have known years ago when you started off your career, because you do have over 10 years of experience in marketing and in communications. What’s one thing that you would have loved to have known back in the day when you started your career off in this area?

Alexandra Hinz 5:02
I think it would have been good to know that it would make sense to have traveled maybe in countries all over Europe or the world before, because it is so much easier when you’ve visited a country or worked closer with those people or your colleagues there, to understand the local needs much better. And if I would have known this, it would have been much easier, if I would have maybe also learned other languages or, so that you know that also cultural aspects and more knowledge about countries. If I would have known this maybe I would have studied also as a subtopic something else and not just German linguistics.

Carlota Pico 5:51
So for recent graduates, your piece of advice to those recent graduates would be learn more languages, go out, explore, travel around Europe, learn about the cultures. Because that type of knowledge will be very useful when it comes to your professional career down the line in marketing and in communications. Is that a good summary?

Alexandra Hinz 6:12
Yes, that’s a good summary, and especially when you really would like to work on a global level. That is very necessary.

Carlota Pico 6:20
Well, we hope that traveling worldwide starts picking up as well after coronavirus, because right now we’re facing lots of problems when it comes to traveling abroad. But hopefully airlines will start picking up some speed and we’ll be able to visit other markets very soon. We are moving into the social media part of this interview. Because you are a social media expert, we will be diving very much into the subject. During my research, I saw that Victorinox throughout its website was constantly bringing the reader back to its origins and to its founder. How important is storytelling in your social media strategy?

Alexandra Hinz 7:05
Yeah, it’s very important, because to understand the products that we are selling you need to know about the heritage and the history of the company, and to understand the philosophy of the company, because the products, the history of the products, is very important because it’s actually the DNA of the company. Because when you understand where we’re coming from as a company, you understand why we are selling that product.

Carlota Pico 7:36
Absolutely.

Alexandra Hinz 7:37
It’s very important, and as you said storytelling in particular, because you can’t really feel… if you see something on a picture or on a video, you can’t, you have no haptic, you know, you can’t touch it, you can’t feel it. But with more background, you can experience and explore, and you can better feel the product.

Carlota Pico 8:02
Just as some background information for our audience, Victorinox is home to the original Swiss Army knife. Today it also sells worldwide cutlery, watches, travel gear and fragrances to a global audience and to global consumers. Speaking of global consumers, we were talking about localization at the beginning of our interview, and I’d like to dive deeper into that subject. Your social media networks are very impressive. According to my research, we’re looking at 14,000 followers on LinkedIn, over 1.4 million followers on Facebook, 186,000 followers on Instagram, and a little bit over 67,000 followers on Twitter. I was only able to look at your international pages. So therefore my question will be the following: what about localized fan pages? Do you also have localized fan pages, considering that your consumers are worldwide?

Alexandra Hinz 9:00
Yes, exactly. We have, it’s very necessary, as the 1.4 million on Facebook for example, is the result of the merged pages. So when you come, we have subsidiaries in more than 11 countries and those of course having their own Facebook pages, and depending on the IP address, people come to the local pages. Because it’s very necessary, I think, that you can speak in local language to your local audience and we realize this especially for example, Japan; when it comes to Instagram, it’s very necessary that they just speak Japanese there, that they’re also sharing their local content there. Because as we talked before, cultural differences makes it necessary, and to reach out to the local audience, yes, we have… Just to summarize it, yes we have local pages, and not all because of capacity sometimes, but of course, when it’s possible, we have localized pages.

Carlota Pico 10:07
How do you manage that content? Is everything centralized? Or do you have local community managers that are responding and engaging with your international audiences?

Alexandra Hinz 10:17
Yes, we have of course a team in the head office, because we are taking care of our direct markets. So like UK, France, DACH we are running from head office, but also, and we’re sharing the content worldwide. But of course, we have, we can’t manage everything on our own. We have people and colleagues sitting in the countries and subsidiaries, or also our distributors, they’re working with our content. And yes, otherwise it wouldn’t be possible. But of course, they’re getting training, they’re getting information on how to use content and how to deal with it. And we are in close exchange as well when it comes to local content.

Carlota Pico 11:02
That does lead me to our next question. The next question would be how do you keep the story and the brand story consistent across all your different channels? Do you have a guidebook, a tone of voice that you’re constantly training your local community managers in?

Alexandra Hinz 11:24
Yeah, of course. Yeah, we have a tone of voice. But I think what’s more important is that we have an asset guide. We have themes as I said; the topics or the themes need to be very basic. So the foundation needs to be the same. And for this reason, we of course, on a global level, we are sharing content with an asset book or asset guidance, and how to use it, where to use it, and so that gives a direction next to the branding guidelines, that of course our colleagues are trained in. So that makes it also of course easier to create local content when it’s needed. And yeah, and a need to run through approval process from head office so that we can assure that the content fits, the local content fits to the overall content and the themes that we are talking to, the campaign themes.

Carlota Pico 12:24
Okay, wonderful. Well, that also leads me into my next question. How has the rise of user-generated content impacted your social media approach and strategy across all your different channels and all your different fan pages? Because of course, local influencers are local because they’re famous or celebrities in that particular market.

Alexandra Hinz 12:47
Yes, actually we started, not really by mistake, but we decided that we need more user-generated content on our PDPs. So to drive more traffic and to get more authenticity to our pages. And we, our e-commerce started using a tool, and this tool allowed us also to reuse those content. And yeah, user-generated content is very, very necessary for us, because you can show as glossy as pictures as possible, but if nobody believes you that said the knife or whatever are really, the knives are cutting well or the luggage is resistant, or the Swiss Army knife has so many functionalities, if not an influencer, a real person is really showing and agreeing that this is really the truth. So user-generated content is very necessary. And we realized even for paid advertising, it’s also, we had better click-through rates using user-generated content. So we’re also working on strategies and tactics to use and reuse user-generated content as well.

Carlota Pico 14:03
Okay, wonderful. So you’re talking about influencers and also brand ambassadors?

Alexandra Hinz 14:08
Well, that is just really user-generated content. And also, of course, we are having brand ambassadors—we don’t say brand ambassadors, because it’s different. But I think in the meaning it is, so we’re having cooperations with partners that are also using our material. And this of course, we’re also using and reusing as well as influencer content, which also is then localized of course, because, yeah, influencers need to be localized.

Carlota Pico 14:43
That makes complete sense. Because of your B2B background. I do want to talk a little bit about LinkedIn. Throughout my interviews, one of the hardest networks to capture an audience on has been LinkedIn. Why do you think that is? And how is your LinkedIn strategy different from what you’re doing on other social networks?

Alexandra Hinz 15:05
Yes. LinkedIn is really, yeah, a little difficult, because as it was really founded to be a network for looking for jobs in the past, and it’s now changing more to become more an influencer for C-level people, and that you’re really networking in a very, very professional way, and then to sell product is not so easy. But of course when it comes to corporate business, so for this reason I think corporate business is very, a good part to start with when you would like to sell your products on LinkedIn. And of course it depends on, for example, Victorinox is having luggage. For example, business travelers, to look at what kind of audience are on LinkedIn—you really need to find your own niche, I think, depending on what kind of products you’re selling, or you’re supposed to sell. And not just being a good employer, but also really to promote your products. I think every business has to find their niche in there, that it’s more relevant.

Carlota Pico 16:24
That’s excellent advice. Thank you. We are moving into the content marketing part of our interview. And from my research, I saw that you have a newsletter. So I do want to touch upon that. How many languages do you publish your newsletter in? And how often do you push out content to your audience?

Alexandra Hinz 16:44
From our head office, we are, as I said, driving our direct markets, UK, France and DACH. So those are regular newsletters one or two times a week, in the relevant languages. And of course, it’s in English, German and French, but also we have in our subsidiaries decentralized newsletters. So those are also in the languages, local languages. And as I said, we have more than 11 subsidiaries so it’s from Spanish for Mexico or Portuguese for Brazil. It’s also, I think in total it’s probably five or six languages for sure that we are, yeah, running newsletters worldwide.

Carlota Pico 17:35
Okay, wonderful. Speaking about content marketing still, and your strategy, so apart from newsletters, what other strategies, content marketing strategies, do you use to engage with your audience? For example, I saw that you don’t have a blog. Why is that?

Alexandra Hinz 17:52
Yeah, well, we started a blog. It is now called news, but it’s very hidden, no wonder that you couldn’t find it. But it’s more related to resources and to tools or to train. Well, I have to start in a different way. It is really, yeah, you need capacity, you need resources, you need a proper strategy. And if you just start from scratch and then you have a reorganization, and you have not the people anymore that writing blogs because their jobs changed, and you have to start from new. So it’s not really clever to have a blog and to run it. So if someone would like to start really a blog, I would recommend to have dedicated people contributing articles on a regular basis. And then it really, really makes sense to start a corporate blog because otherwise it’s a little difficult to keep it running.

Carlota Pico 18:59
What are your thoughts on using an agency to help you run your blog?

Alexandra Hinz 19:05
I have mixed impressions, let’s say. It could be good because, to help you to build up a blog, but on the other side, I think you need to have the passion as a brand, you need to have more insights, because when you have more insights that you can share with the audience, it’s authentic, it’s more… I think you give more value to the customer when you have internal authors, like experts writing articles, as you have an agency. An agency I think can really good support you when it comes to SEO-relevant texts or to structures, to strategies. But to write the content, my personal impression is that it gives more value to the customer when you have really the experts in house writing this with a passion and the knowledge.

Carlota Pico 19:56
Well, we are moving into the last section of our interview today, which is going to be a set of rapid-fire questions. The first question will be a lesser-known app or tool that you can’t live without or that you can’t work without.

Alexandra Hinz 20:11
Yeah, I would say it’s Slack. Because the digital marketing team is spread, we are not sitting everywhere in Switzerland, we are sitting in the UK and in different kind of parts of Switzerland. And really it does make it so much easier to work together. Also with partners and agencies, using one platform really to chat quickly, to share and exchange stuff. Yeah, so Slack, I would say is one of the tools that I can’t live at the moment, working from home.

Carlota Pico 20:50
I would completely agree. I work, well I’m head of business development at VeraContent, as I introduced myself at the beginning of our interview while we were off the record. And at VeraContent we use Slack every single day as part of everything really. We use it with our partners, we use it with our clients, we use it internally across our different teams and departments. And I couldn’t agree more that it’s a great communication tool to use and to implement in one’s every day. So moving into our next question, do you have a marketing influencer in Europe that you follow?

Alexandra Hinz 21:27
Well, actually no. Honestly, no. But what I really do is I really follow or look for hashtags, like digital transformation, social media marketing trends, because this is I think a good way to stay updated, and to get a good overview on being well informed and not just using or following one influencer as specific.

Carlota Pico 21:56
And the last question of our interview today will be a group, or an event, or an association that you feel provides a lot of value to marketing and communication professionals. And let’s try to center it in Europe, something that our European audience can actively attend, even if digitally right now. So I guess that does give the event a global platform.

Alexandra Hinz 22:22
Yeah. So I’m thinking back of the past, of what kind of conferences or groups I attended. I think to give a little, a very broad overview is DMEXCO, that’s a fair in Cologne. Because there you can, on the one hand side, meet partners, different kind of depending on what you’re looking for, if it’s digital marketing, digital communication, if it’s tools that you need to work for. And on the other side, you have representatives from the big channels like Facebook, Twitter, and you have really the latest news, and the way they are showing or giving you insights into the digital world is very, very nice because you have a wow effect. The first time I attended there I really had a wow effect, because I thought, “You can do this, wow, that’s so cool.” And you also meet a lot of interesting people there, you can network very well. And it’s a two-day event, I think. So you really have the chance to explore as much as you can there. So I think that is something that everybody should visit maybe once at least.

Carlota Pico 23:39
Okay, wonderful. Well those are awesome tips, Alexandra. Thank you so much for joining us today on The Content Mix. It was a privilege to learn about your insights and your experience in social media, especially considering your very large fan base and followers. We’re looking at over 1.5 million followers on Facebook alone. So thank you so much for sharing your insights. And to everyone listening in, thank you for joining us today on The Content Mix. For more perspectives on the marketing and communications industry in Europe, check out TheContentMix.com. We’ll be releasing interviews just like this one every week. Thank you once again, Alexandra.

Alexandra Hinz 24:23
It was my pleasure.

Carlota Pico 24:25
See you next time!

Alexandra Hinz 24:27
Bye.

Carlota Pico 24:27
Bye!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai