Giving a digital marketing company running shoes

Tamsyn Friedman has embraced the mantle of Group Marketing Manager for dynamic digital marketing specialist, CBR Marketing, having been part of the company’s strong organic growth for close on five years – and recognised the need for the marketing company to market itself.

“It was a case of shoemaker’s children going barefoot,” explains Tamsyn. “We were so busy creating marketing strategies, campaigns and platforms for our clients, that our own marketing took a back seat. It came time for us to step up and showcase our company’s growing strengths, abilities and achievements – and I was delighted that the job fell to me.”

Tamsyn started her tertiary education in law and then realised it was “too much by the book” for her. She achieved her honours in psychology from University of Johannesburg and went to live in London for two years. On her return to South Africa, yearning for greater excitement and bigger challenges, she landed at CBR Marketing’s door – and has loved every step of the journey. “Destiny led me here,” she maintains.

Marketing CBR is an exciting challenge for Tamsyn, who says the goal is to create a strong brand presence for the company, while also ensuring synergies with its acquisitions. “While CBR offers a full range of through-the-line marketing services, digital is at the core of everything we do – it’s our passion!”

She is characteristically enthusiastic about digital marketing, which offers tremendous opportunities for adding value creatively to customers’ businesses. Her advice to companies engaging in digital marketing is to ensure they are giving their customers value. “It’s about so much more than good design and a pretty logo; it’s about the value your customers are going to get from your product or service. And digital marketing allows you to add that value to so many people,” she says. “Companies that are stuck on traditional marketing are closing their eyes to the reality that digital marketing is here, now, it’s here to stay, and it’s a very good thing.”

Tamsyn says the people she works with make coming to work every day a great experience. “I work with an amazing team and we work well together. It’s a fun and hard-working team with excellent creativity, amazing minds, and abundant energy. There’s also solid support if you need it. It’s an inspiring place to be.”

She believes that the most important thing in any business is people, which makes it vitally important to ensure they are happy and empowered to grow. “Happy staff are inspired – and they are excited to come to work. At CBR we apply this principle to our clients as well – we invest in them as people, and it makes a difference.”

At the top of Tamsyn’s bucket list is the desire to write and publish a book about spirituality and self-awareness, and her interests include “anything esoteric”, self-healing, spirituality, and reading – her nickname when she was younger was ‘Book’. On her bedside table at the moment is Marriage of Opposites by best-selling author Alice Hoffman.

Tamsyn is newly married to Peri Friedman, who is Senior Designer at CBR Marketing.

For more information on CBR, go to www.cbrmarketing.co.za.