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OhHello - Lauren Thomas
75 Plays2 years ago
Lauren Thomas is a journalist turned marketer. She's currently Head of Content at Vouch, an async video platform, based in Sydney, Australia. Lauren is OHHello's first international guest (among several other pod guests dropping soon) b/c we love the product that she runs content for. Lauren has traveled the world, originally from the UK and now residing in Sydney, Australia with her husband.
Vouch is an async video platform that allows teams to communicate with short, authentic videos right from their workflow. Main use cases: HR and recruiting teams screening candidates, marketing and product teams collecting user feedback and bringing the voice of the customer into their business.
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Transcript
Lauren's Early Start and Background
00:00:16
Speaker
Lauren, thank you for being here. It is very early your time. You are coming live to me from where?
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm coming from to from Sydney. So I wasn't I wasn't warmed up for the dance off to start my day at 9am. But I'm here for it. Well said you were not and oh, hello. Hello, Laura. Thank you for being here. Thank you to our podcast listeners. Thank you for those watching on YouTube, LinkedIn, and everywhere else. Tick tock. The list goes on and on.
00:00:46
Speaker
instagram but most importantly lauren thomas thank you for being here thank you for representing vouch who is a fantastic partner of hello and why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself why are you here who are you what is vouch.
00:01:02
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me first. I'm so excited to be part of this and to have Bouch supporting this as well. So, not to let the accent fool you. Obviously, I sound British, but I am living in sunny Sydney at the moment. So, been living here for five years. We just live across the road from the beach, heavily leaning into all of that beach living lifestyle. Absolutely love it here.
00:01:26
Speaker
Love that.
Career Transition to Branded Content
00:01:28
Speaker
But back in the UK, I started out as a journalist. So I trained as a journalist and works in sort of magazines and newspapers for a while before transitioning over to branded content. And so I was creating branded content for fashion brands, kind of
00:01:47
Speaker
these big sort of magazines, which probably ages me a little bit, started out in print, but, you know, knew that it was all going into social media. So started working at a newspaper doing their Snapchat content, which again, probably ages me even more because that was the big social media platform at the time. And then
00:02:06
Speaker
Like I say, I moved over to Sydney five years ago, and that's kind of when I went more into startups.
Roles at Vamp and Vouch
00:02:13
Speaker
I could see the huge impact influencers were having, obviously working in fashion content. So I started working at a influencer marketing platform called Vamp, which was great. Started out as a publicist and then ended up doing that content marketing as head of content.
00:02:30
Speaker
And then for the past year, I have been at Vouch, as you mentioned before. So Vouch is a really exciting startup based out of Sydney, but we are in countries all over the world now.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's an async video tool, as you know. And yeah, it's been really exciting to see the progression over the past year. It's been used for lots of different things. So we've got sort of people and culture teams and recruiters using it to screen their candidates for kind of video interviewing. We've got product and marketing teams using it to get user research and
00:03:08
Speaker
speak to their customers and make sure that customer voice is running all throughout their company.
Vouch's Progression and Partnerships
00:03:13
Speaker
So yeah, really seeing that use case expand for vouch in the growth over the past year has been amazing. And I know that you're going to be using it as part of your, oh, hello, and you know, getting content from mentors. So yeah, it's been it's been a great ride so far.
00:03:30
Speaker
Amazing. Yeah, I have had the pleasure of working with past teams that have worked within your platform. Vouch is so intuitive. It's fast. And this is non-sponsored content. It's just that because of the partnership and because I've used your tools before,
00:03:49
Speaker
and have known your team in the past and now again, just excited to be using your platform and also wanting to help in understanding the vision and the purpose of what you and your crew are going through and you are trajectory. So I appreciate you being part of the journey with Oh Hello. Yeah, thank you. Of course, how would you characterize your skill set?
00:04:13
Speaker
that you, Lauren Thomas, a Brit living down under, are going to be delivering to a global marketplace, providing guidance, providing just mentorship, providing expertise. Tell me a little bit about your skill set.
00:04:31
Speaker
Yeah, so, I mean, my manager, Liz, I think, gave me the ultimate compliment the other day. She said that I'm a Swiss Army knife of talent, which I will totally take as an amazing compliment. But I think that sort of broad skill set you really hone in the startup space, right? Because you're doing everything, you're wearing lots of hats, and, you know, you're running lots of different programs at once. But
00:04:53
Speaker
I guess my main skill set would be content strategies which build brands and build brand awareness. And that could be everything from social media to influencer marketing, blogs are optimized for SEO, and also within the PR and thought leadership space.
Shift Towards Video Content
00:05:11
Speaker
So I think it's really interesting going from journalism into content marketing because and sort of the PR space because
00:05:18
Speaker
You've been on both sides of the fence, right? So you know how to write to get into publications and you know how to pitch to journalists because you have been pitched to many times, successfully and not successfully. So that's usually a spring to my bow when I'm sort of looking at content marketing as well. There's that PR side of things. I would have said that writing and editing was my first love. I think that process brings me a lot of joy.
00:05:47
Speaker
But the really exciting thing at Vouch has been looking at everything through the lens of video and how can we bring this to life with video? I mean, like what you're doing now, it's how people want to be consuming content. So yeah, looking at content through a video lens has been a really great progression for me.
00:06:04
Speaker
Amazing with the PR background, spinning that into site-sound in motion, being able to use your expertise into figuring out and helping tell stories in the most accessible way to everybody worldwide. Here I'm sitting in Chicago, you're sitting in Sydney, in understanding how the technology and the tools can benefit businesses.
Mentorship and Career Adaptability
00:06:29
Speaker
It's pretty impressive, but also,
00:06:31
Speaker
having you as a mentor within our ecosystem is gonna be valuable just with your experience of both PR, content marketing, agency experience, and the list goes on and on. With that said, looking back, tell me a little bit about how you define mentorship, what excites you about mentorship, and some of your mentors that have made a profound impact on you.
00:06:58
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I think mentorship excites me because so much now, our careers are really linear, right? Technology is changing so fast and there's these big cultural changes that have been brought around by the pandemic. So I think that
00:07:15
Speaker
We can't ever imagine that we're going to be able to pigeonhole ourselves in a career and that that's just the way it's going to go. We have to be so open to opportunities and hey, in five years I could be working in a career that I'd never thought of with a technology that hasn't even been invented yet. So I think like keeping an open mind is really important and just accepting the fact that we are going to be beginners at multiple times throughout our career.
00:07:38
Speaker
So I think being open to mentorship and learning to guide you in all of those different stages of your career is really important. And I think Oh, Hello is launching at a really interesting time because we're working, as you say, more async and remote and things like that. It's why a vouch has been so popular.
00:08:00
Speaker
because you're not having as much of that human interaction and those one-to-one conversations that we all need and get so much from. And, you know, also the climate that we're in at the moment with redundancies and these tech layoffs that we're seeing, like it can be a scary time for people. And I think if you are going through any sort of redundancy issues, it can be a knock to your confidence as well. So I think mentorship is, you know,
00:08:27
Speaker
is a great support throughout all of that and guidance. Love that you hit on openness and the true flat earth concept. I don't mean true flat earth concept, but what I mean by that is being able for accessibility, whether you live in
00:08:46
Speaker
Singapore, Indonesia, Uruguay, Brazil, Canada, Australia, the US. It doesn't matter where being able to access experts and access people that you can learn from and being able to do it from your phone, from your laptop. It's pretty async and amazing that we're able to do this, but well said about the tech layoffs too. One of our goals together is being able to
00:09:13
Speaker
help these thousands of people that have been let go that have to showcase
00:09:18
Speaker
vulnerability, being brave, so many different emotions that they likely want to harbor inside that all of us or most of us had gone through at some point. I was laid off years ago between different opportunities. And then I found what was the most fun portion of my career. And I met so many amazing people through that, which is just part of the journey and just understanding how you had hit on openness.
00:09:46
Speaker
something that you and I were talking about beforehand too is just your experience of traveling the world. We'd love to hear a bit more about some of the mentorships that or your mentors that have made a profound impact on you. Yeah, definitely. So kind of on all around the world, which I'm very lucky. So there was an amazing boss that I had back in the UK Mari,
00:10:09
Speaker
And she had a career that I was just in awe of. She had been editor of Marie Claire for many years and was just an absolute powerhouse. And she was such an advocate of mine, really championed me and taught me so much about being direct and using your voice and having the confidence to do that. So I learned so much from her early in my career.
00:10:33
Speaker
I'm sorry, Warren. I mean, to speak over you, my apologies. I was just going to ask what's Mallory's last name, just so we can give her the proper tag. And it's Mario Reardon. And she will be very embarrassed. I'm even mentioning her name. But yeah, we won't tag her. But nonetheless, we should run fuzzies. No, she she is absolutely amazing. I see. We'll keep in touch with Mari. So we should we should definitely do that.
00:11:01
Speaker
And then I'm lucky enough to have an amazing mentor now that I'm working with Liz. I knew her before starting work at Vouch and she is such a such a positive champion and for me and she is really amazing at making me look to the future and future proof in my skill set and you know where do you want to be and things like that and I think that's something I'm a very sort of present person and that's something that I sort of struggle with so I think
00:11:29
Speaker
That's why again like having that mentorship that can really give you a different perspective and open you up to things like that. So she is amazing and that's kind of my professional mentors and then for anything outside of that
00:11:43
Speaker
is my mom. She's amazing. She's such an incredible mentor. She's a very strong lady. She's a breast cancer survivor. She's incredibly emotionally intelligent. And yeah, anything not involved in my career, she's the person I go to. Hugs to your mom. She sounds pretty impressive and very happy that you've been able to see her a couple times this past year. So thank you for sharing that with me before we started.
Supporting Women in Tech
00:12:08
Speaker
The last but not least, we have the opportunity, you have the opportunity after your sessions to be able to donate to charitable causes. Something that's really important about Oh Hello is being able to give back, having that altruism take place, giving back to different charities. What is a charity that's near and dear to your heart?
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, well props to you because it's a hard decision. You've got some really amazing options there of different charities that we can donate to. But I think on this occasion for me, it will be Girls Who Code. I'm just a big advocate for women in tech and women in leadership positions and
00:12:46
Speaker
have been lucky enough to work with some really diverse tech teams. So I can see sort of the impact that can have, but obviously it is still, you know, there's still work to be done on that balance. So I think any, yeah, it's not the norm that I've been working in such diverse teams. So I'm fully aware of that. So I think any support that can be given to that and resources is really important. Amazing.
Conclusion and Future Collaborations
00:13:13
Speaker
Amazing. It's an amazing,
00:13:15
Speaker
philanthropic cause and the diversity and inclusion components are very near and dear to our heart at Oh, hello. I know it is to you. We've talked about this before. So just want to say thank you, Lauren. Thank you for being a fan and advocate for being on our platform. Love working with the vouch team. We appreciate you and thank you for being here today.
00:13:40
Speaker
a very, very nice day is I'm finishing mine up. You're starting your next day. So my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Jeremy. And good luck with everything. Thank you.