The year 2023 has been a challenging year for the media and technology industry as it has seen massive waves of layoffs, leaving many employees in the dark on whether there’s a new opportunity waiting for them. Responding to such challenges, global digital media agency JOLT Digital has launched a new initiative called “Learn With the Expert” with the goal of leveraging the expertise of many laid-off employees to share their insights teach the most pertinent topics in the media industry.
For JOLT Digital, said initiative is part of their commitment to Knowledge Transfer and upskilling the industry.
We recently spoke with Jason Tan, general manager at JOLT Digital, to learn more about the agency’s initiative, and how it aims to create a win-win situation for not just laid-off employees but also industry leaders who could potentially be the future employers for those who are made redundant.
Knowledge transfer as the brand’s ethos
For Tan, the transfer of knowledge has been always part of the brand’s ethos, and that “Learn With the Expert” perfectly reflects such ideology, while noticing a greater opportunity for those who have been made redundant.
“2023 was a challenging year for the media industry and many industry peers who were made redundant reached out to explore job openings at JOLT. We realised that there is suddenly an avalanche of know-how by these talents in the market and every one of these talents have a unique perspective and expertise,” he explained.
Tan also added, “Knowledge transfer is part of our JOLT ethos and ‘Learn With the Expert’ began as a unique opportunity to transfer all the latent knowledge to our clients. After socializing the idea, we decided that if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing bigger and better”
JOLT Digital launched the initiative back in November 2023, as an initiative to share industry expertise amongst marketers and specialists. For Tan, ‘Learn with the Expert’ is a mutually beneficial initiative that has been well received by both their experts and also the client/marketer participants.
“The JOLT team curates the topics of each session and ensures that they address the immediate questions of our clients and the industry. ‘Learn with the Expert’ has covered the areas of privacy concerns, the impact of a cookieless world and most recently the role of organic social for brands. These are areas of immense industry interest and our clients had the opportunity to learn and leave with practical next steps,” he said.
On forging better relationships with brands and agencies
According to Tan, the initiative provides a familiar forum and environment to present in front of our clients and more. The webinars, in which these knowledge sharing initiative are done, are essentially elevator pitches for JOLT Digital’s signed experts and an opportunity to impress potential employers.
“It’s a confidence booster, a recognition for their expertise, and a platform to stay involved in the rhythm of work,” he said.
Some of the topics being discussed already during these webinars include digital marketing strategy impact, cookieless advertising, navigating privacy online, and organic social.
Through this webinar, Tan aims to give these affected experts a platform to reach thousands of potential employers and tremendous social visibility.
“We have recently seen an Expert who found his new job at a publisher and we hope we contributed a little to this. When our clients are interested in talking to our experts, we are happy to facilitate these conversations. On top of bringing experts in front of our clients, we help them minimise the hiatus in their CVs by bringing JOLT in the picture through the work they have done with Learn with the Expert,” he said.
As of this writing, Tan notes that they are booked with experts up until May this year, and have recently expanded their offering to the United Kingdom.
When asked about how this initiative will aim to forge better relationships between brands and agencies, he believes that amidst the complexities of the digital media landscape, there is and should always be a room for knowledge sharing.
“The digital media industry is increasingly complex and platform knowledge is extremely specialised. JOLT strongly believes that all digital media agencies should transfer their knowledge to their clients,” he said.
He added, “We have seen in the past that agency operations has become too much of a black box and clients have to make decisions sometimes without knowing enough the implications. At JOLT, our mission statement is to gamechange the industry. ‘Learn with the Expert’ is a testament to how we transfer knowledge and power to our clients and how we believe stronger brand-agency relationships are forged with trust and transparency.”
