Home
>
Tini Sevak, Vice-President, Audience and Data, CNN International

Tini Sevak, Vice-President, Audience and Data, CNN International

Describe your career to date

From a young age, I was the kid who always asked “why?” and was curious about how things worked. I took apart toasters and radios to see how they worked. An inability to put them back together made me realise that I wasn’t going to become an engineer like my father.

I started my career as an analytics manager at Mindshare in New York, where I was accountable for the delivery of econometric projects evaluating the role of paid, owned and earned media in driving business outcomes. It was with Mindshare that I had the opportunity to come to London and work in the global business planning team.

After 10 years with Mindshare, I joined Starcom’s business integration team, where I was responsible for designing long-term data strategy roadmaps to drive business growth. It was here that I learned the building blocks of elevating data to be part of a strategic conversation.

In 2018, I joined the executive team at CNN International commercial as vice-president of audiences and data, where I run a global team of audience insight specialists, digital analysts and data experts, focused on understanding our audiences, using data to fuel and inform our campaigns, ensuring accountability for our partnerships.

My career choices have been driven by finding leaders and teams I believe in, rather than joining a particular company. I have a passion for learning, genuine curiosity in the “why?” and a strong desire not to let down those who gave me their trust.

What stage has your organisation reached on its data maturity journey?

At CNN International commercial we have a strong data-driven culture that starts at the executive level. Data and analytics is a central driving force within our business, enabling smarter, faster and more forward-thinking decisions that will navigate us through uncertainty and, ultimately, drive future business growth.

Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for

The audiences and data team is responsible for delivering data-driven insights to underpin our decision making, embedding audience insights within our service offering to strengthen and enhance our commercial strategy for CNN International. The team comprises two key functions.

The audience insight and strategy team provides a deep knowledge of the CNN International consumer, international marketplace and broader industry trends to shape how to meet the needs of our audience.

The intelligence and analytics team harnesses our digital, data and analytics service offerings to empower us to be better, smarter and more efficient with what we do with data and insights.

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your organisation and on the industry as a whole?

The role of data continues to grow and evolve at an increasing pace as the organisation needs continual and quicker access to data and insights to deliver strategic direction for our clients and business.

While this has its challenges, it has also served as a catalyst to evolve and innovate how we understand audiences, measure impact and build automated and streamlined data solutions.

The challenge is going to be in ensuring that we strike the right balance between tactical solutions that deliver on the needs of the business today and future proof investments that will pave the way for the future.

Have you set out a vision for data? If so, what is it aiming for and does it embrace the whole organisation or just the data function?

2023 will require our audiences and data function to be smarter, faster and more agile to drive our business with actionable data insights, inform client campaigns and fuel business growth.

The core focuses are to innovate and enhance our insight and analytical solutions; finding new ways to understand our audiences using social and media monitoring, measuring accountability through neuroscience techniques.

We will also develop a new metric to measure the carbon footprint of our media campaigns and explore further reducing our footprint, and develop, attract and grow diverse and inclusive talent, where each member can thrive and be encouraged to have brilliant impactful careers.

Have you been able to fix the data foundations of your organisation, particularly with regard to data quality?

To empower users at all levels to make data-driven decisions, we democratised data by building the right data foundation with a single global taxonomy and hierarchy across the various data units. We have built several cross functional teams to ensure we are continually aligned and collaborative on our data journeys.

Tini Sevak
has been included in:

100 Brands 2023 (EMEA)

Join our membership network of over 250
global senior data and AI leaders.

The trusted global collaboration and intelligence platform for data leaders.

DataIQ is a trading name of IQ Data Group Limited
Registered office: 6^th Floor Charlotte Building, 17 Gresse St. London, W1T 1QL

Tini Sevak, Vice-President, Audience and Data, CNN International

Join our membership network of over 250 global senior data and AI leaders.

The trusted global collaboration and intelligence platform for data leaders.

Join our membership network of over 250
global senior data and AI leaders.