At SuperAwesome, we’re committed to ensuring team members grow and up-skill within their team, and the company as a whole. In this Women in Tech series, we’ll be looking at the career paths of various women working in tech within SuperAwesome – from engineers to product managers to everything in between. 

Jess Whatson joined SuperAwesome as Sales Support in 2016. Her passion for data analysis and the kids digital ecosystem as a whole has led her to her current position, leading our Market Strategy team across EMEA. 

Here, she talks about how her career has evolved within SuperAwesome, and what she does to make the internet safer for kids. 

What does your role involve?

My team compiles internal and external insights to implement strategies both for teams at SuperAwesome, and for clients. We use our knowledge of the kids industry to enable our clients to maximise on their brand missions, enabling safe, compliant digital experiences for kids. Further to this we work on sales strategies and education, keeping our reps at SuperAwesome on the forefront of innovation, as well as organising events across the EU to maintain the SuperAwesome brand.

What’s your favourite thing about your job? 

My favourite thing is using our data to tell a really engaging, vivid story for our clients. 

We combine proprietary campaign data with bespoke kids insights and customer knowledge to power our recommendations and business development strategies. When we can connect together different sources,  like Google Trends, Kidslift studies and campaign performance, we can form a compelling narrative around devices, recommended activations and preferred content. This demonstrates the power of the kids market, and importance of advertising to this audience. 

Sharing these insights across internal teams and clients allows everyone to benefit from powerful leverage in a hard-to-measure sector. Crafting the perfect strategy for clients, then seeing it put into action is always a great moment.

It also makes me feel much cooler than my friends when I know the latest trend / TikTok meme. Picking up on these and folding them into our plans is always fun!

What makes you proud to work in kidtech?

Everyone in the kidtech industry is striving to do better for the next generation. They’re taking real problems facing a largely unprotected population and working out how to solve them in a way that still gives users a great experience, and teaches them positive online behaviour. 

With colleagues and companies like that surrounding you, it’s hard not to be inspired by the positive things happening in kidtech.

What excites you about kidtech? 

Kids don’t react to things the same way as adults – at all. This means you can’t reach them with tech or ads in the same way, which is a new challenge for a lot of our clients. They’re also fickle with their opinions, so just because a strategy worked before doesn’t mean it will ever again. 

Combining real time data with our own internal analysis tools means we’re right at the forefront of kids opinions and interests. Being able to pass on this knowledge and see clients get just as interested in how kids are engaging online is a highlight of my day!

If someone was interested in working in kidtech, what advice would you give them? 

Never stop learning. Not just about your role, but other departments and anything that interests you. Being able to see correlations and understand connections is an irreplaceable skill in an industry that moves as quickly as kidtech. Taking a step back to see the wider picture benefits you and everyone around you. 

Check out our blogs and white papers to understand the context behind the industry, and then try to piece where your existing knowledge can complement and advance making the internet safer for kids. 

Our podcast is the easiest way to do this – my favourite episode is #15, where Sam and Craig talk about just how much influence kids have over everything in the home.

Interested in contributing to SuperAwesome’s mission to make the Internet safer for kids? Check out our job openings here.

If you’re interested in staying on top of technology and kidtech news, we publish several kids industry newsletters which now have over 10k subscribers reading monthly. Sign up now!