Playing in a Bigger League
Some career steps feel like a natural next move. Becoming Marketing Coordinator at Kompan felt like stepping onto a completely different stage. Kompan is a global manufacturer of playground equipment and outdoor fitness installations, headquartered in Denmark, with operations across the world. Taking on the Benelux region meant working within a well-oiled international machine while being entirely responsible for how that machine showed up locally. It was the kind of role that either sharpens you or overwhelms you. For me, it did the former.
The bridge between global and local
What I am most proud of from my time at Kompan is not any single campaign or event, but the role I played as a connector. Headquarters in Denmark produced world-class materials; beautiful catalogues, polished social content, strong campaign concepts. My job was to take all of that and make it land in the Dutch and Belgian market in a way that felt relevant, not just translated.
That sounds straightforward. It rarely is. It requires constant communication in both directions; understanding what HQ needs to protect in terms of brand consistency, and understanding what the local sales team needs to actually close deals. Being the person who holds both of those realities at once, and finds the solution that serves both, is not a design skill or a marketing skill. It is a people skill, and it is one I learned to rely on heavily at Kompan.
Lights, camera, campaign
It was also at Kompan where I had my first real experience with corporate film production; from the initial brief through to directing an external production team and then making sure the final result actually did something. Because a film without a campaign around it is just a film. We had a running joke internally that everything we did needed “a head and a tail”; a proper beginning and a proper end, a reason to exist and a plan for what happens next. A film launch with a social campaign, a trade fair stand with a follow-up mailing, an event with a content series that kept the story alive afterwards.
That philosophy shaped everything I touched at Kompan, and it has stayed with me ever since. It is the difference between producing materials and building communication. One fills a folder. The other moves people.
From photography to trade fairs
One of the things that set my time at Kompan apart was the level of ownership I had over the creative output. Photography concepts, video productions, event presentations, trade fair stands; all developed and executed independently. Where the local level had previously relied on whatever global produced, I was allowed to rais the bar considerably, bringing in photographers, developing stronger event concepts, and building a more consistent and compelling local brand presence.
The trade fair work in particular became something I genuinely loved. Taking a stand from brief to build, making sure every element tells the same story, and then watching it come to life on the floor of a venue; there is something deeply satisfying about that. It is total creative ownership with a very real deadline.
Standardising without losing soul
One of my key results at Kompan was building more efficient content production through standardisation; creating templates, workflows, and visual systems that made it easier to produce consistent materials at speed. This is the part of marketing that does not always get celebrated, but it matters enormously. A team that has clear tools and formats produces better work, faster, and with less friction. Building those systems was as much a part of my contribution as any single piece of creative work.
What Kompan taught me
Kompan gave me scale. It taught me how to operate within a global brand framework while maintaining the flexibility to respond to local needs. It taught me that good marketing is never just about the output; it is about the relationships, the processes, and the clarity of thinking that make consistent quality possible.
And it confirmed something I had suspected for a while: that I work best when I have real ownership, real responsibility, and the freedom to bring my full range of skills to bear. Not just the creative ones. All of them.
