This week on Strivin & Thrivin, we spoke with Alex Conomos, Senior Manager for Content Marketing and Social Media at Audible.
Alex spent a lot of time in the media and entertainment industries, with a focus on food. It all started in food magazines, which then saw her move from editorial to advertising, before realising that the place for her was in marketing.
Next up was food and lifestyle TV at Foxtel, then Alex launched Australia’s first food channel, SBS Food. But if there’s one thing that was consistent with every one of those marketing roles, it was working with storytellers.
“Working with my internal content teams, executive producers, writers and chefs, I would help mould their ideas and their content into something really fantastic that audiences would love. And work out the right way to shape it, brand it and package it all up so that audiences would really, really engage with it.”
That leads us to Alex’s current role at Audible (which surprisingly, isn’t food related!), with a focus on their Audible Originals – audio storytelling that’s created to be listened to.
Alex already has an impressive resume, and has only added to it by working on projects with Eric Bana (yes, THE Eric Bana), Sarah Wilson (author of I Quit Sugar) and, Audible has recently announced a collaboration with another iconic Aussie, Cate Blanchett!
With big names signing on to create original audio projects tells us one thing, audio is here to stay.
“So now is the time to be working in audio. It’s having a resurgence, there’s so much flex in the medium and because we’re quite a small and nimble team, I’m able to work really closely with our content creators. Whether it’s the writers, the hosts, the narrators – many who are coming in from film and screen and stage – and work with them on packaging up these Audible Originals into something fantastic that we can take to our members and to our prospects as well. And it’s becoming a much bigger focus of the business globally. So a really exciting time to be working at Audible.”
While there are so many exciting things happening on the work front, a question we often ask our guests is how they carve out a work-life balance. For Alex, she’s seen the benefits in running as a mood changer (we wish we could relate!).
“I might try and pop in a run at lunchtime, or in winter when it would get dark early, I might run at four o’clock, come back and then continue on with my workday. But making time for me would just pay off in spades afterwards.”
