What Denise Mercado loves about Billups is that she has the freedom to build her own role:
“I can drive where I want to go,” Mercado said. “The key thing here is there’s a lot of support in what you want to do in your career.”
Throughout her career at Billups, she has held many roles, at times overseeing multiple regions or acting as Regional Director, but she’s always really loved the aspect of creating new business and building relationships with new clients.
Denise Mercado, Client Director, has been with Billups for 13 years serving in multiple roles as the company grew and her interests expanded and changed.
She was initially hired as a Senior Planner based out of Los Angeles, focused primarily on the west coast, but worked on campaigns throughout the United States. From there, she was promoted to Supervisor, and then Director.
Then came an opportunity to create a brand new region in San Diego, where she now lives, and she was promoted to Regional Director of San Diego, a region that also included the state of Arizona.
“It differed from the other regions where they already had a book of business and a team already. It was just me and I had to create it from the ground up,” Mercado said.
Creating Her Own Role at Billups
Mercado found that in her new Regional Director role, she only worked on new business and served more of a business development function. She saw an opportunity to create a hybrid role that would bring in new business and plan Out-of-Home (OOH) media campaigns.
“There’s a lot of support in our growth as individuals at Billups, and they give us a lot of freedom and tools,” Mercado said. “Roles can be created if there’s a fit, and if you’re interested in something, it’s easy to move.”
In Mercado’s current Client Director role, she not only brings in and supports new business but also does media planning, buying, and contracting for fledgling accounts to support them through their first few campaigns. In addition to this, she still has her own clients through accounts she’s brought in, where she manages all of the facilitation, production, and post-buy.
How Her Values and Passion Drive Outcomes
As a lifelong learner and connoisseur of new experiences, Mercado merits the company’s core value of authenticity above all others and says it’s okay, even for those in leadership positions to not always have all the answers.
“I’ve always been myself,” Mercado said. “I’m not a person that’s afraid to say I don’t know something or I don’t know what I don’t know. Once you get to this stage in your career, people are often afraid to say they don’t know something, but that’s obviously a detriment to yourself and the company.”
Passionate about the challenge of learning new ways to support the company, Mercado has thrived in the fast-paced, quickly changing world of OOH, which further fuels her drive to continue learning and adapting to changes.
“There’s always some new format or a new way to buy things or new attribution,” Mercado said. “There’s always something new, and there’s always change in our industry. It’s not like buying a newspaper or TV spot.”
She prides herself on her relentlessness and negotiating skills. Her track record of existing accounts, accounts she has brought in, and how she has helped foster Billups's growth show her commitment to achieving great things for the company.
Mercado attributes her success at Billups partly to feeling empowered to delve deeper into the parts of her roles that excite her. The company has allowed her freedom in the work that she does, and this has helped her to expand her own skill sets, as well as provide great value to the company.
“If I wanted to pursue some other aspect, I would have the support to do so,” Mercado said.
Perhaps in part due to holding so many different positions at Billups, Mercado recognizes the value of collaboration. Though there can sometimes be competing goals between different teams, it’s critical to take a step back and realize that, ultimately, everyone is working for the same company and towards the same goals.
“Everyone’s role is important in a different way,” Mercado said. “We have to think about it as one team. We have our KPIs for our own team, and different segments of the company have their own. We can’t meet those without collaborating internally.”
Following Interests to Support Company Growth
Mercado continues to consider where her future interests and work in the company will take her. She is especially excited about the possibilities of Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) and Programmatic DOOH (pDOOH).
“I’ve taken an interest in DOOH and pDOOH. That is my next interest,” Mercado said. “How do we get more of those dollars into our company because that is a very fast-growing sector of OOH. There are talks of programmatic static buying, and I think we need to get ahead of it.”
She is also excited about how attribution will continue to grow in importance to her role as she brings in new clients and manages client growth.
“The two things that are going to be important are ‘can we measure it?’ and how quickly and easily we can execute and measure,” Mercado said.
Pride in New Experiences
Mercado’s passion for novelty is also seen in how she spends her time away from the office. In her free time, Mercado enjoys a number of hobbies and interests. She likes to get people together, create meet-ups or gatherings for brunch, try different restaurants, or visit museums. She’s also a DJ, vinyl collector, and music curator who creates playlists for DJs at Vinyl bars.
“In general, I just like new experiences. I’m always out and about,” Mercado said.
Mercado is proud of her role in the growth of the company and the volume of net revenue she’s helped bring in and increase during her time with Billups.
“I think for me, my biggest accomplishment is having been actively involved in the growth of the company and seeing where it went from 2010 until now,” Mercado said.
