Hawkers, Panama Jack, Merkal, Primor... Throughout his career, the name of Diego Moreno has been associated with some of the most popular brands in our country. A top-level background that has made Diego a benchmark for a generation of entrepreneurs and marketing professionals, and which in 2019 led him to launch his marketing consultancy, Hawk X, hand in hand with two other former Hawkers What Alexander Sanchez And his brother Alex Moreno.
Currently, Diego combines his activity as CEO of Hawk X with the CDO of Perfumerías Primor. To learn a little more about his history, how he is experiencing the current situation and his plans for the future, we have spoken with him.
Let’s start with the important thing: how are you and how are you living this crisis?
The truth is that I am very well, lucky because for now the covid-19 has not affected any relatives. I must admit that on a personal level the state of alarm has been very hard, being separated from the people you love the most is never easy. On a professional level, I have experienced this crisis as if I were a small child.has allowed me to experiment and learn a lot in the digital channel, It has been like completing a master’s degree in just three months.
This is because the volume of traffic and sales of our clients has multiplied by four in this last quarter. To give you an idea, in terms of traffic and sales we have experienced during April and May eight weeks in a row with figures higher than the week of “”, handling enormous volumes of data that have served us to obtain an amount of data that otherwise we would have needed several years to achieve. As in any crisis, it has been an unrepeatable opportunity for change that we have taken advantage of.
How have you coped with the change of scenery?
We have faced this change of scenery in the best possible way: Working as a team. When you work as a team, the efforts of the members are enhanced, the action time decreases and the effectiveness of the results increases. The declaration of the state of alarm caused an abrupt change, which occurred, we had to adapt quickly and make changes on the fly.
As I have said before, it is very important to identify any crisis as an opportunity for change and progress. I really like a quote from Gandhi: “When there is a storm the little birds hide, but the eagles fly higher” .
What changes have you made to adapt to the new situation?
As we all know, within the digital channel there were sectors that saw their sales fall, such as the travel sector or hotel reservations… and others, such as the food, sports and parapharmacy sectors saw their sales increase. form sales exponential.
Our clients are in that second group, and for them the three business areas in which we had to make the most changes to adapt to the new situation due to the enormous increase in the volume of traffic and sales were: logistics, supply and customer service.
In Primor Perfumeriesthe most important changes took place in the logistics area, having to reconvert nearly thirty stores into order preparation centers for the web. There were also changes in the department of Customer Support, where we had to triple the template and optimize their work to the maximum in order to efficiently resolve all customer queries and incidents. For this we create a new action protocol, we eliminate the contact email and instead we implement a form on the web that allows cases to reach our colleagues with much more complete information and simplifies resolutions.
Seeing your resume is a bit scary. In less than ten years you have worked in brands as powerful as Hawkers, Panama Jack, Merkal or Primor. If you look back, how do you remember Diego from 2013, when you started at Hawkers?
It was a truly amazing year, I couldn’t believe anything that was happening. The Diego of 2013 was reinventing himself, enjoying his work as he had never done before. At that time he worked with my brothers Alex and David in the online sale of the brand of glasses knockaround, and it was the magical year of the launch of the eyewear brand hawkers, an already mythical 11th day of the 12th month of the 13th year. (12/11/13)
What learning do you take from each of these companies?
hawkers
From Hawkers I take the teaching that everything is possible if you wake up every morning with enthusiasm and focus your efforts on achieving your goal. I feel super lucky to have been part of that team of people who made history in digital marketing in Spain, revolutionizing an entire industry and paving the way for many young entrepreneurs to see themselves reflected in us and be encouraged to start their own projects.
Panama Jack
I was very excited to work with Panama Jack, since I have grown up admiring the brand since I was a child. My incorporation meant a great clash of cultures: I came from a hyperdigital brand where everything happened very fast. Panama Jack is a prestigious international brand consolidated in the market for 30 years, they have all the workflows superdefined and optimized.
Everything that happens in the company has a procedure, there is no stitch without thread. I had the fortune to share enriching conversations with its founder and president, Anthony Vincent, From whom I learned a lot about the importance of caring for and preserving the brand’s values over time. I admire that after thirty years he keeps his passion for work intact. He was a visionary in his timehis first advertising campaigns contained nudes that were quite daring in those years, he was able to create a brand and make it last over time while always staying true to his ideas and principles.
cousin
The main difference between Primor and all my previous works is that for the first time I have to plan strategies for a multi-brand distributor, and not for a specific brand. The difference is very important. Also at Primor I am learning a lot about the Beauty sector, which as you all know is one of the five sectors that invest the most in digital advertising in Spain.
My position at Primor has allowed me to collaborate in the strategic marketing planning of large groups such as LVMH, L’Oréal, Puig, Procter&Gamble, Coty… with such important brands as Dior, YSL, Lancôme, Armani, Carolina Herrera, Valentino … You can imagine that these brands work great professionals, from whom I try to learn as much as possible every day. It is a very enriching experience at a professional level, without a doubt I would pay to do it.
mercal
For Merkal we are doing a great job from our agency Hawk X. Although it is true that at the beginning of our relationship I did a consultancy very focused on the Drive to Store, after a change in the general direction of the company, now we are working a lot more on driving traffic to the web.
In all large companies I meet great professionals, in this case Ainhoa Basterretxeadirector of marketing and communication at Merkal for 12 years, is an excellent professional, with a prodigious 360 vision and a management capacity that never ceases to amaze me.
At the beginning of 2019 you decide to go one step further and participate in the creation of Hawk X. Why did you make this decision?
This was a logical step in our career. During my time at Hawkers we did multiple co-branding actions for brands as important as: Apple, Los Angeles Lakers, with Pull and Bear, Samsung, BBVA, PlayStation, Ford, El Corte Inglés…
Our season countdown presented by begins as we set up for Media Day. Only 30 days until!
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers)
All these actions were awin win”there was no monetary exchange between us, and there were many occasions when Big brands requested our services so that we could carry out digital marketing campaigns for them. But logically, while we were immersed in the Hawkers project, this was not possible, so when we left the company it was understood as a logical step to create a digital marketing agency from which we would transmit the knowledge acquired in Hawkers to other large companies. .
What was your goal at the time?
The main objective was to re-form a team of professionals, enthusiasts and lovers of their workwhich would allow us to launch new own D2C projects (Direct-to-Consumer). We had the firm intention of re-launching native brands in the digital channel, currently we already have the swimwear and activewear brand on the market ONNE, and we are about to launch a new brand of sunglasses under the name of PROJECT H.
How were the first moments of Hawk X? How has it been evolving?
I remember the first moments with a lot of hope: After the sale of Hawkers we took a gap year, and therefore we had “worm” to go back to work on what we really like and are good at, why not? What is true is that a year disconnected from the digital world is like starting over, since everything evolves very fast.
I remember the day we went back to our old offices, this was where it all happened (Hawkers)… it made me very happy to go back to “conquer our castle”. We had it so clear that on February 28, 2019 Hawkers moved to its new offices and on March 1 we entered with Hawk X. It was an especially exciting moment return to work side by side with many of the people who started the Hawkers project with us.
We were very lucky, because we started working with large clients such as Panama Jack or Primor Perfumeries who placed their trust in us and allowed us not to have to provide their own financing to start our project. We started working with four people and we are already about 40, in the first six months of life we billed just over two million euros.
“It was a particularly exciting moment. return to work side by side with many of the people who started the Hawkers project with us ».
How are your clients?
Spain is a country with a lot of fans of football, therefore surely you easily understand this metaphor, we are like Guardiola, Zidane or Mourinho, successful coaches who have accumulated dozens of titles and can choose the team they want to coach.
Thanks to the huge success we had with Hawkers brands trust us and this has allowed us to be able to choose the clients with whom we want to work. So much so that In the agency there is no commercial figure, we have never had the need to offer our services to third parties.
All of our clients have the following characteristics in common: faithfully believing in the potential of the digital channel, having boundless ambition and fully trust us. It is a pride to have had as clients and successfully managed the investment in campaigns of brands such as Panama Jack, Merkal,…
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