Roman Zimmermann

Hoi!

Seems like you googled me. As a marketing geek, I’m going to be reckless and use the opportunity 😈.

I'm one of the co-founders of www.rainstudio.ch, a Zurich-based digital commerce agency, which was acquired by floid AG in June 2019. Floid is an integrated creative agency offering strategy, product, content and media solutions to consumer-facing businesses.

Most of my work is focused on the intersection of technology and branding.
I love to create B2C ventures that strategize around an understanding of their consumers. I strongly believe that those who are obsessed with their end user will endure 🕵️‍♀️.

If you think that I could be helpful in some way, feel free to reach out 📩!

Recent Projects

I'm currently working with a few clients. One of them is GRA, a foundation fighting racism and anti-semitism, whose website is reaching thousands of people each month and shaping public opinion, for the better I think.

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  • SEO

  • Newsletter Marketing

  • Wordpress Development

In a recent project, we've helped the University of Zurich create a website portraying and propelling the work of its financial auditing chair. The project objective was to make the otherwise rather serious and colorless subject fun and engaging for a wider audience, ranging from students to journalists.

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  • Branding

  • Information Design

  • Illustration

Travelhouse Snow is the heliski branch of the leading Swiss travel company Hotelplan. We helped the team design a web interface, which intuitively guides and inspires visitors at the same time. To achieve this, we combined large scenic images with a modern, technical design.

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  • Branding

  • Web Design

  • Frontend Development

Aside from client projects I am currently engaged in the development of a marketplace, which is aiming to modernize the distribution of loose building materials such as concrete or gravel. If you work in this field I would be more than glad to show you what we've been working on. Please reach out!

The Kudos 🙏🏻

customer-1

Sinan Yuksel

  • Managing Director

  • Procter & Gamble

  • Former Manager

I was lucky working and managing Roman while leading Mid-Tier and Super Premium Hair Care Portfolio (Blendax , Rejoice, Wash &Go , Blendax , Aussie) and also continue mentoring him after his P&G career on his start-up career (I can easily say that he reverse mentored me and I learned more:). Roman is one of the most unique and outstanding talents I have ever worked through out my career. Working together we turned our mid-tier business from historical decline to fastest growing hair care brand with seemless agility on FMCG world via changing equity , positioning , packaging , innovation , line-up , campaign less than 6 months and launched Aussie across CEEMEA. This would not be possible without Roman. Roman has outstanding visionary leadership skills , eye for beauty that leads and values craftsmanship , strategical thinking merged with pragmatical execution , building and energizing teams. He is a unique combination of a multi-national high end strategical leader with street smart valley entrepreneur:) After P&G he also embraced start-up world pretty fast , excelled on growth hacking , software development , creating/leading multiple start-up projects. I highly recommend him for any corporate company or startup if you can get him before we see him on the cover of Forbes or Inc:)

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Mélanie Montel Brinbaum

  • Senior Marketing Director

  • COTY Luxury

  • Former Manager

As Marketing group manager at P&G, I had the chance to manage Roman during 6 months on his very senior Marketing design role for LACOSTE fragrances, managing a key project for P&G Prestige i.e. the launch of a new blockbuster. I have to say I have never been so impressed by the start of a Marketing manager as Roman in this new role. Roman has immediately demonstrated very strong leadership skills, being able to manage a very diverse multifunctional team towards the same goal, to deliver the strategies he put in place. This is due to Roman's passion for winning and his style of persuading. His winning behaviors are based on proposing and reasoning. Also he is a very nice person to work with. Also Roman is very reliable and accountable.

customer-3

Martin Rifai

  • Director of Supply Chain Europe

  • Amazon

  • Former Co-Worker

Roman is a bright, innovative, "out of the box" thinker who drove his brand to double digit growth in less than 18 months. He is approachable, friendly and a brings an magnetic energy to those around him. He thrives in a fast paced environment where he can personally grow business and deliver outrageous results!

Work History

Transition Team

  • June 2019 - now

  • floid

  • Zurich, Switzerland

As mentioned earlier, floid is an integrated creative agency offering strategy, product, content and media solutions to consumer-facing businesses. As a member of the transition team I am main responsible for:

  • Transition of client accounts into new environment
  • Onboarding team to acquirer’s vision, leadership, infrastructure, workflows

Co-Founder & Development Lead

  • Spring 2014 - May 2019

  • Rain Studio

  • Zurich, Switzerland

Rain Studio was a Digital Commerce Agency. When I left my job at Procter & Gamble in 2014 I started consulting tech startups on topics such as branding and digital media on a freelance basis. Eventually, I got very interested in growth hacking and user experience design - an interest through which I met many great designers and web developers. Together we started developing e-commerce websites on behalf of clients, working on a wide range of topics. While the team and the clients have evolved during the past 4 years, our main themes have remained similar:

  • Strategy & Brand Development
  • User Experience & Interface Design
  • User Funnel & Customer Relationship Management
  • Automation for Marketing and Business Processes
  • Search Engine Optimization
  • Social Media Development

In June 2019 Rain Studio was acquired by floid AG!

Co-Founder & Partnerships Manager

  • July 2015 - June 2017

  • Attire

  • Zurich, Switzerland

Attire is a fashion marketplace for the next generation fashion savvy consumer. Or sadly, I have to admit it was.

Attire brought together over 500 brands and more than 25k contemporary high-end fashion products into one intuitive interface. While the mid-sized boutiques selling those products mostly maintained an online store, they were very hard to find and SKU availability was often poor. Also, they were not ready for the mobile age. Our idea was simple. We wanted to develop a mobile first one-stop-shop for this segment. We built the platform for web and iOS, integrated vendors, products and also developed a sizable social media following. We created a partnership with some of the biggest influencers in the segment and managed to generate a small monthly revenue.

In the end, however, we faced several problems which we could not overcome. We underestimated how crowded this market was and would further get while we were working on it. Also, admittedly we made some poor technological choices, leaving us with little agility to experiment, to build new features and try new growth tactics.

Defeat is hard, but if you’re really determined to your field of work or even better a purpose, you will end up stronger stronger and better prepared for the next challenge ahead.

Senior Associate Brand Manager Luxury Fragrances

  • August 2013 - December 2013

  • Procter & Gamble

  • Geneva, Switzerland

In my second role at P&G, I was responsible for the global product launch of the Lacoste L!VE fragrance, introducing a completely new brand pillar to the market.

As the global project leader for the launch, I was responsible for all aspects of this venture. This included juice and packaging choices, a multifaceted global media campaign, a retail and merchandising concept and a holistic 3-year plan for the business to thrive on.

Here are some highlights of this journey:

  • Finding the perfectly scented juice for our project was something completely new to me. We worked with external perfumers, internal R&D and a series of focus groups to decide between tiny nuances in scent.
  • We developed a cube-shaped glass bottle. Since glass naturally assumes a round shape during its production process, creating a cubed-shaped glass led to both a unique product and a tense supplier 🙆🏻‍♂️!
  • Planning and producing a global media campaign together with Grey London was a lot of fun. The toolkit which included a TV commercial, a 3-dimensional print insert, and various acceleration tools was themed around taking "a new perspective” and thus leveraged various types of optical illusions.

Junior Associate Brand Manager Hair Care

  • July 2011 - July 2013

  • Procter & Gamble

  • Geneva, Switzerland

The main objective of my first P&G assignment was to turn around P&G’s Mid-Tier hair care business with a series of top-line and bottom-line initiatives.

  • To increase brand awareness in the relevant markets we created a catchy campaign format working with local celebrities in Russia, Turkey and Romania, producing a total of 14 TV copies and various other offline and online assets.
  • We launched a new packaging across the portfolio in response to new insights about the mid-tier consumer affinities.
  • We created engaged in multiple cost-saving projects touching various points in the supply chain process.
  • We built a 3-year innovation pipeline approving product concepts with top-scores in consumer tests.

Aside from the Mid-Tier portfolio, I was assigned to a set of high-end hair care brands including Aussie, Fekkai and Vidal Sasson into the CEEMA market. We built up the supply chain and launched the brands with a combination of targeted premium retail and social media influencer advertising.

Management Consultant Intern

  • July 2010 - September 2010

  • Roland Berger

  • Cologne, Germany

During my internship with Roland Berger, I was working in the project management office of a large post-merger integration project which kept more than 10 consultants electrified all day and sometimes all night. Assisting the project leader I helped monitor the project progress and prepare the materials for the reviews with the leadership teams of the acquirer, one of the largest German retail banks.

Junior Strategic Planner & Assistant to CEO

  • September 2009 - June 2010

  • PS Group

  • Tokyo, Japan

Japan is a great place to get a change of perspective. During my 9 month internship with PS Group, a company providing indoor climate solutions for homes, offices and industrial purposes I assisted the CEO with strategic analysis and his keynotes. Working out of the Tokyo office I attended trade-shows and looked into the customers’ path-to-purchase.

Investment Banking Intern

  • April 2006 - August 2006

  • UBS Wealth Management

  • Zürich, Switzerland

After having worked in the trading execution team of as part of the investment bank I moved over to the other side of the wall, the wealth management business. There I was given a project with the objective to improve the fund ordering practice conducted by relationship managers. I then joined another project which focused on increasing the time relationship managers spend with their clients.

Investment Banking Intern

  • January 2006 - April 2006

  • UBS Investment Bank

  • Glattbrugg, Switzerland

In my first work experience ever I interned at the UBS Investment Bank. Our team was responsible for the execution of 3rd party fund orders placed by UBS clients. At that time UBS clients could place orders for almost any title in the market. Hence our job was to find ways to buy even the most exotic ones. This was done through a large network of brokers all over the world.

Education

MSc International Business

  • September 2010 - July 2011

  • Jouy-en-Josas, France

  • Summe Cum Laude

What sounds like a cruise ship company for business speed dating actually stands for a “master of science” program offered by HEC Paris business school. During a year spent on the campus in Jouy-en-Josas just outside Versaille, our class received lectures in a variety of business subjects including corporate finance, innovation, marketing and so forth. My own focus was set on the topic of luxury branding, completing a minor degree led by luxury executives and writing my thesis about luxury strategies for electric cars.

BA International Business

  • September 2006 - July 2009

  • St. Gallen, Switzerland

A classic generalist bachelor program to learn about business. The University of St. Gallen teaches its business students anything from business law, strategy to economics and more.

Things I try to be good at

Project Leadership

Looking back at my work experience gained in multiple industries and in widely different work environments I can conclude that project leadership is the single most important competency of any business leader. It does not just make up for 70% of the work hours spent, in my opinion, it is also the most crucial factor when working towards a challenging objective usually requiring the brains and hands of multiple individuals.

Good project leadership is all about communication - having a common purpose and keeping team members in sync even when the environment is rapidly changing all the time.

Brand Development

Brands are as old as the cognitive revolution (yup, that’s 70,000 BC). You are one, your company is one and your country is one. In a globalized world with ever-lowering barriers to markets and ever-growing competition, the importance of brands is growing too.

Often perceived as an outdated art, brand development is changing rapidly. Marty Neumeier’s “The Brand Gap” sums it up well:

Today the features and benefits of a product might still be important, the personal identity is much more to prioritize. We have moved from “what it has” to “what it does” to “what you’ll feel” to “who you are”.

A good brand developer is thus obsessed with the consumer. And with this as your mantra, I believe you will thrive.

Product Development

Many good businesses build their brand with strong products and services rather than a lot of “marketing”. I personally think that the experience when using a product and the stories that stem from this experience are among the most important assets of any business. While technology often plays a big role in the leadership of consumer experiences, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the crucial factor.

During the past 7.5 years of my work life, I’ve continuously been involved with product development, first in consumer goods and later in native and web software development.

E-Commerce

Once a niche, E-Commerce has become an integral part of the global retail landscape. While in Western markets E-Commerce has grown rather slowly reaching approximately 10% of retail, in China it is becoming the norm for all kinds of sectors with 2019 projections hinting at 34% share of retail.

At Rain Studio we build E-Commerce solutions, touching a variety of relevant topics on a daily basis. This includes among others UX Design, Code, SEO & SEM, CRM, Omni-Channel Management, Warehousing and Fulfilment and also more hidden aspects such as ERP Gateways and Marketing Process Automation.

Thanks for visiting 👋🏻