I joined Mantu to work on social media and became Head of Social Media within six months. The real work went far beyond channel management: I was building a function across multiple brands, countries and time zones while marketing and recruitment were deeply interdependent, ownership was fragmented and the organisation went through repeated restructures.
The business situation
Mantu is a global private consulting group operating across multiple brands and countries. During my tenure, 2019 company reporting put the group at approximately €480M revenue and 6,500 people.
Growth depended heavily on people. Recruitment was therefore not simply an HR concern: talent acquisition, employer brand, corporate reputation, communities and external marketing all intersected.
When I joined, the social footprint reflected the organisational complexity:
- 73 registered channels;
- only 3 meaningfully active;
- duplicated content;
- dormant accounts;
- inconsistent publishing;
- no shared KPI framework;
- no systematic community management;
- no dedicated team.
Different brands also served different markets and audiences. The function could not simply become one global content calendar.
What made the environment difficult
I was operating between functions that needed each other but did not always share the same priorities.
Marketing leadership and recruitment leadership had overlapping stakes in employer brand, audience and candidate acquisition, but the interface between those teams was weak and responsibilities were not always clear.
At the same time:
- teams were distributed internationally;
- people worked across different time zones;
- brands had different needs;
- resources and budget had to be justified;
- reporting lines changed repeatedly;
- the organisation went through three leadership / organisational restructures in roughly two years.
The real problem was not:
How do we improve social media?
It was:
How do we build a growth and brand capability that works across organisational boundaries and survives structural change?
Decision 1: Audit before asking for resources
The first move was not to post more.
I mapped the existing footprint: what was active, what was dead, what was duplicated, what each brand needed and where the biggest gaps were.
That evidence became the business case for a dedicated function.
I designed the department architecture, including team, tooling, content model, paid support and reporting, and presented a six-figure department budget proposal at COMEX level, which was approved.
The sequence mattered:
- audit
- evidence
- business case
- budget
- function
Decision 2: Don't preserve complexity for the sake of coverage
Seventy-three channels gave the appearance of a large footprint. Operationally, it was mostly noise.
Rather than attempt to revive everything, I reduced the active architecture around a smaller curated footprint.
The operating principle became:
- one audience
- one channel role
- one content logic
The active system moved toward roughly six core channels rather than dozens of nominal presences.
That made it possible to focus resources on the audiences that mattered.
Decision 3: Don't copy the same strategy across every brand
The group included several businesses and identities, including Mantu, Amaris Consulting, LittleBig Connection, Move and others.
They did not need identical content. They needed shared infrastructure.
So I standardised:
- planning;
- briefs;
- production workflows;
- approval flows;
- reporting;
- UTM conventions;
- escalation;
- documentation.
But individual brands retained their own audiences, positioning, editorial lines and organic / paid priorities.
Standardise the system, not the brands.
Decision 4: Treat recruitment as a major growth stakeholder
For a consulting organisation, the ability to continuously attract talent is directly connected to growth.
That made recruitment one of the function's most important internal clients.
Employer-brand work therefore connected:
- organic audience growth;
- paid amplification;
- candidate-facing content;
- employee stories;
- communities;
- reputation;
- advocacy.
Instead of treating marketing and recruitment as separate universes, I worked across the boundary where the customer journey and candidate journey overlapped.
Where the organisation did not provide a clear interface between teams, I helped create one through process and shared operating rules.
Decision 5: Don't build an audience that depends entirely on brand accounts
Official channels were only one distribution layer.
Employees and communities could create much more reach and credibility if participation was designed properly.
I helped design the Mantu Inspire employee-advocacy programme around a 4-tier participation model for ExCom, Directors, Amplifiers and the wider employee base.
The system included:
- 3 integrated platforms;
- 5 training workshops;
- an 85-slide playbook;
- differentiated expectations and support by seniority level.
The initial active-ambassador target was around 340.
The programme ultimately reached 2,193 employees on the Weshare platform, and its structure later became the foundation for a Social Media Academy.
That expanded distribution far beyond what the central team could publish itself.
Decision 6: Don't let the team become another bottleneck
As the remit grew, I moved quickly from individual execution into management.
I designed roles, seniority levels, responsibilities, recruitment, onboarding and workflows.
The function grew from one person to 5+ people.
I also worked across adjacent teams including Design, Campus, Translation and Recruitment when unclear ownership created production bottlenecks.
Standardising recurring work reduced production cycle time by approximately 40%.
The purpose was not simply to create a larger department. It was to reduce the coordination cost of getting work done across the organisation.
Decision 7: Don't report marketing through platform metrics alone
Follower and engagement metrics were useful operationally but insufficient at leadership level.
Reporting therefore evolved toward a broader Global Notoriety framework combining:
- social visibility;
- search;
- website performance;
- PR;
- online reputation;
- employer-brand signals;
- recruitment visibility.
I directly owned KPI areas including online mentions, key-person influence and ambassador influence.
The reputation-monitoring system moved from manual tracking into dedicated tooling and reached 100% brand-mention coverage from system launch. Tracked online mentions increased 608% YoY in the documented period.
The conversation with leadership moved from:
How did LinkedIn perform?
to:
How visible and influential are our brands in the markets where we need customers and talent?
Business and audience impact
Representative proof from the period includes:
- six-figure department budget approved after the initial audit and business case;
- 0 → 5+ team members;
- −40% production cycle time;
- Amaris LinkedIn growing from approximately 10K to 54K followers in under one year, and later reaching 118K across the broader period documented in the archive;
- 2,193 employees activated on the advocacy platform;
- 100% e-reputation mention coverage from system launch;
- +608% YoY tracked online mentions;
- the function continuing through 3 leadership changes / restructures without resetting to zero.
Bigger strategic projects enabled by the function
Mantu rebrand
When Amaris Group became Mantu, multiple identities and channels had to launch in parallel. I helped turn the rebrand into a repeatable production workflow across copy, design, approvals and publication rather than treating it as a one-off campaign.
Move
I contributed to building a new media brand from zero: tone of voice, social presence, content strategy, SEO and acquisition planning.
Employee advocacy
The Inspire programme turned employees into an additional distribution and employer-brand layer, rather than relying only on owned accounts.
What changed
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| 73 registered channels, 3 active | Smaller, deliberate channel architecture |
| No confirmed department infrastructure | Six-figure function budget approved at COMEX level |
| Individual contributor | 5+ person team with defined roles and ownership |
| Content duplicated across brands | Brand-specific strategies on shared infrastructure |
| Organic channels operating in isolation | Organic, paid, communities and advocacy working together |
| Marketing and recruitment coordination largely informal | Shared workflows around employer brand and audience growth |
| Platform-level reporting | Executive view of notoriety and reputation |
| Function vulnerable to leadership changes | Operating model that continued through repeated restructures |
What this case demonstrates
Mantu is not primarily proof that I can manage social media.
It demonstrates that I can build and lead a marketing capability inside a complex organisation where business growth, talent acquisition, brands, teams and internal politics intersect.
The visible output was channels, content and communities.
The harder work was deciding what to stop, getting resources approved, building the team, creating interfaces between functions and making the capability resilient enough to survive organisational change.