Workflow automation start-up Flows has hired Rhea Craib, former group marketing manager at Gaming Innovation Group (GiG), as its new head of marketing.
Craib joins the business from her previous role at GiG, where she spent more than three years overseeing the marketing output of its B2B offerings.
During her time in that role, Craib was responsible for setting and implementing the overall marketing strategy for GiG as a brand, as well as for its platform, products and services.
The role included oversight of lead generation, event and conference planning, content and digital strategy and implementation.
Prior to her time with GiG, Craib held a range of marketing roles with agencies and in-house teams, with a strong focus on content and strategy.
At Flows, Craib will be tasked with implementing and executing a marketing strategy that will allow the business to continue to scale at pace while allowing it to capitalise on new opportunities.
Flows CEO James King: “[Craib] joins at a time when we continue to push forwards with new ideas and innovations, and this makes it the perfect time for her to shine.”
She will be responsible for creating content, strengthening Flows’ messaging, aligning the company’s tone and voice, developing a content marketing strategy to boost SEO activity, and working on the third version of the firm’s corporate website.
Craib will report into Flows CEO James King, who also joined the company from GiG, where he held the director of sales position until August 2021.
“I am really excited to join the team at Flows, many of whom I have worked with in the past,” Craib said.
“Flows is such an innovative product with endless potential and has already set a solid footprint within the industry. I am looking forward to supporting the team in growing the business and capturing new opportunities. There are some exciting times ahead.”
Flows is one company in the portfolio of HappyHour.io, an iGaming seed and early stage accelerator founded and led by former GiG CEO Robin Reed.
King said of Craib’s appointment: “I am delighted to welcome Rhea to the Flows team and for the business to benefit from her incredible talent and experience of deploying successful marketing campaigns and activities in the gambling sector and beyond.
“Having worked with Rhea in the past I know exactly what she is capable of, and this will make her a valuable asset to Flows and the wider team.
“She joins at a time when we continue to push forwards with new ideas and innovations, and this makes it the perfect time for her to shine,” he added.
James King, chief executive at development platform Flows, took to the stage at iGaming NEXT: Valletta ’21, to argue that one of the key limiting factors which slows innovation in the iGaming industry is the number of people who have the technological capability to deliver new ideas.
While businesses such as Ikea have empowered customers to build their own furniture, and Amazon has empowered sellers to have access to a global marketplace, the ability to innovate at speed and quickly react to change and trends doesn’t exist in the iGaming industry, he argued.
There is no lack of ideas in our industry, King said, but our ability to deliver is held back by legacy systems, and more importantly, legacy mentalities.
These mentalities have built high walls around gaming businesses, and prevented companies from sharing best practices, he added, but it is time for this to change during the digital revolution currently taking place.
King argued that the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need to improve digital delivery within iGaming – the situation has placed additional pressure and responsibility upon technology and IT teams, and added more steps into already overcrowded roadmaps, he said.
Changes in the US have also shown that iGaming is going mainstream – and coming to be seen as a true entertainment industry. But this has caused large businesses from outside the gambling space to enter the industry, including Disney, which has a market capitalisation of around $300bn.
This, he said, is why it is so important for businesses to be able to innovate quickly, in a frictionless manner.
King then introduced the audience to Flows, “the innovation platform that sets your ideas free”.
Flows is a self-service platform for innovation and digital empowerment, helping to accelerate the delivery of digital products and allowing teams to build features and applications “in minutes, instead of months.”
Prompted by event MC and host Oisin Lunny to prove this claim, King invited chief technical officer at Flows, Mike Broughton, to the stage, to demonstrate the capabilities of the platform in real time.
In the space of a few minutes, Broughton showed the audience how easily a team could add features to a game – by creating a new ‘bad luck’ pop-up correspondence to be sent to customers following a 3-round loss on a slot game.
But the platform is capable of much more than such simple features – it can also be used for authentications, risk and fraud analysis, and checks on payment providers.
“If you think it, ultimately, you can Flow it,” King concluded.