Each month, industry news media organization XBIZ spotlights the career accomplishments and outstanding contributions of Women in Adult. WIA profiles offer an intimate look at the professional lives of the industry's most influential female executives. Women like Julia Dimambro, Founder And CEO of Cherry Media.
What in your background prepared you for what you are doing now?
I think the biggest challenge facing those who sell content and other adult services directly to consumers is the locality difference between online and mobile.
Working at Private Media Group was invaluable! Not only did it introduce me to the concept of mobile and what it could be, but more importantly, it gave me such a unique insight into the consumer mindset and how they interact with adult content across different platforms.
When I started Cherry Media, one of our marketing angles was “there are a lot of people who understand adult and a lot of people who understand mobile, but very few people who know how to put those two together.
I set up Cherry Media with a Samsung Vio and a phone line with dialup (yes, we’re talking Spain 2003 here – a bit behind the times). I had no technical experience and even less interest in learning it, but a friend pointed me to this very basic authoring tool, where I could upload 100x100 pixel images and write some text and then add a link for the user to download the image to his phone! I added billing using Bango.net, as it was the only company in the world at the time that could bill for adult mobile and launched my first mobile site on Oct. 1, 2003, with only eight billing points. By the end of the month, I’d matched my director’s salary at Private.
My learning at Private still plays a part today, although now of course, I can add 10 years of those behavioral patterns within a mobile environment too and this is really what has differentiated Cherry from any other mobile suppliers.
We are able to offer such great insights, case-studies, proven sales and conversion strategies, content trends and best practices relating to both global and local audiences, to those who are looking to create adult mobile services. If we combine this with our largely bikini and topless product portfolio, which is in line with global content grading standards for mobile network operators around the world, we are so ideally positioned to provision global MNOs, mainstream app stores like Google Play and now even Google Glass!
I know there are many who state that content has no value to suit their product offering, but I vehemently disagree because at the end of the day, what is it that the customer is buying? And creating customer loyalty over just churning visitors creates the larger profit margins!
What do you see as the challenges of working in the adult mobile business? How do you overcome them?
I think the biggest challenge facing those who sell content and other adult services directly to consumers is the locality difference between online and mobile.
With online, you can set up your billing account with CCBill or NETbilling and you immediately have global billing reach for your adult services.
Unfortunately, mobile isn’t as simple and due to local and MNO regulations, a different approach needs to be applied, which from what I can see, tends to put a lot of people/companies off building their own mobile services and instead, they’re handing over their valuable customers and revenues to affiliates programs and losing out on so much!
Mobile is a bit like your insurance. No claims bonus when it comes to adult. If you don’t start and get your foot on the ladder, you’ll never benefit from the rewards down the line and you will remain in the same situation instead of growing.
And with mobile traffic superceding online traffic this year (two years ahead of predictions!), the necessity to think seriously about your mobile strategy is more important than ever!
Does your work life affect your personal life?
I try to keep the two separate, I have to say. My close friends and family tell me that I am the most prudish porn princess on the planet. As you can see from the answers above I fell into it accidentally and whilst I love what I do and find the business and psychological aspects of this industry fascinating, having a strong moral code of conduct has always been a big part of what we do at Cherry.
I live by the motto “only do what allows you to sleep easy at night” and whilst certain arse-holes have taken advantage of this in the past when I was still a rookie and learning the ropes of running an adult business, I believe it has also played a major part as to why we are so respected globally across both the mobile and adult industry sectors. That’s something I’m very proud of because we’ve worked very hard to do good business, not just any old business!
