Inspiring Conversations with Jenny Wolfram of BrandBastion

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jenny Wolfram.

Hi Jenny, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
When working at a law firm in Europe back in 2013, I came across a legal case where a company was being sued for harmful comments on their Facebook ads. I dived into many brands on social media and noticed that the majority of them were receiving tons of comments including hate speech and spam. I sent emails to marketing managers asking how they’re dealing with their engagement on social media and got some responses expressing how hard it is to manage 24/7.

I’ve always been entrepreneurial with multiple different projects (I started selling a homemade moisturizer when I was 8 years old) and decided to try to solve this problem with technology. So I quit law and started BrandBastion; we help brands have better conversations on social media by providing AI solutions for brand safety, customer care and intelligence.

Our first clients were big US brands and relatively quickly the business started taking off globally. Nine years in; we now cover over 2 billion USD in annual ad spend with our solutions and are fortunate to work with hundreds of incredible brands including Netflix, Uber, Red Bull, NARS, Mango, etc. Our team is born global and fully remote including over 18 different nationalities.

I moved to Santa Monica last year (in 2022) from Finland and have absolutely loved it so far. I’ve found an incredible community of entrepreneurs and creative thinkers. I host monthly Female Founder Brunches for female entrepreneurs and have with my friend Laura Crymble started a network for marketers called Marketing Mixer LA. We organize quarterly events for marketers at Soho Works in West Hollywood.

I think West LA is one of the best places in the world to be an entrepreneur. There are so many incredible founders and thinkers in the area, the closeness to beautiful nature provides a sanctuary in between all the hard work and hustle and there are always a lot of interesting events and happenings going on.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Haha, I think no entrepreneurial journey is completely smooth. If it is, then perhaps you’re not going fast enough 🙂

Our company BrandBastion is in the space of both artificial intelligence and social media; both spaces see constant change and require constant innovation. The competition is fierce and if we aren’t innovating and moving forwards, we’re going backward.

We’ve set up our company to be as agile as possible; we for example work in 1-week sprints and encourage all team members to test ideas in the most minimum viable format as possible to make sure we build features that truly make an impact. But this fast-moving 24/7 environment can be a lot to manage!

I think one thing we at times struggle with is finding a healthy balance between being reactive and solving problems fast and reacting fast to customer feedback AND being proactive and bringing completely new things to market that no one has yet asked for. It’s easy to just stay reactive, but to be long-term competitive you have to find a way to be both.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Social media is social with people posting comments on ads, posts and pages around the clock. How do you as a brand manage these conversations, providing people with the right information at the right time, protecting your community from hate speech and spam and learning from all the feedback you receive?

This is a challenge we set out to solve 9 years ago when we started BrandBastion. We help brands such as Netflix, Uber, Nars and Red Bull have better conversations on social media. We provide AI-powered solutions related to brand safety, customer care and analytics. We offer our solutions in over 60 languages, we cover over $2 billion in annual ad spend and we have a global team with over 18 different nationalities.

We also recently launched a self-served platform called BrandBastion Lite for smaller brands to help them manage conversations on social media faster with the use of AI. In case you run a brand and want to check it out, you can sign up for a free trial here: https://www.brandbastion.com/platform/lite

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
– I’ve always been very happy and held the belief that I’m one of the luckiest people in the world. The fact that I get to live in LA and work on my company BrandBastion with an incredible team surrounded by inspiring people, how could I not be happy? – Personal growth and seeing others grow makes me very happy; When I see myself improving and developing new skills and especially when I’m able to put them to use to help others, I feel very satisfied. Same thing when I see our team members growing; we’ve had team members join entry-level roles and grow into heading key departments – this makes me very proud and happy, as it shows that anything is possible if you put in the effort.
– Seeing others gain more freedom makes me happy, whether it’s financial freedom or more free time to spend on things they care about. Especially seeing other women succeed as entrepreneurs is something that makes me very happy.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brandbastion.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennywolfram/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennywolfram/