From wild child to marketing heavyweight: Zalando’s Aifric Campbell on breaking rules, building teams, and scaling growth

In my late teens, I was more focused on pushing boundaries than following a structured path. My family had expectations, and I rebelled against them. I underperformed in my final year, which was a wake-up call. I’ve always valued achievement. Not achieving makes me feel like I’m lacking something key. Looking back, and now understanding what’s important to me, I can now define my core values as independence, authenticity, achievement, and curiosity, but at that time, I was still figuring them out.

After school, I took a year abroad, which gave me perspective. I returned focused and studied European Studies and German at university. Wanting to challenge myself further, I joined an international business development program that placed me at Tourism Ireland in Frankfurt am Main. My first year involved press coordination, travel fairs, and business partnerships. In my second year, I was given responsibility for a small blog and newsletters. The audience was tiny, but that was where I first became obsessed with testing and optimizing. I wanted to understand what worked and why. That curiosity led me to marketing.

I had no formal marketing background, but I knew I wanted to go deeper. That led me to trivago, where I joined as a marketing specialist working across multiple channels. I managed campaigns on Meta, Google, affiliate networks, and email. It was a fast-paced environment with a steep learning curve. The expectation was clear: take ownership, figure things out, and make your market cluster work.

That level of responsibility early in my career shaped how I think about marketing today. trivago was highly data-driven, and everything was measured. The culture rewarded people who could test aggressively, optimize, and prove their impact with results. That reinforced my belief that marketing is not just about messaging. It is about experimentation, measurement, and continuous improvement.

Marketing should never be a pure execution function. Too often, companies treat it as a service department that takes requests and runs campaigns, but that is not how you drive growth. Marketing should be an engine that builds, experiments, and learns – the driving force behind ensuring consistent and sustainable channel performance. Cross-functional teams (product, analytics, applied science, engineering) need to see Marketing at the centre point to ensure success.

At trivago, autonomy was key. You had to take responsibility for making things work, but the focus was still very channel-driven. At Booking, the experimentation culture was much stronger. Failure was not seen as a problem, but as part of the process. The mindset was clear that not all experiments would be successful, but the learning, whether positive or negative, was where the value really was. I can proudly say I made my fair share of learnings while working there. 

Zalando was a different challenge. The (cross-functional) marketing team was highly structured and automated, which made it efficient but limited the ability to experiment on a deeper level. When automation becomes the default, teams risk losing the ability to test and iterate effectively. One of my first priorities was to introduce a structured testing approach and ensure experimentation was at the core of decision-making.

The first step was changing how we talked about failure. At Booking, mistakes were openly celebrated as part of the learning process. At Zalando, there was more hesitation in admitting when something did not work. We started sharing experiment results across teams, even when they failed, to help shift the mindset toward progress over perfection.

The second step was breaking down silos within Performance Marketing. Marketing, product, applied science & analytics and engineering were not working closely enough. Without that alignment, teams can work in a disjointed manner, which can create a risk of not addressing real business problems or opportunities, resulting in inefficiencies.  Defining a common team vision that aligns with our broader business strategy, helped to unify teams under a common goal. 

The third step was ensuring that experimentation insights translated into real actions. Zalando had a strong measurement setup, but we needed to move faster in applying what we learned. Instead of seeing testing as validation for performance alone, we evolved to ensure experimentation informed growth decisions.

Zalando had one of the strongest performance marketing setups in Europe, particularly in the measurement and incrementality testing space. The company had built a system where investment decisions were based on rigorous testing rather than platform-reported attribution.

One of the key strengths was its structured measurement and investment framework. Channels were categorized based on their proven contribution to value. Those that consistently demonstrated incremental value through geo-lift studies and platform-based tests were allocated budget based on an ROI-driven model. For channels where consistent incrementality was still being validated, investment was scaled only after structured experiments confirmed their impact.

Zalando also had an advanced automation system which ensured efficiency at scale. A dedicated measurement team worked continuously on refining incrementality testing, particularly with lift experiments, guiding newer platforms in the Performance Marketing space on how to build a best-in-class conversion lift testing framework.

While measurement was a major strength, structured experimentation across marketing channels was not as systematic. Channel level experimentation was happening, but through an ad hoc approach, with no unified framework or roadmap.

One of the first steps was introducing a centralized experimentation framework. We made sure every channel had a clear learning agenda with prioritised experiments based on expected impact, while also ensuring each test had a clear hypothesis, execution plan, and measurement criteria. This helped prevent redundant testing and made results actionable at scale.

Creative, or rather format optimization, was another area that needed more structure. Zalando had a strong technical foundation in performance marketing, but the setup was dominated by a one-dimensional dynamic ad format. Testing beyond this was not integrated as rigorously. We built a process for continuously iterating on different format types based on incremental performance data, ensuring diversification of our ad stack, effectively responding to the needs of the consumer and reducing the risk of relying on one format type. 

In addition, as mentioned previously, while the company had great measurement tools, we focused on making insights more actionable. Instead of using lift tests for validation alone, we ensured that the proven results from variable testing were rolled out to AlwaysOn or Evergreen campaigns, unlocking the ability to adjust budget allocations and campaign strategies based on these optimisations in real time.

Adopting new platforms is always a challenge, especially in markets like Germany, where companies tend to be more conservative with experimental channels. The key, as with all new channels, was proving TikTok’s incremental value in a way that fit Zalando’s rigorous measurement standards.

Rather than allocating a significant budget immediately, or ‘spray-and-pray’ as it’s so fondly termed, we ran controlled incrementality tests to measure the platform’s real impact. This allowed us to make data-driven decisions about scaling rather than relying on premature performance indicators.

We also created a structured testing roadmap, analyzing different optimisation tactics, creative formats and audience strategies before expanding investment. This ensured that TikTok was not just another spend channel but a performance-driven platform that fit into our broader growth strategy.

Performance marketing is changing rapidly. I no longer see Performance Marketing as a pure transactional lever, but it extends beyond this. Today Performance Marketing needs to not only convert customers, but to deepen relationships with customers and ensure a seamless customer journey. With the additional challenge of continued privacy regulations, the loss of third-party tracking, heightened customer expectations and the increasing reliance on automation, the complexity has never been as high. The old ways of granular audience targeting and deterministic attribution are gone.

The key shift is that we now need to focus less on manual optimizations and more on challenging the status quo and redefining how to best capture demand in a way that is sustainable and measurable. The opportunity is learning how to work with automation, and tactically manipulating algorithms rather than working against them. As consumer behaviour continues to evolve and the marketplace becomes more cluttered, the Performance Marketing space will continue to rapidly change. Companies will need to be willing to make big bets and experiment in new areas.

Incrementality is more important than ever. As tracking signals disappear, the ability to distinguish correlation from causation is critical. Just because a platform reports conversions does not mean those conversions would have happened without the influence of marketing. Without structured validation, companies risk over or under investing in the wrong areas.

Incrementality is essential not only for Performance Marketing, but across the funnel. At Zalando, for the broader funnel, we are working on a triangulation approach, combining different methodologies to get a more accurate picture of the long term impact of marketing. Incrementality testing, media mix modelling and multi-touch attribution combined will help us to understand both the short and long term impact of our marketing investment. No single model is perfect, but together they will create a more reliable framework for decision-making.

The same principles apply when expanding into new channels. At Zalando, we took a rigorous approach when testing TikTok, treating it as an experimental channel rather than just adding budget and hoping for results.

Instead of repeating the details from earlier, the key lesson is that new platforms need structured validation before they scale. The same approach can be applied to any emerging channel—test with incrementality, ensure consistency rather than let early results justify further investment.

First, invest in measurement. If a company is not running structured incrementality tests and experimenting consistently, it is operating blindly. The best strategies will fail if they are not backed by proper validation.

Second, rethink how performance marketing teams are structured. The traditional model of focusing solely on media buying execution is outdated. The best teams combine analytical, data science, technical, and strategic skills. Running campaigns is just one part of the job. Teams need to build better measurement systems, leverage automation effectively, and continuously experiment with new channels and optimisation strategies.

Finally, embrace uncertainty. The marketing landscape is evolving rapidly, and there is no single playbook for success. The best teams are those that are constantly testing, adapting, and learning.

The first thing I would bring is our measurement team. If I could package up their expertise and bring it to every company I work for, I would. The second would be the experimentation framework we’ve built, including our automated geo-lift creation and test output systems. That gives any team a strong foundation for data-driven decision-making. And third, I would bring the level of ambition and drive that exists in the team. You do not get that everywhere.

I am reading Gone with the Wind because it is one of those classics I feel like I need to read. Before that, I read The Vegetarian by Han Kang, which was incredible. I try to read at least 40 books a year.

I mostly listen to audiobooks when I’m walking my dog, Murphy, but a good podcast I can recommend is High-Performing Professionals and How They Get That Way by Brendan Burchard. His accent can get a bit much, at least maybe for some, but the content is solid.

Be yourself. It sounds simple, but early in my career, I thought I needed to be a specific type of personality to perform well. A manager at Booking once told me, “Never try to be someone you’re not,” and it’s stayed with me. Being successful at what you do, is also about enjoying what you do, and you can only do that by staying true to yourself.