With its ‘Spotlight On…’ series, CargoForwarder Global shows just how wide the range of careers are within the air cargo industry. As it moves forward, digitalization plays an ever-increasing role in improving process efficiency, as well as bringing a very fragmented industry closer together. Digital marketplaces enable airlines to reach a greater spread of freight forwarders, offering their capacity and rates in real time, speeding up the booking process and related admin, and providing the added benefit of data analysis for more focused strategic decision-making. Freightos is one of those platforms. This week, its Head of Marketing, Elodie Guillard (EG) details her responsibilities and thoughts on the industry.
CFG: What is your current function and company? And what are your responsibilities?
EG: I’m Head of Marketing at Freightos, where I lead marketing across the entire Freightos company and its products. I joined Freightos two years ago as Marketing Director for WebCargo (a brand that has since been sunsetted), and in April this year stepped into the Head of Marketing role for the broader Freightos business.
My role is essentially about bringing the different pieces together: brand positioning, demand generation, content, digital, performance, research, lead generation and our SDR organization. We’re also going through an important transformation as we bring everything together under the Freightos brand, so there’s a strong focus on creating one clear story for the different audiences we serve across the air, ocean and ground cargo ecosystem.
The interesting part is that marketing in the cargo industry is not simply about making people aware of a product. It’s about understanding a complex industry, the people operating within it, and the problems we can genuinely help solve – and then translating all of that into something clear, relevant and commercially meaningful.
CFG: What does a normal day look like for you?
EG: I’m not sure ‘normal’ is a word I would use for my calendar!
There is usually a plan: strategy, team discussions, campaigns, pipeline performance, product launches, brand positioning, events, budgets and the inevitable list of things that were definitely not on the agenda when the day started. Then reality happens and I finish the day working through a new market opportunity or an urgent business priority.
What I enjoy is that mix. There’s enough strategic thinking to keep me challenged, but also enough execution to make sure we’re not just producing beautiful PowerPoints about what we should do someday.
CFG: How long have you been in the air cargo industry, and what brought you to it?
EG: I’ve been in the air cargo industry for two years, which is relatively short compared with many of the people I’ve met in the sector.
I actually came into air cargo from the marketing and technology (SaaS B2B) side rather than through a traditional logistics or aviation career. I joined WebCargo, part of Freightos, as Marketing Director, and discovered that air cargo was far more fascinating (and far more complicated) than I had expected.
What attracted me was the combination of technology, global business and very real operational challenges. You have airlines, freight forwarders, shippers, airports, technology providers and many other stakeholders, all connected by a supply chain that has to work across countries, time zones and increasingly complex regulations and market conditions.
Two years later, I’m still learning something new almost every day. And being promoted to lead marketing for the entire Freightos company has made that learning curve even steeper – which I suppose is one way of making sure I don’t get bored!
CFG: What do you enjoy most about your job?
EG: What I enjoy most is the combination of people, complexity and the opportunity to actually change things.
I like working in an environment where there is a real problem to solve rather than simply a message to promote. Air cargo has a huge amount of complexity behind it, and one of the most interesting parts of my job is taking something complicated and finding a way to make it understandable, relevant and actionable.
And I love building things. Whether that is a new marketing strategy, a team, a campaign, a process or a completely new way of approaching a problem, I find it very motivating to take something from “we should probably do this” to “it actually exists.”
That’s probably the part of marketing I enjoy most: turning ideas into something that has an impact.
CFG: Where do you see the greatest challenges in our industry?
EG: I see several, but one of the biggest is the industry’s ability to move from talking about digitalization and innovation to actually adopting it at scale.
Air cargo (but also Ocean and Ground) is an incredibly interconnected ecosystem, so changing one part of the process often requires multiple players to change with it. That makes innovation more difficult than simply deciding that a new technology is better. You can have a great solution, but if the data, processes or incentives around it are not aligned, adoption becomes a much bigger challenge.
I also think the industry has a communication problem. Air cargo is critical to global trade, but outside the industry, very few people really understand what happens behind the scenes. That matters not only commercially, but also when it comes to attracting talent. We need to make the industry more visible and show that it is not just about moving shipments from A to B. It is technology, data, international business, sustainability, customer experience, operations, finance, and more.
And finally, we need to keep the customer at the center. The expectations people have in their everyday digital lives are increasingly influencing their expectations in business. More visibility, simplicity, speed and predictability are not unreasonable demands anymore – they are becoming the baseline.
CFG: What advice would you give to people looking to get into the air cargo industry?
EG: My advice would be: don’t assume you need to come from aviation or logistics to have a place in air cargo.
I’m a good example of that myself. The industry needs people who understand cargo, of course, but it also needs people who understand technology, data, marketing, customer experience, business and all the other disciplines that help an industry evolve.
If you are coming from the outside, I would definitely invest time in understanding the fundamentals of air cargo and the wider supply chain. You don’t necessarily need to become an expert in every operational detail, but you should understand how the different players connect and where the real pain points are.
I would put curiosity above qualifications. Ask questions, talk to people who actually work in the industry, go to industry events, and try to understand why things are done the way they are.
And don’t be intimidated by the jargon. There is a lot of it. Once you survive the first few months of learning what all the acronyms mean, you’ll be fine!
CFG: If the air cargo industry were a film/book, what would its title be?
EG: ‘It takes a village’
Except this village spans continents, speaks dozens of languages and includes airlines, freight forwarders, shippers, handlers, airports, customs authorities and technology providers.
Every shipment depends on an enormous network of people, processes and systems working together, often across different time zones and under constantly changing circumstances.
It’s a massive team effort, a constant exercise in problem-solving, and occasionally a test of everyone’s patience – but somehow, the shipment keeps moving.
And perhaps that’s the magic of air cargo: when it works, nobody notices how much had to happen behind the scenes to make it happen!
Many thanks, Elodie!
If you would like to share your personal air cargo story with our CargoForwarder Global readers, feel free to send your answers to the above questions to cargoforwarderglobal@kopfpilot.at We look forward to shining a spotlight on your job area, views, and experiences.
