Just Russel is a Belgian pet food brand that tailors dry food to each individual dog and cat. Based on a short online questionnaire about breed, weight, age, activity and sensitivities, every animal gets its own recipe, delivered by flexible subscription and adjusted as the animal changes.
From August 2025 to August 2026 I served as Interim Country Manager Germany, responsible for growing the German market.
Just Russel had entered Germany, but the market was not growing the way it should. Content was produced without a clear process, little of it was localised for German customers, and marketing measures ran side by side without anyone steering them as a whole. New customer acquisition was expensive at the same time.
The root cause was structural: there was nobody in the team who owned and managed the German market end to end.
I started with the numbers. Analysing customer behaviour, market data, media costs and performance across the season, down to CPMs, CPCs, CTRs and CPAs, gave me a clear picture of what actually drove the business. From that I built one commercial plan for Germany and derived the media plan and campaign calendar from it.
On that basis I brought in new agency partners for Google and Meta Ads, launched influencer marketing and introduced regular campaigns and sales promotions.
To fix the content side, I introduced a new briefing process for advertising: which elements every ad needs, what customers have to understand and be told, and in which way, so that an ad works rationally and triggers something emotionally. Finally, I developed an AI-based system to analyse the efficiency and effectiveness of our advertising.
Interim Country Manager Germany
Briefing process & influencer marketing
AI-based ad effectiveness analysis
