Andra Ciucescu, founder of Pinpoint and Fractional CMO, on leadership, entrepreneurship, marketing, branding, PR and the lessons shaping a professional journey.
Andra Ciucescu is the founder of Pinpoint, a Fractional CMO and marketing, branding, and PR consultant with 16 years of experience. She works with startups and SMEs with medium and long sales cycles, starting from the reality of the business, with reduced risk for founders.
For a long time, I associated leadership with positions, organizational charts, and big decisions. Over time, I began to recognize it in much smaller things: feedback I received after an interview I had failed, a discussion about who should bear the cost of a mistake, a coffee a colleague thought she was supposed to make for me. The people involved have probably long forgotten these moments. But I remember them.
Junior Professionals with Initiative
I have been working in marketing strategy and coordination for several years, but since Pinpoint came into existence, students and junior professionals have been reaching out to me quite often. They send me their CVs, ask me for advice, or simply tell me about their perspective. I greatly appreciate their effort and initiative, but unfortunately, I cannot hire anyone right now; for execution, I work with agencies and freelancers because Pinpoint is still at the beginning. Even if these calls catch me on days when I am exhausted or have something else important to do, I still talk to them. At least five minutes of conversation and an exchange of emails, enough for me to understand what they want and what they know how to do. I save their CVs in case something comes up later where I can recommend them to my partners or clients, or a project where we could work together if they are interested in freelancing. For them, those few minutes we spend talking certainly matter more than they do to me… I do it because I remember very well what it was like to be on the other side, when I was looking for internship or employment opportunities as a junior.
How I Started During the Previous Crisis
In 2009, when I graduated from university and the economic crisis was in full swing, with promotional budgets among the first to be cut, I went to an interview at an advertising agency. I had enrolled in a master’s program, had worked as a freelancer, and had completed an internship at another agency, but I had never actually been employed in advertising or marketing. And they gave me a test: positioning and target audience for the launch of an automotive brand.
When I got to the customer profile, among other things, I specified the gender: he/she. It came naturally to me, because women buy cars too, especially since the model in the test was one that suited women very well. I did not get the job. I came in second. However, the two people running the agency took the time to explain their decision to me. That was how I found out that, although I did not have the necessary experience, I had been the only candidate to include women in the customer profile, and that observation had made them seriously consider hiring me.
The agency still exists today and has grown. I do not think they remember that interview anymore. I still remember it, including the way they treated me, at a time when I was seriously wondering whether I would have a real chance in this profession.
Almost three years before that scene, in my first year of university, I was a freelancer; I wrote articles in English at night for the U.S. market, as a ghostwriter, through a Romanian company. After a few months, they offered me a job and… I turned them down. I was nineteen, about to enter the first exam session of my life, and at the time I could not imagine how I would have kept up that pace while attending university at the same time. I simply did not know what to expect, either from university or from employment. So I chose to focus on my studies.
My First Role as a Junior Leader
Fast-forward several years, during which I held various execution roles. As time went by, I developed a desire to contribute in a more meaningful way to the lives of people and businesses. Perhaps because I had already worn enough creative hats, or perhaps because that is simply what growing up looks like.
That is roughly how the desire to become a manager took shape, although I admit that the transition created even more pressure for me at the time, precisely because I was suddenly given trust and freedom, which, of course, come with responsibility. From a context with clear processes in a stable multinational and a current I simply followed, I found myself in the specific whirlwind of a startup, which I had to make run smoothly for everyone else, even though I had not yet found my own footing. I genuinely do not feel that I was a good leader back then. The people from that period say I was; today, I believe I could have done much better.
I can tell you about just one day when things went wrong. I was the marketing director, and we had advertising materials in production that were going to be installed at height. The measurements had been taken by an industrial climber sent by the supplier. I was not at the location and, in any case, there was no way for me to verify them. It was only during installation that we discovered the materials did not fit. They had to be redone.
I spoke with the general manager and the financial director and told them exactly what had happened: who had taken the measurements, why the error had only come to light so late, and what redoing the materials would involve. The general manager understood; however, from a financial perspective, the natural question arose: “Who pays?” I said that I was taking responsibility for resolving the project, that I would organize the remake in time, and that we would cover the cost from the reserve we had kept in the budget specifically for unforeseen situations. They agreed.
The truth is, I had done a calculation. The same amount of money can mean very different things: for the business I was working for, the cost represented a small part of the marketing budget; for the much smaller supplier, the same amount would have carried a completely different weight. And there was also the relationship: I was working directly with those people and knew that a tense discussion, triggered by the immediate cost and the pressure of the moment, could damage a collaboration we relied on.
Behind my reaction were, in fact, two lessons I had remembered: one from my workplace at the time and one from the previous one. During that period, I had noticed how the general manager did not cascade potential tensions from top management down to colleagues and partners, and the situation above was the first time I applied that lesson, right in front of him. And, years earlier, I had heard my boss at my previous workplace, the country manager, tell the financial manager to pay the invoice of a small supplier who had partially made a mistake in a technical execution. I understood then that, as a stable company, we would manage, but for that particular supplier, non-payment could have meant closing down the business. At the time, I simply listened to the logic and appreciated the humanity behind it. And years later, the decision was mine.
During that same period, I also learned that a position often changes the way people behave toward you. In my first management role, some things that seemed to come with the position made me uncomfortable. I had a junior colleague, the youngest person on the team, who, at first, insisted on always making coffee for me. She was convinced that this was part of her responsibilities toward a manager. It seems funny to me now, but back then I repeatedly explained to her that this gesture had nothing to do with her role and, obviously, that I could make my own coffee. It seemed important to me that the difference in position, age, and these small pro bono gestures should not place her, in her own eyes or those of the team, in an inferior position of perception that she might not have been able to change later. It was my first management experience, but even then I knew exactly what kind of manager I did NOT want to be.
And speaking of how a position changes the behavior of those around you, later I found a passage in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in which the Roman emperor, at the height of the power of his era, reminded himself of the risk of being transformed by the role of Caesar and listed the qualities he wanted to preserve. From this perspective, the Meditations are, in fact, the notes of a man who was examining his own judgment because he was trying to remain balanced.
Toward Entrepreneurship
Meanwhile, over the past few years, I have grown fond of entrepreneurs. Maybe it is because of the hardships they carry silently, maybe it is admiration for their courage and the way they think. Or perhaps I have simply had the opportunity to work with small founders who genuinely deserved admiration and from whom I truly had things to learn.
What is certain is that this is how I gradually ended up on the other side of the table, through Pinpoint.
And now, all my previous experience on a human level comes together in the way I answer the phone when junior professionals call. I remember how difficult it was, during every year of university, to get into one of the few agencies that accepted students for internships at the time. Not a job, an internship! I still remember how various people I spoke to treated me, at a time when I placed my hopes in every conversation.
Over the years, I have met serious junior professionals, experienced professionals with decades of experience who continued to learn, founders who treated their partners fairly, and marketers who were careful about what they promised. Of course, I also encountered situations that confirmed the exact negative stereotype. In some situations, I too formed opinions too quickly, and a few meetings later showed me that I had been wrong. The people who made time for me back then may have long forgotten those conversations. I remember them. It is possible that some of the junior professionals who call me today will remember them years from now, too, and the part that depends on me is happening now, in just a few minutes.
I am at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, I do everything, and I carefully manage every hour. When a junior professional calls me, however, I still find a few minutes for genuine attention. Sometimes, that is all I can offer, because I remember how much those minutes I once received from others meant to me.
Looking Ahead
The truth is that good intentions are not enough to be able to pass something concrete on to others. A founder I worked with in previous years explained this idea best. He used to say: “You can be the bread of God, but take zero and divide it: it is still zero.”
What does this have to do with entrepreneurship and with the desire to contribute to the businesses and lives of others that I mentioned above? It does, because, several years from now, I would like what I do to be able to support a foundation focused on social issues. I do not know whether that will happen; I only know that it cannot happen before I build something. And valuable things are built together; that is why, for the entrepreneurs I appreciate, I would like Pinpoint to gradually become a small networking hub.
Well, there is still a long way to go, and in the meantime, I have work to do at Pinpoint.
Andra Ciucescu’s journey from freelancing and her first professional experiences to entrepreneurship and building Pinpoint is a story about leadership, responsibility and creating professional relationships based on trust. Her experience in marketing, branding and PR now shapes her work as a Fractional CMO and the way she partners with startups, SMEs and founders.
