She walked into SOFTSWISS in 2020 with no background in iGaming and no marketing department to inherit. That last part, she says, was the point.
Valentina Bagniya is Chief Marketing Officer at SOFTSWISS, the iGaming tech company behind casino, sportsbook, and affiliate platforms used by operators around the world. Under her leadership, SOFTSWISS has become one of the most recognised B2B brands in the industry, winning multiple awards and launching data-first initiatives, including the annual iGaming Trends report.
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When SOFTSWISS approached her, Bagniya had just been promoted at her previous company and wasn’t looking to move. She took the call anyway. What she found was a young, fast-moving business with no marketing function to speak of. Just a couple of people posting on LinkedIn between other responsibilities, and no strategy behind any of it.
“It was a fantastic challenge for me. A space where I can implement everything that I gained before, during my fifteen years in marketing.”
Valentina says.
What she really appreciated was the company founder’s instinct, which she believes was ahead of its time. They were looking to hire someone with extensive strategic marketing experience from outside the industry entirely, and let them (re)build the department from the ground up. She started with marketing strategy, then brand positioning, then built the team in-house, because the agency expertise didn’t yet exist in B2B iGaming.
One of her first moves was the FMCG playbook. In industries like Nestlé or British American Tobacco, she says, brand comes before promotion, always. You build the foundation before you execute. iGaming at that point was doing the opposite. They were grabbing every opportunity the market handed them, with no long-term architecture to guide their decisions. “The growth came from the industry because the industry was growing by itself,” she says. “But I understood that after this period of fast growth would come the phase of mature development, when there would be a lot of competition, and it would not be that easy to grow.”
The campaign that defined what that era would look like was “Bringing the Heat,” launched in Malta in 2022. This was a first-of-its-kind full 360-degree campaign: out-of-home, bus and vehicle branding, airport activations, radio, and C-suite executives made visible as part of the creative. None of it was typical for B2B. All of it was standard FMCG thinking. It won multiple industry awards and, more importantly, generated contracts. “We grew our brand awareness a lot because of this campaign,” she says. “But it also brought us sales.”
Competitors noticed. Within a few years, others in B2B iGaming were producing trend reports, diversifying their media mixes, and investing in brand. “We became a benchmark,” she says.
Transparency runs through everything she describes. She draws a direct line between her experience in tobacco and alcohol, industries that went through regulatory transformation and came out the other side, and what she sees coming in iGaming.
“Industry is growing from a grey segment to a white market. We shouldn’t follow. We should be ahead of that.”
Valentina says.
Asked what advice she would give a marketer entering a fast-moving regulated sector for the first time, her answer is to maintain a mindset of patience before passion. Do the strategy. Do the analysis. Sit through the boring part. “If you don’t,” she says, “in a year you will face problems, and you will have to go back to the beginning, but already you will have made several mistakes.”
Valentina Bagniya is the first guest on The CMO Sessions, a Future Makers series. The full episode, including her approach to brand building in regulated markets, team structure across 12 countries, and the role of AI in the SOFTSWISS marketing function, is available to watch now.
The CMO Sessions is a Future Makers series of in-depth conversations with CMOs and marketing leaders from global companies, unpacking the strategies that drive breakout growth. Host Annetta Benzar sits down with the people making the decisions, on brand, performance, org design, measurement, and what it actually takes to build marketing that moves a business.
A production of OLOI Media and The Future Media.
