As The Outcomes Agency, AFFINITY puts thinking first. And since our rebranding has just taken place, it’s appropriate our latest appointment is a thinker par excellence.
Will Nichols joins AFFINITY as Chief Strategy Officer, following on from both agency and client marketer roles in both Australia and the UK.
Recently he shared 4 key lessons he’s learnt from past experience in terms of driving significant business outcomes.
A key way to drive business outcomes is to connect all your creative and performance activity
Media agency, creative agency, digital agency. All doing their own little piece of the puzzle and all are great in their own right, but not truly working in harmony. The best outcomes occur when we have connected thinking and application of ideas.
Agile programs may be fast, but they don’t always deliver the business impact you need
It’s been a buzzword on the lips of many in recent years, but for some organisations it could be said that agile has been more about doing things quickly than doing things properly. While speed is critical in today’s world, it shouldn’t be the over-riding driver. It’s critical to have checks and balances in place to prioritise the most important actions you need to take to drive the biggest impact.
Organisations are spreading themselves too wide with CX programs that try to tackle everything
One of the big challenges around being true to the notion of Customer Experience within an organisation is that it can encompass so many disconnected aspects of what a company does. A laser focus and complete organisational buy-in are both required in order to focus on what you should be doing to drive business outcomes – whether that be a specific goal (e.g. more efficiency) or solving a particular customer or business problem. At the end of the day, you should achieve a result that benefits customer and business alike.
Put yourself in your client’s shoes
Having worked as a client-side marketer previously, I’ve learnt to understand the competing tensions that many clients are facing in achieving whatever it is they’re targeting. The client-agency relationships that are most successful in still delivering results are the ones where the agency shows a willingness to truly understand what a client is facing.
We’re thrilled to have Will as part of our team and look forward to introducing him to all of our current (and future) clients. As Will also commented: “I’m excited to be joining AFFINITY. They have a unique combination of capabilities from media to data to creative, which are consistenly focused on delivering business outcomes for clients. This approach has never been more critical than today, as brands have been challenged by recent events.”
We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, Will.
