The Hoffman Agency creates APAC chief strategist role, promotes Nicolas Chan
The Hoffman Agency has promoted Nicolas Chan to chief strategist for Asia-Pacific, a newly-created role.
The announcement:
Chan has been with the company since 2019, when he joined as head of digital for the region.
The appointment is driven by demand for strategic leadership in the PR industry in Asia-Pacific. The Hoffman Agency sees a lack of strategic roles that focus on the region. Instead, agency networks tend to operate strategy from a global (typically US) level, missing the nuances of diverse and often complex Asian markets.
Chan’s promotion is also part of company-wide efforts to build out Asia-Pacific leadership. It follows the recent elevation of Caroline Hsu from regional managing director to chief global officer and of Maureen Tseng to general manager of Singapore and Indonesia.
Chan will advance The Hoffman Agency’s agenda of helping technology companies solve business problems – as opposed to communications ones. Where strategic roles can be theoretical, his primary responsibility will be quality of product, which includes agency methodology: ensuring that the answer to a brief is driven by real insights, creatively courageous and offers a clever solution to a defined business challenge.
“People tend to associate creativity and customer insight with consumer marketing, not B2B technology,” Chan said. “Yet creative thinking and insightfulness are essential for B2B tech companies to succeed in today’s environment. My aim is to ensure that we see things from the customer’s perspective while adapting the best principles of consumer marketing for the B2B space.”
Over the past five years, The Hoffman Agency has evolved from a traditional PR agency model to one based on integrated marketing communications (IMC). Chan has been instrumental in this change by putting in place frameworks to teach insight generation and creativity and instil a more consumer-style mentality to tackle B2B business challenges.
An example of this is Blueprint, a proprietary customer-journey-driven planning methodology that Chan introduced in 2019. It is designed to support the creation of integrated work by channelling public relations through the lens of integrated communications and helping consultants think like CMOs, connecting touchpoints beyond the scope of a traditional agency.
Chan will also expand the scope of Hoffman’s design studio’s services with a focus on branding consultation. The studio approaches design as an organic part of storytelling and has grown rapidly since it was established in 2020, working with clients such as Aboitiz Data Innovation, Heidrick & Struggles and Tealium.
“The right mindset is key to solving business problems,” said Caroline Hsu, The Hoffman Agency’s chief global officer. “As a tech geek with valuable consumer experience, Nicolas exemplifies the direction we and the B2B tech sector need to move in. Tech communications should reflect the dynamism of the tech sector. Nicolas’s approach is inspired and energizing, challenging industry norms while being firmly rooted in business and customer insights.”
Chan will retain his role as head of digital while other team members step up to take on more responsibilities.
Source: The Hoffman Agency
