Maja Pawinska Sims 14 Jul 2022 // 8:45AM GMT
SINGAPORE — The Hoffman Agency has further expanded its senior leadership team in Asia Pacific, with the promotion of head of digital Nicolas Chan to the newly-created role of chief strategist for APAC.
Chan’s promotion 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.
Before joining the technology-focused agency in 2019, Chan – named as one of PRovoke Media’s Innovator 25 in Asia Pacific in 2021 – spent seven years with Golin, where he held senior planning and analytics roles in China. His background spans digital, planning and analytics for consumer and B2B companies.
In his new role, Chan is tasked with ensuring that the agency’s answer to a client brief is “driven by insights, creatively courageous and offers a clever solution to a defined business challenge.” He will also expand the scope of Hoffman's design studio, set up in 2020, with a focus on branding consultation.
Hsu said the new role was in response to a lack of strategic agency roles that focus on the APAC region, as “networks tend to operate strategy from a global, typically US, level, missing the nuances of diverse and often complex Asian markets.”
She added: “The right mindset is key to solving business problems. 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 said: “People tend to associate creativity and customer insight with consumer marketing, not B2B technology. 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.”
During his time at The Hoffman Agency, Chan has been instrumental in its shift from traditional PR to integrated marcomms, including putting frameworks in place around insight-generation and creativity to instil a consumer-style mentality to tackle B2B business challenges, including the agency’s proprietary Blueprint planning methodology.
Chan will retain his role as head of digital while other team members step up to take on more responsibilities.