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Sapient Nitro rethinks strategy team, says clients need journalists, architects, consultants

Sapient's new strategy team

Widjanarko, Collins, Cook, Trimboli

Digital agency Sapient Nitro has announced that it has remodelled its strategy team in Singapore based on the theory that clients need “planners, journalists, architects and consultants” to help them navigate the digital world.

Melanie Cook, who is just under a year into her role as head of strategy for Sapient Nitro in Singapore and Hong Kong, has brought in Simon Collins from Accenture as the final part of a quartet that includes former consultant Andrew Trimboli and designer turned creative director Ari Widjanarko. Collins takes on the role of marketing technologist.

“No longer is being a strategist enough, clients now need a journalist, an architect and a business consultant to help advise them on the best solutions to shape their influence on the continuously emerging digital space,” Cook said in a press release.

Widjanarko, who has been with Sapient for three years as associate CD, takes on the role of experience architect. Trimboli, a former copywriter for SingTel who has worked for the agency for over a year as senior manager of content strategy, has been named content strategist.

Cook said: “Most of the strategy written today uses the Internet as a new place to disseminate old 360 thinking. A pre-roll is a TV ad online. A banner is a rotating press ad. An email is direct mail. And, Social Media is the new competition response mechanism. When we use the Internet in this limited capacity, all an agency needs is an integrated strategist who knows how to message a brand’s single-minded proposition across different channels.”

With the newly formed team, Sapient has created a “team that is made up of highly specialized individuals who will work together and use connected thinking to transform how people experience brands through technology,” Cook said.

Cook, the former Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore strategy head, was hired to replace Sushobhan Mukherjee, Sapient’s Asia Pacific strategy lead. He resigned after just over a year with the agency in October last year.

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