Engine Creative Launches Brand Experience Consultancy Practice

ENGINE Creative has expanded its offering with the hire of Rob Chalmers as its first Chief Experience Officer (CXO).

In this newly created role Rob will report to Ete Davies, CEO of ENGINE Creative, and will be tasked with leading the agency’s Brand and Experience Consultancy; with a focus of driving growth through the design of innovative brands and connected experiences.

Rob recently called an end to a five-year stint with R/GA in APAC to return to London. Whilst at R/GA, Rob held the position of Executive Creative Director APAC, where he was responsible for building and leading the experience and design practices across Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai, and driving rapid growth across the region.

While at R/GA Rob and his teams partnered with brands including Toyota, Nike, Telstra, Google, Shiseido and Standard Chartered to transform their customer experience and tackle the C-suites’ most pressing challenges:

- "How can we foster financial trust with a new generation?"

- "How do we maintain our customer relationship as mobility evolves?"

- "How do we prevent our brand from becoming purely a data commodity?"

Over the past five years Rob has worked hard to develop actionable experience strategies that outline how brands can grow by enabling change. The output of these strategies has seen the creation of net new brands, products and services and the transformation of their digital ecosystems. Prior to R/GA he worked at the ideas and innovation company AKQA.

Rob said: "When I think about the impact that disruptive technology has had on consumer behaviour and expectations – and the new series of challenges it presents to brands – it's clear they will need a new type of partner to adapt and grow. When you combine human-centred creativity with ENGINE’s full stack offering, you have the perfect platform to help brands take on these challenges."

Ete Davies, chief executive officer of ENGINE Creative said: “Rob has a unique ability to combine consulting and strategy, brand, experience design and technology. Clients love working with Rob because he makes the complicated simple, and manages to find the right balance between ambition, vision and pragmatism. He is a craftsman and a leader, and in an industry full of people who talk innovation and transformation but don’t always come up with the goods, Rob can be relied upon to actually deliver.”

Billy Faithfull, chief creative officer of ENGINE, said: “Look under the hood at most creative companies and you realise that when they say they can do everything, they’re mostly good at one thing and winging the rest. Rob Chalmers is a different breed of creative thinker and doer. He’s yet more proof that we’re not winging it, we’ve got world class creative talent to help us cook up transformative ideas and experiences that help clients stay ahead of the game.”