Now Numbers: Data at the heart of our business

27th October:

Now has consolidated their data offering under the banner of Now Numbers, which will make data central to the agency’s creative strategy.

Now has hired Simon Wall, one of the original founders of Fuel, the independent data consultancy acquired by Engine Group, as Director of Analytics. Wall will lead Now Numbers and help drive strategy at the agency. He joins as a significant shareholder at Now.

Wall has already delivered major projects for Now clients using data to drive strategic and creative direction, including Smart Energy GB, Nuffield Health and the Royal Academy of Engineering. Data was also central to Now’s recent Ocado win.

For Smart Energy GB, Wall and Now produced a deep understanding of the attitudes and household of every homeowner in Britain to inform creative, media targeting and drive below-the-line activity.

For the Royal Academy of Engineering, the team built an assumptive framework to discover how the engineering industry could recruit an additional 500,000 engineers, and for Nuffield Health, a framework was developed to identify the right target audience for the brand and enhance engagement.

Wall will help inform all of the agency’s creative output and will work alongside Now’s Chief Strategy Officer Kate Waters and ECD Remco Graham.

Now’s Chairman John Townshend said: “Data has changed every walk of life apart from traditional advertising. Usually used to optimise performance at a CRM level, at Now we are using it in a fundamentally different way. We can use data analytics to help direct creative strategy, to make strategies more robust and to connect directly with the creative work and inspire creativity.”

Simon Wall said: “Now has always been an agency that has embraced data and its ability to drive the creative strategy – the birth of Now Numbers is simply a reflection of the rapidly growing importance of that relationship for clients.”

Kate Waters said: “We love the creativity of data. It lets you come up with more lateral answers to problems, and to be more certain to commit to a direction wholeheartedly. For clients it justifies bold ideas and supports the case for creativity.”

Remco Graham said: “It’s been a revelation working with Simon. The numbers tell stories you couldn’t find in any other way.”

Read: Data: Listen. Learn.