I want to know Winlove is…and I want him to tell me
Dow’s latest acquisition of Digital agency Goodfolk has bought a whole new team of expertise into the fold, let’s hear from the good-est one of them all (arguably of course), Benn Winlove.
What got you into Digital? Into Goodfolk? Into Dow?
I first got into digital when I was 9, and my brother got a Sinclair ZX81 (that’s a computer console for those of you under the age of 40), with a whopping 1 kilobyte of RAM! To play on it, you had to type out lines of code from a magazine and if you made one mistake, the game wouldn’t work. If you wanted to play it again the next day, you had to type it all out again. (Millennials, you have no idea how lucky you are!).
I set up Goodfolk with two colleagues when the design company we worked for, The Church, split between its Wellington and Auckland studios. We turned the Auckland studio into Goodfolk in 2011.
We joined Dow in December last year. I had been looking for a way to lift the design and branding side of our offering, while Annie was looking to round out Dow’s design capabilities into a more complete offering. It’s been a natural merge of complimentary skill sets and like minded cultures.
Why digital? What’s so good about it?
Anyone sitting here reading these words will be using a digital device that has contributed to making their lives infinitely more connected and efficient. Every year processing power increases along with our capabilities. It allows all of us the luxury of living and thinking in the future every day. If harnessed correctly digital design can, and should be able to help us all. Done well it can bring huge efficiencies, solve planet wide problems and bring us all closer together.
The Dow Goodfolk acquisition is an exciting new step for both organisations? What are you gonna bring to the table and what are you gonna take from it?
It’s super exciting. Dow is a design leader, and to become a part of the team is a great move for all of us.
We are bringing our digital design experience and process into the Dow mix. It naturally compliments their design process, but between our teams we now have a more complete branding and design offering for our clients.
There is so much we will take from the move. The people at Dow have unbelievable skills and experience.
Briefly explain a great success story you’ve had with a client and how you’ve helped them overcome some digital hurdles.
We worked closely with Auckland Council on a number of projects over a three year period, including Our Auckland, their digital news channel.
When they came to us with the project, there was no way for them to talk to Aucklanders directly. Press releases were intercepted by news outlets and usually cast the Council in a negative light.
Our job was to design and build a news platform that they could use to tell more positive stories and publish information about important events. We duly designed an effective solution, well within scope. It is also able to be securely accessed and used by multiple publishers simultaneously and received over a million visitors in the first year.
What are your top 3 digital do’s and dont’s?
Don’t jump on every digital band wagon. There are so many new digital things out there that everybody raves about that go absolutely nowhere.
Do the UX properly. It’s so important. The battle for customer loyalty is so often won and lost here.
Do keep learning and changing. Digital allows you to record customer behaviour better than ever before. Use the data well. If something’s not working as well as it should, change it. Right away. Now.