Ruth Blair joins Managing Director, Ahmad Salim and Chief Creative Officer Dan Wright to help design an entirely new offering for the New Zealand market where they seek to combine the power of creativity with the discipline and impact that Deloitte NZ brings to its private and public sector clients.
Blair is departing her role as Head of Strategy at True NZ where she helped reimagine the agency’s approach to creative strategy and brand building. Her previous roles saw her working as an Innovation Strategist at Previously Unavailable and with organisations such as NAB at Clemenger Melbourne and BNZ and the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation at Colenso BBDO. Outside of the mainstream industry, Blair has also helped to shape social enterprise, and explored how ethics, wellbeing and sustainability can be applied in meaningful and measurable ways.
“It’s really exciting to have Ruth bring her talents and experience to the team. She’s one of those rare and amazing people who feels with her head and thinks with her heart which will make her a joy to work with and will help drive real cultural empathy into both the way we work, and the work we make,” saysSalim.
Blair has always seen creativity as a catalyst for meaningful change, and her commitment to using creativity to push the world forward has allowed her to work with some of Australasia’s most ambitious organisations including The Starship Foundation as it transformed into a social enterprise, NAB as it undertook its biggest transformation in decades, BNZ’s shift to helping New Zealanders Be Good with Money, and helping the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation save lives with Breast Cream.
“Working with Ruth again has been a career goal of mine for years now. She’s got this magical way of making formidable intelligence seem totally obvious, she’s endlessly curious, plus she’s one of the nicest people I know. I can’t wait to see what she can make happen at Deloitte,” addsWright.
Blair says of her appointment: “Working with Dan and Ahmad is like stepping back into my creative tribe and working within the Deloitte organisation is like stepping into the future. A future that places creativity, ethics, and innovation at the heart of everything we do. And that’s exciting.”
This news comes on the back of the recent Deloitte acquisition of Madras Global, a global content creation and delivery studio to help Deloitte’s clients better manage the rapidly increasing need for personalisation and automation at scale.
With the addition of the NZ team Deloitte Digital Creative now has three studios across Australia and New Zealand, working as an integrated talent pool, leveraging capability, insights, and inspiration to deliver world class work for clients.
Grant Frear, Lead Partner Deloitte Digital NZ says: “We are already seeing the benefits of integrating creativity with the other services we offer our clients. As we work more closely with our clients in 2022 on their transformation agendas we are confident that Ruth and the team will make a real impact and scale the impact of the work we have been delivering to our client base through Deloitte Digital over the past few years.”
