Alpha Digital has announced the promotion of Sam Wood into the newly created role of CEO, stepping up from his previous role as General Manager.
The move comes as the strategic marketing partner confirms 10 new clients have been added since April, including Morgans Financial, QUT and Tradelink.
The promotion also brings an exciting transition for the founder and managing director Matt Cooper, who has now become Alpha Digital’s Chairman and is concentrating his efforts on developing a new small and first time advertiser focused agency, Springboard Digital.
Alpha Digital’s restructure comes off the back of new hires in March when Tobey Bower joined as Commercial Director and Grant Collins as Head of Digital Experience. After a promotion to Client Strategy Director, Chris Lockwood will now take over some of the day to day client responsibilities from Wood who will turn his attention to the future of the company and how the team can best continue to effectively deliver lifetime value for clients.
Wood’s evolution to CEO has come at a most interesting and challenging time, with one IAB Australia report citing 21 per cent of advertisers paused their spend, while just over half decreased their spend in the peak of the Coronavirus pandemic. However the new CEO put measures and assurances in place which ensured that all staff remained in work during lockdown and the client roster was able to grow even while working remotely.
Wood said: “I’m proud of how well our team has performed over the past few months. Congratulations to Tobey who’s flourished in his newly appointed role, and the supporting team that has expanded the depth and breadth of our partnerships with clients such as myHomecare, Cloudscene, M.J. Bale, Tradelink and Beds & Dreams.”
Commercial director Tobey Bower said: “Pitching remotely has had its challenges, but it’s made a little easier when your team has a wealth of solid experience across a number of verticals to call on. Alpha had a very strong team in place heading into 2020 and was uniquely positioned to help our clients weather the storm this year. I’m excited to see the growth we can achieve in the coming financial year, as we help our clients to adapt and respond to new and unique digital communications challenges.”
Wood added: “Thanks to Grant, we’ve been able to leverage our newly created aggregate client data lake to illustrate sector trends throughout the pandemic.”
Existing clients also ramped up their online efforts during the lockdown with eCommerce the main distribution channel for many including Stone & Wood, Pillow Talk, City Beach and Petbarn.
Almost overnight brands that had online as part of their strategy, had to adapt to having eCommerce as their sole channel during the lockdown. The newly created data lake helped inform the insights and strategy behind expanded campaigns for Stone & Wood, Pillow Talk, City Beach and Petbarn, as many transformed eCommerce to their primary distribution channel.
Cooper commented: “As Alpha establishes itself as one of Australia’s most highly regarded digital marketing agencies, Springboard is here for the Australian business needing sound digital marketing fundamentals and help making sense of the complex, ever evolving digital world. I have a strong feeling of pride in the company Sam and I have built and excitement for the new era under his stewardship.”
The list of new clients in full includes: Tradelink, Morgans Stockbroking, Beds n Dreams, myHomecare, Showroom-X, HiKOKI, Foundry, eMHprac (part of QUT) and Roof Racks Galore.
