Meet Chris Burke, and his new venture Tadashi: Part 5
This interview series has offered insights into Chris Burke’s new agency Tadashi and its particular focus on how digital can benefit health in Australia. In this final article, we get to know the Tadashi group and get a glimpse of Chris’ vision for the future of the brand.
Thinking of the BA model, say you do some work for a client and it does turn out that they need a website, and they want you to build it. Talk to us about the people in your team — how does that process then work?
[CB]: The term ‘full-service’ gets used a lot. Even agencies of two people still say that they’re full service. In my own experience — and from a business point of view — I’ve been involved in almost all of the services in a full-service agency.
At Tadashi, we don’t proclaim to be the experts at all of those things. We’re very good at the BA work and everything that happens at the start, like strategy, and we’ve got loads of experience with the tech and creative (I started out as a creative). I’ve got specific people in the Tadashi group that we use depending on what the project requires. For example, if it’s to do with accessibility, we would draw on my specific experience around web accessibility or work with people that I trust who are well established in the field.
The same goes for tech. I engage people who work in tech because inevitably every conversation you have in digital requires tech input. Sometimes we’re engaged to build the product and sometimes we’re not — it really depends on the client and the project. We’ve got a long history of partnering with agencies that have their own strengths that we draw on. And the same, for example, goes for content — which isn’t my forte — but I’ve certainly been in the industry long enough to know who the experts are, what the approach should be and who we like to work with.
So, it’s not just you that people will get when they work with Tadashi — they get access to a whole group of specialised experts.
[CB]: Yes! There’s a small difference between what people commonly refer to as a ‘network of experts’ and what I’m talking about with the Tadashi ‘group’.
From a BA or product owner perspective, a ‘group’ means that once you start implementing things — whether that’s building a new site or creating a content strategy — there’s a product owner or person in the middle to champion the requirements. Their job is to steer the ship, know what the results should be and own it (funnily enough).
That’s why it’s the Tadashi group, not a network. A network means that you’re often farming things out and that’s been problematic for digital in the past as a result of the industry’s immaturity. People tend to say, ‘ well we had someone build us something but then they used someone else, and we didn’t know who that was’ — which can get a bit murky.
Tadashi is absolutely in the middle of owning and steering the process, and sometimes it means that if we bring someone in, they become part of the client’s group on that occasion.
What’s your vision for Tadashi, or some of the goals you want to achieve?
[CB]: From a business point of view, the drive is not to take over the world and make millions of dollars. My preference is that Tadashi is successful, however the path that’s more rewarding is one littered with problem solving and valuable solutions for people where we can see a real result that has a real world effect.
We hope you enjoyed meeting Chris and learning more about Tadashi. If you’re part of the health industry in Australia, we’d love to hear from you — get in touch.
Originally published at https://www.tadashi.com.au on March 7, 2019.
