Strategy

Lachlan Drummond joins redhanded

Lachlan Drummond joins redhanded

Lachlan Drummond has joined redhanded as Strategic Director. He is an ideal fit for the business bringing 20 years of research, strategy and media experience as well as first-hand knowledge of regional and rural Australia.

His path to redhanded started with an Arts Degree in Media studies followed by a Master of Marketing. He spent ten years at Chant Link & Associates as a consultant and then partner in the business. During that time he worked with clients including KMart, Coles, ANZ, ATO, ASIC, Monash and La Trobe universities on research and strategy projects.
In 2010 he joined Newspoll as Head of Strategy and Group Director for Victoria. In that role he was responsible for extending the Newspoll brand into strategic research in addition to undertaking the polling-related work for which the business is best known.

Lachlan’s relationship with redhanded started at Chant Link and continued at Newspoll where he undertook a range of ad hoc agri-business projects. It is now great to welcome him in a permanent, dedicated capacity to redhanded.

So what is the Redhanded vision for strategy and what do I get out of it?

Research ProcessAs Redhanded grows we want to cement our position as the leaders in Australasia in understanding and communicating to regional and rural audiences. Our belief is that communications must be underpinned by insights and understanding of the audience to whom they are aimed. This is critical for any audience, but especially those in regional and rural areas. It follows that we need the best talent to drive that understanding. Gut feel and anecdote should never be relied upon to inform your sophisticated communications strategy. Nor is it sufficient to get a junior staff member to ‘run a couple of focus groups’ and call this research. At best these (typical) approaches might give clients a couple of quotes, at worst it might lead to a campaign that completely misses the mark.

Lachlan’s research, strategy and agri-business expertise delivers a deeper understanding of the sector and drives better client outcomes. His agri-business experience is extensive having worked with clients including Monsanto, DuPont, Incitec Pivot and GRDC among others. He is also a former Treasurer for the Australian Market and Social Research Society and was recently called upon to appear as an Expert Witness in Communications at the Hazelwood Mine Fire Inquiry.

Agri-Business—a specialised research area:
Undertaking research in the Agri-Business sector requires understanding of the sector to draw out the insights and to design and deploy research tailored to that sector. Agri-Business research is quite unique for several reasons:

  1. Diversity of audiences: From large-scale corporate farms to small family-operated businesses. From growers to consultants and re-sellers. All come from slightly different perspectives and engage with Agri-Business in different ways. It is important to understand these differences and issues associated with each audience when conducting research in this sector;
  2. Expert audience: Agri-Business clients tend to have greater knowledge about the issues and research and scrutinise it more than most.  Any research and strategy offering must be robust and able to withstand careful analysis.
  3. The importance of practical, actionable outcomes: If you can’t take actionable outcomes that makes a materiel difference from your research and strategy, then why are you doing it? Redhanded with Lachlan Drummond specialises in delivering robust recommendations and outcomes that takes into account the sector, market forces and can be actioned.
  4. Credible and authoritative: In order for research to be accepted it needs to be delivered by researchers who have expertise. To obtain quality insights, you need to understand the issues and speak the language of the sector. Lachlan Drummond lives in rural Victoria and knows the challenges, the market and has 20 years of agri-business research and strategy experience behind him.
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In the coming months, we will be giving you more examples of our strategic capabilities and some tools we have created that will add value to you.

So, we welcome Lachlan to Redhanded and know that he will add value to you. On top of all this Lachlan is a nice bloke and lives with his family and dog, Maple Syrup, at Birregurra in the Otway hinterland, South West of Melbourne.

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