Simon Millard says that his background in direct marketing has stood him in good stead and given him tools that he still relies on as Country Director with Western Union Financial Services in Australia. “I’ve been at Western Union for six years now,” he says. “Before that, I spent twelve years working for direct and digital marketing agencies throughout London and then more recently, in Sydney. It was a great experience, because I was working across many sectors and multiple clients, so I was exposed to a broad range of business and marketing challenges, which has proved to be very useful.
“It was also a very creative environment — not just in terms of creative output, but also creative solutions to challenges and opportunities. The direct marketing aspect has meant that data has always played a pivotal role in decision-making, whether it’s transactional or market insights.
It helps take away the emotion from decision-making and it’s something that I call on regularly.
“I then thought it would be good to broaden my experience and try working client-side, and a marketing role came up at Western Union. At the interview,
I was told that they wanted someone who could do things differently. They said, ‘If we just do what we’ve always done, we’ll grow at the same rate’, and that was something that appealed to me as a challenge. I became the Marketing Director for Oceania and Indo-China and then had the opportunity to lead the team here in Australia when I became Country Director, and I’ve been enjoying this role for two years now,” Simon says.
Western Union has been helping people to move money for more than 145 years, and during that time, it has built a truly global footprint. Its funds transfer service is available in more than 200 countries and territories around the world, through over 500,000 agent locations as of 31 March this year.