In late 2015, the founders of The Works came up with an idea for a start-up. They have now turned that into a real company. On Message is Australia’s first messenger-based social media company. It will now work with leading social media brands and build a team of Australia’s primary tech developers to launch the first work in the next few months.
On Message aims to enable brands to communicate with their audiences in more effective ways.
Nicol commented, “The Works prides itself on being innovative and putting creatives at the forefront, On Message has been developed from this forward thinking attitude and we are excited to be thought leaders in how brands will be communicating through messenger apps and have already begun discussions with various leading brands which has been met with a really positive response.”
The concept was developed when The Works’ founders, Douglas Nicol, Damian Pincus and Kevin Macmillan observed the huge increase in the use of messenger-style apps like Snapchat, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Their user numbers are now that of the top four traditional social media platforms.
“The shift in platform popularity has caught many marketers off guard and they are unaware on how to best engage their customers who are moving from being a wider audience to becoming an individual. If we look to China and the success of WeChat you can see a future where brand engagement, customer service and e-commerce has become one seamless and open ecosystem, a shift that we can already see with consumers and their social media behaviour in Australia,” Nicols added.
The Works hopes that the new service will encourage brands to rethink their approach to engagement, service and usefulness, using On Message for conversation marketing and becoming more relevant, reactive and responsible.
“This is so much more than a new version of SMS. It’s a tectonic shift in how apps are developed and used. Chat platforms are the next great outlet where brands integrate their services and engagement into the customer’s message stream eliminating the once hard to manage, stand-alone brand apps,” Nicols noted.
On Message aims to win new clients’ attention with fun customer engagement tools like custom keyboards, stickers and GIFS plus bot development, e-commerce and payment integration.
“Australia produces some of the best tech talent in the world and until now there has been little opportunity to retain or attract international talent to the country. On Message is a fantastic platform for up and coming developers to be positioned as industry leaders and showcase their expertise.”
