5 Minutes with Lillian Lim, Director of NHO
29.08.22

Discover the perspective of our Director, Lillian Lim, who cements the correlation between strategy and design with a creative yet commercial sensibility. With over 15 years of diversified marketing experience across design, the built environment, retail and consumer goods, Lillian is highly skilled at making ideas scalable, translating big-picture thinking into achievable outcomes.

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Q: Describe a day in your role as Director at NHO.

A: My role as Director is to provide guidance and oversight across all facets of the business – as such my role is pretty varied. A typical day might involve working on new business proposals, facilitating a brand strategy workshop, developing a strategic marketing plan for a client or having a work-in-progress check in with our Digital Marketing Strategists James and Lawrence. A central part of my role is also identifying growth opportunities and improvements across the agency and working with Neil our Founder on developing and implementing strategies that deliver on our company vision and help achieve our business objectives.

Q: What is one of your key mantras that you encourage the team to subscribe to?

A: I’m a big advocate of systems and processes as a way to improve efficiencies and ensure a consistent standard of service across the business. I regularly encourage the team to challenge our ways of doing things, identifying opportunities to improve and streamline tasks. When a new team member joins NHO this really helps to expediate the onboarding and induction process. Although our team is relatively small, I’m a firm believer in setting things up properly from the beginning as this will act as a great foundation as we grow.

Q: What inspires you?

A: Travel has always been a great source of inspiration for me. Some of my most memorable travel experiences would have to be visiting different design galleries and museums. A few of my favourites include 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo created by Tadao Ando and the late Issey Miyake, Dia Beacon a converted industrial building located on the banks of the Hudson River in Beacon New York, Zaha Hadid’s iconic Dongdaemum Design Plaza in Seoul, Villa Aalto (former home of Alvar and Aino Aalto) in Helsinki and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Copenhagen that is set inside a beautiful 1870s modernist building which is seamlessly integrated with its sea surrounds.

I was lucky enough to attend Milan Design Week this year, followed by a two-week holiday with my husband – we drove from Milan to Lake Como, to Rome and Puglia, all the way down to the Amalfi Coast. Coming out of the pandemic, has made me appreciate travel even more. I’ve really come back to Melbourne with a renewed sense of energy and excitement. We have actually just formalised a new company benefit where all employees will have the opportunity to attend Milan Design Week. As a business we recognise its importance from a design indoctrination, knowledge building and professional development perspective – it’s also a lot of fun!

Q: Can you share any marketing advice or words of wisdom?

A: As company directors and business owners it is easy to purely focus on short term immediate priorities. Because of this, being reactive rather than proactively spending time on longer term strategic planning is something we are all too familiar with. It is important to remember however, that a brand is often a business’s most valuable commercial asset and needs to continuously be invested in through brand building strategies and initiatives.