Nimbletank hires Somo’s El-Arifi on back of Santander win

Aside from Somo, El-Arifi has worked on projects with BBH, Dare Digital, Mother, JWT, AMV BBDO and What if? following his postgraduate degree after completing an undergraduate degree in Film and TV Production from the University of Leeds and a masters in Advertising at Buckinghamshire New University.

He also worked as a technical expert blogger for Samsung, gaining an accolade of ‘Best Mobiler’ by the company and being invited to Korea for a preview of new technology by the company.

Chris Minas, founder of Nimbletank, said, “Transforming corporate and start-up businesses via mobile is at the heart of what we do. I am delighted to welcome El-Arifi to the Nimbletank team. El-Arifi will be joining some of the industries best talent, helping to innovate ideas and products for our clients.”

David Skerrett, managing partner of Nimbletank, said of the appointment; “We created the role to meet the demand for innovation from our clients as it was such a good opportunity to get someone like Naji on board. His role will look at innovation, technology and hackathons, which we’re finding increasingly are a good way to work with clients.”

“I was tempted by the breadth of clients that Nimbletank had, and the chance to work on global brands such as Santander and interesting start-up products such as minicabit was too good to miss,” said El-Arifi. “I’ve loved my experience at Somo, but felt that the time was right to move on.”

Nimbletank created a mobile app called Kitti, which was in partnership with Santander and mobile payment provider Kalixa. The concept of the app was the old-fashioned group ‘kitty’ idea, but using technology. It has experienced usage (based on Santander’s original app) surge over 313 per cent, and mobile transactions rise by 294 per cent.