When it comes to digital platforms the difficult is always displaced by the simple, says Ajaz Ahmed, CEO of AKQA.

Speaking at Global Marketer Week in Marrakech, Ahmed discussed some of the ideas to which the best, most sustainable businesses of whatever size, era and concern always return.

According to Ahmed, there are five characteristics that he respects and admires that helps the most successful businesses to endure: democratise; revolutionise; organise; simplify; authorship; and values.

He believes that for every single project created you must first think about what opportunity you are trying to unlock.

“What’s the memory we want to create and the feeling we want to evoke in the hearts and minds of our audiences?”

Citing one of the agency’s clients Nike, Ahmed described some of the ideas behind its hugely successful Nike + app.

“One of the ideas we had was why don’t we democratise the idea of having a personal trainer?”

The Nike + app acts as the users very own personal trainer and helps them to track progress, stay motivated and achieve a better workout.

“In our industry we hear a lot about storytelling and big data, so we thought why not combine the two and make it a more personalised experience,” he added.

The top 100,000 users on the Nike + app received their own personalised video at the end of 2014.

“It’s a really gorgeous way to combine storytelling and art and data in a personalised way,” said Ahmed.

“The organisations that tend to endure look at innovation as an experiment with unknown outcomes,” he added.