Charisse Nel has worked in various fields of marketing and advertising over the past eight years, but hates the word "advertising" - when people ask her what she does, she avoids that word like the plague as she doesn't feel she's in advertising.

After working in marketing and production, as well as traditional advertising, she broke away from the traditional agencies to join the more diverse brand solutions-centred agency, Arctic Circle

Charisse has spent the past year-and-a-half building a dynamic new client service team that is able to answer to the need for strategic, focused branding solutions, rather than being limited by the traditional account manager roles. She works with a team of creative thinkers and problem solvers - creatagists (creative + strategy) - that takes a business problem, analyses it, pulls it apart, listens to what people are saying, thinking and feeling and then crafts a long-term business solution. Sometimes making an ad falls part of this solution; sometimes it does not.

She has also focused, along with the MD (Reghard Goussard), on building a new client base that has seen the agency win some blue-chip clients.

Charisse is particularly passionate about providing clients with innovative solutions for a new age that are cost-effective and provide return on investment.

Contact her on tel +27 (0)21 486 8140, email , follow @shazzup on Twitter and connect on LinkedIn.