Edelman appoints Lynnette Edmonds as talent director as agency hunts for GM of consumer

Edmonds

Edelman Sydney has appointed former Hausmann Communications group talent director Lynnette Edmonds as its first talent director to oversee the agency’s recruitment efforts, Mumbrella can reveal.

Edmonds joins Edelman after just over two-and-a-half years at Hausmann. Edmonds has also spent 15 years as a PR consultant, including five years as co-owner of PR People, a specialist boutique recruitment agency especially for the PR and communications industry.

Matthew Gain, chief operating officer of Edelman Australia, told Mumbrella the agency had been looking at the talent director role “for a long time”.

“A lot of agencies have it to be fair, we’re actually starting to see it in market a lot more, particularly in PR agencies. For many people in the PR industry, Lynette is the most prominent recruiter anyone knows,” Gain said.

“The opportunity to have Lynette in our business was just too good too pass up. Already she’s making a huge impact, we’re out recruiting, we’ve already recruited a huge range of roles and there’s more to come.”

On choosing to leave Hausmann Edmonds said Edelman was only company she thought of contacting.

“I wanted to stay with an independent. I wanted something bigger, something with a global presence and a bigger presence in Australia,” she said.

Edmonds said her role is “broken into talent acquisition, talent retention and we’re also looking at training, employee engagement and talent mapping”.

The PR agency is currently recruiting for a number of roles, with the biggest vacancy a general manager of consumer role.

“We have a big consumer role open. We’re talking to a few people at the moment,” Gain said.

Purdie

The agency has also appointed consultant, and former Hill and Knowlton London director, Amanda Purdie as director of corporate in Edelman Melbourne.

“We’re seeing Melbourne as an opportunity. There is an opportunity to be bigger and better in Melbourne and Purdie is part of that push down there in Melbourne,” Gain said on Purdie’s appointment.

The two senior appointments come as the agency appoints six new staff across its health and beauty, consumer and corporate teams.

Founder of boutique health and beauty PR agency Vivid Publicity  Snezna Kerekovic comes on board as an account director in the health and beauty team, with former Cube Public Relations account director Laura Cragg joining the health team as account director.

Former MaxMediaLab account director Adrian De Brock joins the consumer team as account director while the corporate team adds three new team members.

“We’ve won a whole heap of tourism clients recently and he’s working across that,” Gain said.

Former One Green Bean account manager China Collins takes on a senior account manager role in the corporate team where she is joined by former Howorth Communications senior account executive Eva Schmalkuche who joins in an account manager role and Harriet Jack who also joins as an account manager.

“We’ve had enormous growth across our corportate/B2B clients,” Gain said.

Miranda Ward