TBWA’s PR agency, Eleven, has revealed Fee Townshend as the managing director of its new Melbourne operation, which opens tomorrow.
Paul Reardon TBWA Melbourne ECD, Jill Manester TBWA Melbourne planning director, Eleven Melbourne MD Fee Townshend and Kimberlee Wells TBWA Melbourne CEO
Townshend is joining the agency after an eight-year stint with the company PR Edge, having been a managing partner for six years from 2008-2014 and managing director for two, finishing in December last year.
Townshend told Mumbrella she was thrilled to work with Eleven after being ready for change and admiring their work for a long time.
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“We’ve got a couple of landmark clients we have already secured and were working with back in December to secure, we’ve got fantastic foundation clients and I would really like to see the agency grow rapidly but also remain true to the discipline of the type of work Eleven is renowned for – PR work that’s highly creative and highly strategic.
“We want to turn things up in Melbourne and have a better offering for anyone wanting to do business out of Melbourne in the next year.
“There is real opportunities to be able to start something fresh and start it right, because everybody is trying to integrate. All advertising agencies are trying to offer PR and then PR agencies are trying to imitate the advertising model, so to go in there with all of the learnings I’ve had in integrated services for the last 16 years, and be able to go and set the model right from the start, that’s extremely exciting,” she said.
Eleven will start operating in Melbourne tomorrow and will be co-located with TBWA Melbourne, the same as their Sydney and Auckland offices. The office currently has four consultants alongside creative and planning services.
Kimberlee Wells, CEO of TBWA Melbourne, said: “Fee impressed us from the get-go, she knows Melbourne inside-out, but more importantly perhaps, she bought into what we’re about here: creating disruptive work. We’ve always had a strong earned media focus in what we do at TBWA Melbourne, with ANZ Equal Future and GAYTMs as recent examples, but having PR right here in the office will greatly complement our planning, creative, digital and social teams.”
Roberto Pace, managing director Australia at TBWA said: “Fee is exactly the kind of leader we want for our local offering and she embraces the Eleven way of working. She comes with 16 years of experience, most recently in a similar MD role where she won accounts such as Telstra and spearheaded the launch of Australia’s first PR offer targeted at tackling gender inequality.”
The company was Mumbrella’s PR Agency of the Year last year.
Eleven has created a snapchat filter to celebrate the opening of their office, also serving coffee at the Eleven office in Coventry Street, South Melbourne.
