Hardhat announces new hires made throughout Melbourne’s lockdown
Hardhat is marking the agency’s growth throughout Melbourne’s extended COVID-19 lockdown, announcing the appointment of five senior staff.
In the newly created role of head of production, Charlotte Wren has joined the agency from BWM Dentsu. Meanwhile, Alice Tschuchnigg took up the role of client services director in April, after a year at White Grey and a year at Saatchi & Saatchi.
Hardhat’s co-founder and managing director, Justin Kabbani, said: “Whilst the start of the COVID period was challenging, our deep digital DNA and UX [user experience] capabilities served us well. From there, we’ve been able to respond to client opportunities and continue building out our broader strategic and creative capabilities. Adding so much talent in such a short period of time has been an awesome accelerator.”
Also new to the creative team is art director Luke Danzig and senior strategist Hayley Read. Danzig joins from The Royals in Melbourne, and has previously spent time with Jack Morton and freelanced for Grill’d, Deakin University, University of Melbourne and Mercedes-Benz. Read was most recently a strategist at AJF GrowthOps, which this week entered a trading halt as it attempts to delist from the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), and was previously at Y&R and Meerkats.
Also joining the agency is Brogan Sulzberger as a producer. Sulzberger has spent time with Penso, JTB Studios, The Monkeys and Host.
Throughout Melbourne’s lockdown, the agency has boasted bringing on a new piece of business on average every three weeks, the company said, and building out its internal PR capabilities.
“It seemed intimidating at the start, but it’s been incredible to see how the culture and systems we’ve built the agency around have made scaling up like this not just possible, but actually seamless,” Kabbani said.
Hardhat’s clients include Bupa, Lion Dairy and Drinks, Simply Energy, Kogan.com, Victoria University and Carsales.