Kinetics to merge with sister Photon agency Hotwire
The Australian-based Kinetics is to merge into fellow Photon-owned PR agency Hotwire and will be headed by Hill & Knowlton’s Jorn Sanda in the new role of MD.
Andy West, Jody Lennon & Jörn Sanda
The agency will be rebranded as Hotwire Kinetics, with the merger to occur on July 1.
Hotwire, which has offices in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain has a total staff of 110. Led by Andy West, managing director, international, it specialises in PR for for the technology industry.
Kinetics, which was founded by its current CEO Jody Lennon, has offices in Sydney and Melbourne, and has eight staff. Its clients include Axis Communications, Alphawest, Cisco, FileMaker Inc, Lexar, Logitech and Quantum.
As part of the changes Lennon will move into the new role of executive chairman of Hotwire Kinetics on July 1.
Lennon said: “We’ve been collaborating together for the past two years and this provides Kinetics with the opportunity to branch out internationally.”
She said it is now working for ALK Technologies in Australia – an existing Hotwire client. Lennon added that it will be announcing two more new clients shortly.
Meanwhile, Sanda has been charged with leading the growth of the newly merged agency. His responsibilities will include overall client service management, business and financial management and the day-to-day running of the company.
He has previously worked in senior management positions with Text 100 in Australia and the UK, and more recently as the director for enterprise technology at Hill & Knowlton, Australia.
In other people moves, Hill & Knowlton boss Michelle Hutton recently resigned to take up a role with rival Edelman.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Finally I get 15 seconds of fame – and not a single comment… Ok, will just have prove our promises to get people talking…
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C’mon Jörn you know how pathologically shy PR people can be… Nice one btw, you and Jody should make a very good team.
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I’ll get the ball rolling by making the first impartial comment. Congrats Jörn, sounds like a great opportunity.
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Congrats on the new role. Kenetics/Hotwire have done well. So which pub will have the open bar and when?
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It would be fiscally irresponsible to publish time and date of pub session in this forum. mUmBRELLA readers would read it as a open invitation… And there are just too many readers. Thanks for extending those 15 seconds…
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Congrats Jörn! Exciting times. I’ll keep an eye out for celebration drinks .. 🙂
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I must admit that this news is pretty dull. A small agency of 8 joins one of 50 all owned by Photon. It’s a simple redistribution of financial targets so Photon can eran more. From what I gather Hotwire is a sinking ship.
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Hi Tanya — not sure where you get the idea that Hotwire is a sinking ship from? Our business performance across all our offices in Europe speaks for itself. If you’d like to know more, we can chat. I am contactable at Kinetics office until next Wednesday.
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