Pitch Watch: South Africa Tourism and Vault Intelligence announce PR win; Havas Village wins two clients
Mumbrella casts an eye over the major media, creative and public relations pitches at play in market.
In today’s wrap up: South Africa Tourism (PR appointment); Vault Intelligence (PR appointment); Bioceuticals (strategy/planning appointment); Havas Village wins two clients
South African Tourism ANZ announces PR agency win
South African Tourism Australia and New Zealand has appointed The Hallway as its PR agency following a competitive pitch process.
Professional Publications Relations (PPR) will be stepping down after nine years as agency of record for South African Tourism ANZ.
The Hallway’s role across the three year partnership will involve PR and social strategy, social content, strategic partnerships and influencer engagement.
Yana Shvarts, country manager and marketing and communications manager for South African Tourism Australasia said The Hallway’s full-service offering contributed to its account win.
“For us, The Hallway stood out with its strategic and creative approach to PR and social. This aligns with our need for a forward-thinking team to deliver authentic and engaging campaigns that will drive awareness and visitation, and we are really looking forward to seeing some great results from this new partnership,” Shvarts said.
Jules Hall, CEO of The Hallway said of the appointment: “We’re delighted to be working with South African Tourism to position the country as the number one travel destination for Aussies and Kiwis, leveraging our Create and Connect model to architect more impactful stories across earned channels.”
Vault Intelligence appoints PR agency
Vault Intelligence has appointed Bench PR as its agency of record.
The business was founded by a former director for safety for the Australian Army, offers cloud based environment, health and safety software internationally.
Tim Dowling, general manager of commercial operations at Vault Intelligence said: “Bench PR were highly recommended to us. Health and safety compliance is a challenge for many organisations and we needed a PR partner who understood how our technology meets that challenge.
We’re already working with some large corporates in Australia such as Visy, Coca-Cola Amatil and Kraft Foods but we’ve got big plans for Australia, so we also wanted to work with a PR agency used to working with fast growing tech companies and Bench certainly has an excellent track record here,” Dowling added.
The appointment is one of two for Bench PR, who were announced as PR agency for Australian IT consultancy, Versent.
Bench PR was involved in launching Stax, a program offers insights and recommendations for Amazon Web Service (AWS) environments.
Jocelyn Hunter, managing director, Bench PR said of the two appointments: “Both Vault and Versent are great examples of Australian entrepreneurialism and innovation. Experts in their respective fields, turning their backs on the corporate world and risking everything to develop new, innovative software, bringing it to market and then successfully selling it to top ASX listed companies.”
Bioceuticals announces customer engagement strategy appointment
Bioceuticals has appointed Urban as its agency for customer engagement strategy.
The agency, which recently rebadged from an experiential agency to be a strategic consultancy and creative services company, will be responsible for developing engagement platforms across Bioceuticals’ practitioner customer base.
Arina Pogossian, head of marketing, Fit Bioceuticals said: “As allied health practitioners are at the core of our business, we’re very excited to initiate this project with Urban. Implementing strategies to support practitioners in their business as well as growing the integrative health industry are – and have always been – fundamental to our purpose.”
Jonas Katzellenbourg, director of planning and strategy, Urban added: “Elevating brands and educating stakeholders about products is a significant challenge in practitioner environments. This is a great opportunity for Urban and BioCeuticals to ‘unthink’ traditional rep-to- client engagement models in order to find new ways of growing business and advocacy”.
The two companies will unveil their first work in the new year.
Havas Village secures two new clients 
Havas has secured two new clients using its integrated ‘Village’ structure, with OFX and MyRepublic set to work with different agencies across the group.
The move will see the two companies use a range of services from agencies in the group including Havas Worldwide, Havas Media and PR offering Red Agency.
According to the release OFX, an Australian online foreign exchange and payments company will “implement a full suite of performance focused integrated communications service to support its brand and retail communication growth”, while MyRepublic will take a direct response focus with a TV campaign.
In a joint statement from Havas Australia’s executive management team Anthony Gregorio, Mike Wilson and James Wright said: “Our Havas Village structure transcends the confinements of a traditional agency set-up with a focus on seamless integration and agility across a number of disciplines. We think this is the just kind of partner clients in today’s marketing landscape need.
“We are firm believers that a strategy-first, collaborative approach is the key to achieving business results. For clients accessing all or multiple parts of the Havas Village we strategise, create and execute exceptional ideas as one team. Our clients have one point of contact, one mind-set, one goal, one language, all under one roof.”
