Poem hires new creative director as Jessica Cluff departs
Earned creative agency Poem has announced some senior leadership changes, including the appointment of a new creative director after Jessica Cluff departed.
Cluff had been with Poem since August 2023, having joined to lead the agency’s creative offering. She finished up with the agency last week, and will be taking some time off before announcing her next move.
Rob Lowe, co-founder of the agency, said she helped Poem do “some of its best ever work” over the past two years.
“It’s allowed us to evolve our agency model, skillsets and outputs and created opportunities with clients to show how and why earning attention first can be so effective for brands in today’s culture and digital media landscape,” he said of Cluff.
“She’ll be hugely missed and goes with our greatest respect and thanks.”
The agency has appointed Tom Manning as its new creative director to replace Cluff.
Tom Manning
Manning returns to fulltime agency life after freelancing for the past year, where he was engaged by a number of PR and advertising agencies. His last fulltime role was at Havas Red, where he was national creative director.
He has previously held other creative roles within the Havas network, including at Havas Melbourne and Havas London.
“Poem has an incredible radar for the type of ideas that can shape and shift culture – not just piggy-back on it,” Manning said in a media release on Thursday.
“I was immediately impressed by the team, the culture, the clients, and the leadership vision. All the ingredients are there to be Australia’s best earned agency. I can’t wait to hit the ground running.”
With the creative leadership change, Lowe took this as an opportunity to also officially restructure the wider senior leadership team.
He will fully step into the CEO role, while managing partner Katie Raleigh — who has been with the agency for nearly seven years — will officially move to the role of managing director.
Its next phase includes the recently-launched B2B offering Poem Resonate, in partnership with Phronesis, and new clients including McCain Australia and El Jannah.
“We’re at an inflection point in Poem’s trajectory and I’m very proud and excited to have such a strong, dynamic and passionate team to take us to the next stage,” Lowe said in the release.
“I have every faith in Katie’s leadership and Tom’s belief in attention-seeking creative, to maximise the opportunity and further our vision to be the most effective earned-first creative comms agency.”
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Lauren McNamara was the associate editor at Mumbrella. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS. She left Mumbrella in August 2025.
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