VaynerMedia’s new group creative director on doing ‘cool stuff that actually drives business results’
VaynerMedia Asia Pacific has appointed Guzman y Gomez marketer Yash Murthy as the first group creative director for Australia, Mumbrella can reveal.
The creation of the new role reflects the VaynerMedia’s plans to continue to expand its creative capabilities in the region, with Murthy set to lead the the agency’s creative vision, alongside head of Australia, Amy Bradshaw.
Bradshaw was the agencies first hire when it launched into the Australian market in 2021, and was last year promoted to head of Australia. Mumbrella understands that Shaun O’Connor, who was hired as the agency’s first creative director in March 2022, departed the agency in December.
“At VaynerMedia, we are focused on audience attention and relevance to drive our clients’ business. With his hybrid background as a business and creative leader, Yash truly understands our integrated approach and is well positioned to drive real impact for our clients and VaynerMedia’s growth,” said Bradshaw.
Murthy joins the business with more than a decade of experience, including roles at OgilvyOne, Droga5, M&C Saatchi Australia, and a number of digital agencies. In 2017 he joined AKQA, where he worked his way through to executive creative and strategy director before moving client side to head up creative and strategy at Guzman y Gomez, across brand strategy, campaign development, content planning and production.
Commencing his first day at VaynerMedia on Monday, Murthy told Mumbrella that his new role was “deliberately wide-ranging”, with his remit including helping to build partnership models with clients, as well as leading the agency’s creative output in the region.
“VaynerMedia is a pretty unique proposition in terms of what it does,” he said, referring to the agency’s customer-first approach to telling brand stories on social media.
Its an approach that he feels Australia’s media and marketing industry has “lagged a little behind in”, with the opportunity and challenge for VaynerMedia being to follow in the footsteps of its global counterparts in the social-marketing space.
“I think we’re moving towards platforms like TikTok where there is a such a creator focus and we want to make sure that we are building a next generation creative department looks like.”
Over the next four months, he said he will be looking to build out his creative team with talent who not only develop big ideas, but equally “understand platforms and audiences and build within those natively”.
With the nature of production “rapidly evolving”, VaynerMedia APAC will look to bring “creators and makers” in-house, ensuring the agency will be able to operate “at the speed of culture”.
As for his unusual trajectory from agency to client-side, and then back again, Murthy says he adored his time at Guzman y Gomez, and there was no way he would’ve gone back to a “big network agency”, but he was drawn in by VaynerMedia’s vision of being a “great human agency” that understands customers.
“I think often people forget about marketing and advertising’s inherent connection to sales. That’s what drew me to Vayner – it’s not just about doing cool stuff for cool stuff sake. It’s about doing stuff that is relevant and impactful, but impactful, not just from like a vanity metrics point of view, but in a way that actually drives business results.”
Murthy hinted that the agency would soon be able to announce a number of new client wins, noting that he was excited to help build brands in “bold new ways”, without being encumbered by legacy structures and operating principles as he might be at a traditional creative agency.
“I think it’s the perfect time for an agency like VaynerMedia in this market. It’s exactly what clients are looking for, based on my experience as a client and where the pain points are, it’s around. It’s around things like how am ‘how can I deliver ROI but still deliver scale and impact?’ and ‘how do I solve my TikTok problem?’,” he added. “I’m incredibly excited to work with great people tp actually enact that change in our market”.
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