Special Group has announced the launch of Special PR – a natural extension for the agency considering its long track record of creating work that has a PR focus and generates headlines worldwide.
Kelly Grindle has been appointed as Head of PR & Influence in its Auckland office, effective immediately.
He has over 15 years of creative PR experience, with an award-winning career spanning across agencies and in-house roles in London and Auckland.
Special is positioning the offering as a creative-led PR solution – combining consumer-orientated insights with innovative creative thinking to generate clearly measurable results.
It integrates three distinct disciplines – strategic and targeted communications and PR; influence and endorsement across the digital and physical divide; and stand-out activations and consumer experience.
CEO Tony Bradbourne says: “We have always strived for work that has talkability at its core, we believe it’s such an important part of any modern campaign’s success. So we have intentionally kept PR as an integrated service sitting alongside our strategic, creative, design and media teams.”
Grindle has worked as Associate Board Director at Cake and Associate Director at M&C Saatchi in the UK.
He was PR Lead for Virgin Atlantic’s leisure division Virgin Holidays – driving multiple award-winning campaigns before returning to New Zealand as Director of Integrated Strategy at Pead PR.
StopPress chatted to Special about why now is the right time to launch a PR venture.
Bradbourne says: “Special is going from strength-to-strength, both in New Zealand and abroad. For a long time, we’ve felt that PR could be done differently – and believe that marketing and PR work best when they’re cohesive. We hope the launch of Special PR will improve the creative out of the main agency, whilst attracting new clients and fuelling our next stage of growth.”
Grindle adds: “PR has changed a lot in the last decade – it incorporates elements of experiential marketing, content creation, media relations and digital influence. It requires a certain agency set-up to offer full service PR campaigns: and Special offers that framework. Their creative and strategy is world-class, and now they’ve got the execution to compliment it.
“Special is an agency at the top of their game – they have cleaned up at every award ceremony, and broken barriers for a New Zealand agency. It’s exciting to be able to work here in Auckland, but still have access to world-class talent and deliver PR campaigns that can transcend borders.”
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