Deloitte Digital Creative hires Colenso star

AUCKLAND, Thursday: Deloitte Digital Creative NZ has announced its hiring of Abbi Barker as programme director. She’s ex Ogilvy NZ and Colenso BBDO, and most recently spent three years in London at Vice magazine’s creative division, Virtue.

She then headed up brand experience and innovation at Rehab London, working on projects for Nike, Warner Media, PepsiCo and Estée Lauder.

Deloitte Digital Creative MD Ahmad Salim (also ex Colenso) said: “Abby joins the growing team to help shape the way we deliver our new holistic creative strategy process and integrate with the consultancy’s other professional services. 

“Abbi stands out as one of the best programme leads I’ve ever worked with because she’s truly passionate about ideas and the nuances that can make or break them.

“Abbi is an absolute juggernaut of positive vibes.”

“She can make incredibly challenging projects appear easy, brings great energy to every meeting, and runs things with military grade precision. I’m stoked to be working with her again.”

In her time at Colenso, Barker led the delivery of The Pedigree Child Replacement Programme, and Pedigree SelfieSTIX. These two pieces of work won many of awards for creativity and effectiveness around the world and ranked in the top 10 of the WARC 100 in both 2018 and 2019, helping Pedigree top the world FMCG brand rankings.

Auckland-based Deloitte Digital Creative AUNZ chief creative officer Dan Wright said: “Abbi is an absolute juggernaut of positive vibes. And it’s not just that she makes you feel like everything’s going to be great, but she also then makes damn sure everything is great.

“She’s a lover of creativity and a grandmaster of incredibly challenging projects. We are super-lucky she has chosen us.”

Barker said: “I’m really thrilled to be working with the team at Deloitte Creative. Some of my most memorable career highlights are with Ahmad and Dan already and joining a new creative offering that can actually deliver meaningful transformation with Deloitte’s capability and their creative leadership, is beyond exciting.”