INDUSTRY PROFILES

I started Thrive when I was 24 in Melbourne with a goal to raise the bar with PR accountability and ROI in our industry. Our clients were LVMH Watch & Jewellery, Melbourne Racing Club, Reece Group and City of Melbourne, and we started a celebrity charity gala called Starry Starry Night for The Alannah & Madeline Foundation which led to us becoming one of the most recognised agencies in that market. Pitching and winning the Nike account in 2004 was the impetus for us to set up shop in Sydney and soon after, we won the national account for Coles Supermarkets.

That was almost a decade ago and since then the agency has gone from strength to strength. We now have five offices and fifty staff based in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Auckland.

My role as Managing Director is hands on supporting with strategy and creative for our clients. I also drive the evolution of our services and the agency’s strategic direction. I spend a lot of time developing the team and looking at how we create and inspire leaders at all levels. When I started Thrive I chose our name deliberately for its definition: "To grow vigorously, flourish and be successful." It's what I strive to deliver to my team and Thrive's clients every day. Thrive celebrates eighteen years in business this year and we will deliver our most successful year to date with an incredible portfolio of clients.

As a large independent agency, we combine the “best of both worlds” when it come to attributes of the multinational agencies and the boutique agencies.
We are specialising in "Corpsumer" PR...that is bringing together the right combination of new age corporate and consumer PR work. Whether it’s engaging major enterprise, SMBs or local/communities, our clients love how we combine logic and magic to the way we build campaigns.

Our digital capabilities sit within a fully integrated PR service model and that has allowed us to continue to grow our clients, push the boundaries with them and introduce new communications methods. We have always been famous for earned media - we have hundreds of media contacts - but being independent means we can innovate, take risks, try new things and make investments to ensure we are ahead of the game. An example of this is thrive360, a content production warehouse that we custom built in Sydney six years ago to meet the changing demands of the media industry and to deliver more to clients in the owned media space. It's a stand-out resource for our clients to develop low cost, fast turnaround content and to host our own events.

Our main categories of expertise include technology, food/drink, sport & entertainment, retail, education, home and design, finance, travel and tourism.

Every office has a diverse portfolio that plays to that team's strengths and we collaborate across offices to best service client needs. Some current clients led by office include Melbourne with ANZ Group, Coles Local, Spotlight Group, AGL, Porter Davis and Swimming Australia, for Sydney it's Cisco, Optus, Twitter, ASUS and Bauer Media, for Brisbane it's Expedia Group (LPS), Triumph and Cbus Property, and in Auckland it's brands like Brother.

Like many industries, the PR skills shortage is a challenge and the new VISA requirements haven’t helped us. At Thrive, we have invested in our programs to navigate and nurture great talent whether that's through working parents programs with industry-first full paid leave policies, flexi-time for staff, international discovery opportunities, or training programs to build resilience and self leadership skills.

It's a challenge to keep up with new technologies to advance your agency and your team's capabilities however again, we navigate this by being early adopters at Thrive, and embracing new technologies and tools. We were among the first to introduce MACs across our whole business ten years ago, every team member has a laptop, we have been working on software collaboration tools for a long time, and we've just introduced Cisco Sparkboards (teleconferencing digital whiteboards that can link more than 20 locations into the one meeting).

The people. That's so "PR"! It's the relationships that I love the most. Some of my closest friends are clients, media, suppliers and Thrivers whom we've worked with for almost two decades.

I love the diversity of what we do at Thrive too. One day I could be working on a major issue and counselling a CEO, then the next day I could be in a creative brainstorm hearing cracking ideas from our young guns. I love that we take a “no limits” approach.

The loss of industry talent due to some consultants (not at Thrive) working in an environment where late nights are the norm. Nothing disappoints me more than hearing a candidate talk about leaving PR because of the hours. We all know that there are periods of 'over and aboves' when you work in PR - however it's very unusual at Thrive for team members to be at the office past 6pm. If you are managing team capacity and client scoping well, then you shouldn't have that ongoing issue in your agency.

The Thrive team.

A key part of our work is issues mitigation so it's our job to avoid disasters where possible! There's nothing that comes to mind, but there have certainly been close calls over the years.

We have ambitious plans for Thrive. We will continue to evolve our services and innovate with technologies. We will work on the growth of all locations especially newer markets like Queensland and Auckland, and we will continue to invest in our team to ensure they're growing and able to deliver best-in-class campaigns.

I think Thrive will have a second international location but most importantly, we will remain fiercely independent, family-run and female-led.

Politics. Julie Bishop stole my job! I wanted to be Australia's first female Foreign Affairs Minister when I was at school. I feel very passionately about gender equality and childcare access, and I'd love to use my PR skills to influence more positive outcomes in these areas.

@leilaniabels

@thrivepr @thrive360