Diana Marszalek 16 May 2019 // 8:01PM GMT
PARIS — Havas Group has consolidated its US, UK and Asia Pacific PR operations under a new brand, called Red Havas.
Havas PR North America, with offices in New York City, New England, Phoenix and Pittsburgh, and Asia Pacific-based Red Agency, with offices in Australia, Singapore and the Philippines, will all carry the new brand. In addition, Red Havas has opened a new office in London and rebranded its Havas PR offices in Manchester and Edinburgh, as well as Havas PR Vietnam and Jakarta. The new brand plans to expand to Japan and South America within the next 24 months.
James Wright, global chairman of the Havas PR Global Collective, is now global CEO of Red Havas. He said the launch of Red Havas was part of the organization’s larger goal of growing its offerings and expertise across earned and owned media.
"The guiding light of PR has always been to integrate brands' or organizations' stories into the daily conversations of the media ecosystem," Wright said. "PR is one of the most powerful tools that brands can use to connect to audiences, but it's essential that it integrates seamlessly across content types and sources and operates at the pace, and in the ways, of today's consumer.
"With content, social and predictive data at the core, we've built a model that merges all of the various media sources and essentially redefines the PR capability entirely."
The regional leadership of Red Havas includes Nigel Hughes in the UK, Sarah Trombetta in Australia, Kenny Yap in Singapore, Harry Tumengkol in Indonesia, Thoa Nguyen in Vietnam and Charrise Vilchez in the Philippines.
In its announcement, Havas Group said: “As creative and media agencies face a near-daily redefinition of their identities and scopes of work in the modern media landscape, public relations agencies in particular are being completely reconstructed.
“The agencies that comprise Red Havas are employing a strategic model called ‘Merged Media’ that replicates the convergence of media consumption—blending traditional and digital publishing, content, social media and data in a way that it believes defines the future of PR as a category."
The rebranding comes alongside the group making investments in data, content and insight tools, which will include listening and predictive analytics platforms.