LONDON — Former travel PR agency leader Jonathan Williams has set up a new venture to offer international freelance consultant support to corporate, healthcare and consumer clients.

Rosely Group already has a cohort of 25 senior freelance PR professionals on its books. Williams leads the consumer division, while the healthcare division is led by former Ketchum UK health managing director Con Franklin, who left the Omnicom firm last year, and the corporate division is led by former journalist, press officer and corporate content specialist Liam Thompson (UK) and longtime technology and consumer PR freelancer Jenny Volanakis (US). 

The remote-first agency is working with clients globally, primarily from London, The Hague and New York, with additional consultants so far based across Europe, in the Middle East and North Africa, and Asia. launch clients include finance firms Apex Group, Pollinate Global and Oanda, as well as Innova Health Care and luxury self-catering holiday company Rural Retreats.

Williams (pictured) was the co-founder of travel and lifestyle PR agency Peel+Williams, which he set up in 2016 with Kathryn Peel before exiting last year. In the meantime, he has launched the Briefly app to give small businesses access to PR agency services without the cost, and Start PR, to connect clients with individual freelance PR support.

He told PRovoke Media: “After I started Briefly, some users needed more help, so I found freelancers for them, and that led to me setting up Start PR. We then took on clients who needed more than one freelancer and started building teams to deliver projects for clients, and realised we were back to creating an agency.

“The idea of Rosely is to create bespoke teams for clients and to be extremely agile, so when their needs change, the team can change. All our clients have one thing in common: they need representation in multiple countries and we can deliver that by using highly experienced freelance consultants around the world who are at the top of their game.”

Williams said the needs of the freelancers on his team were as important as client requirements: “Freelancers are freelance for a reason, whether it’s better quality of life, family time or travel, so our ambition is to make things even better and easier for them, with great clients, doing work they can be passionate about and are proud of.”

He added that the agency had already expanded its services beyond PR into social media and SEO, and was looking at moving into advertising: “We’re looking at becoming an agile one-stop-shop for communications for our clients.”