Former Campaign Palace, Sydney MD Lindsay Evans lured to president role at TBWA\UK Group

Lindsey Evans, the much-lauded former managing director of The Campaign Palace, Sydney and founding partner of the award-winning creative hot shop Happy Soldiers has been lured to the role of president of TBWA\UK Group.

Joining the newly appointed chairman and chief creative officer of TBWA\UK Peter Souter, Evans is tasked with driving the growth of the agency and improving creative output.

She comes to TBWA after a stint client side as GM marketing with one of her long term clients, Pacific Brands, where she was responsible for a portfolio of brands including Bonds, a top ten Australian brand with acclaimed creative work including The Birthday Project.

Evans is credited with reviving one of Australia’s most awarded and respected advertising agencies, The Campaign Palace when she joined as MD of the Sydney shop in 2005. The agency doubled the size of its team and tripled its profits within two years through a drive in creativity, introducing digital and channel planning and new business. She left The Campaign Palace in 2009 to become one of the founding partners of Happy Soldiers – which, in just two years, became Australia’s most creatively awarded independent agency in recent history. Evans sat on the board of The Communications Council, Australia’s marketing communications body.

For Evans this is something of a homecoming having spent five years as managing director of New York based creative shop Weiss Stagliano Partners – joining when it was acquired by TBWA in 2001 – before moving on to become MD of its branding agency TBWA\Brand Architecture International, then on to Sydney as a managing partner of Whybin Lawrence TBWA. Evans began her career in the UK, as a graduate trainee with Cogent.

Says Evans: “I’m both humbled and exhilarated by the challenge of taking TBWA\London to its next level, and to do so with a creative legend like Peter. It’s a perfect storm.”

Says Perry Valkenburg, president of TBWA\Europe: “We simply got lucky with Lindsey Evans. She is British but worked most of her career in the USA and Australia. Strong strategic skills, digital native and she worked at both sides of the table for the best agencies and world-class brands. Above all she knows our culture and will be at home from day one. The amazing new hires of Peter Souter are, in combination with the young talent that scored so many wins recently, in my opinion the best team in town.”

Evan’s appointment comes as outgoing TBWA\UK group president, Robert Harwood Matthews, moves to take up the position of President of TBWA\Chiat Day, New York.