Former TBWA head of social + content strategy Kent Pearson joins GROUND as managing partner

Award-winning integrated social agency GROUND has today launched an evolved business under new leadership with the arrival of social leader and former TBWA Sydney head of social and content strategy Kent Pearson.

Over the past five years, GROUND has firmly established itself as a creator of culture, having partnered with the likes of Tinder, Activision, Priceline, LinkedIn, Oatly, Knobby and Sennheiser.

The agency’s former leader Colin Fairley is moving back to the UK for personal reasons.

Under the new offering led by Pearson, GROUND will operate as a full-service digital and social media marketing agency with a mission to help brands harness content to break new ground culturally and commercially.

Over the last three and a half years Pearson has spearheaded the growth of TBWA’s social offering and team from a sole social media manager to a team of over ten that services the social and content for clients including Amazon, Hort Innovation, CUB, Mastercard, Optus, Allianz, MJ Bale, Vicinity and mycar. The growth saw Pearson receive TBWA’s ‘Midas Touch’ award in 2022, as well as numerous other local and global accolades.

Kent’s 15 year career has spanned strategy roles across brand, comms, social, content and even co-creating a TV drama for MTV.

Says Pearson: “I’m excited to be leading GROUND at a time when Australians are spending more time online than ever, but it’s never been more challenging for brands to make and break new GROUND. The business will take a strategy-first approach to content that delivers measurable and attributable impact right through the funnel.

“We believe social has the unique power to be the barometer of an idea – it should also be the lowest risk investment in an idea. With an ear to the GROUND, we’re always listening, reacting, posting, iterating to find what sticks and scale the cultural impact of what works. Then converting engaged audiences into loyal customers and social advocates. With our end-to-end expertise and agile ways of working, we can uniquely deliver social results at the speed of today’s social change.”

Says Judi Hausmann, chairman, The Haus: “Since launching my own business 33 years ago, I’ve always believed in backing and guiding talented people and have really enjoyed sharing the journey with the agencies that I’ve co-founded in recent years – Banter, Illuminate, humann and Health Haus. It’s truly exciting to have someone of Kent’s calibre to lead GROUND into the future.”

Say hello at hello@groundagency.com