Red Havas announces series of new promotions and hires to expand specialist growth sectors

(Pictured L-R: Alex Erasmus, head of strategy; Candi Hindocha, account director; Jackie Crossman, executive director, Sydney; Reema Babakhan, practice head; Aiza Rusli, account director)

Australian PR, social and brand experience agency, Red Havas, has announced a series of promotions and new hires as part of an expansion across specialist growth sectors.

Following the agency’s recent rebrand to put data and creativity at its heart, Alex Erasmus, has taken the helm as national head of strategy to strengthen the agency’s strategic offering and elevate its integrated brand communication solutions for clients. Erasmus has more than a decade’s experience in PR and digital marketing, making him well placed to lead Red Havas’ research and insight teams across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and harness Havas Group’s data streams.

With the agency seeing large growth in its consumer marketing portfolio, Reema Babakhan has been appointed to the newly created role of practice head, travel, tourism, sports and leisure.

Moving to Sydney following stints at Ogilvy, Frank and Synergy in the UK, Babakhan brings international perspective and more than 15 years of experience leading integrated campaigns across consumer PR, sport sponsorship and entertainment. This includes MasterCard’s sponsorship of the Champions League and Rugby World Cup, Standard Life’s sponsorship of the British Lions and more recently, the ICC Cricket World Cup.

Bringing further breadth and depth to the team, Aiza Rusli and Candi Hindocha have joined as account directors from the Sefiani Comms Group and The IMPACT Agency respectively. Rusli’s appointment spans a variety of Red Havas’ consumer and corporate accounts while Hindocha will work across the agency’s fast-growing technology division.

Both bring dynamic leadership skillsets to their roles, Rusli’s previous client roster includes Tourism Northern Territory, EY (formerly Ernst & Young), Xero, Volt Bank and WorldRemit, while Hindocha’s experience includes Gartner, Unisys, Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and The Growth Faculty.

Says Sarah Trombetta, CEO, Red Havas: “It’s exciting to bring together more diverse minds to keep elevating our data-driven strategies and creative ambitions in growth sectors. Alex’s leadership continues to drive our culture of curiosity to go beyond the brief and bring rigour to how we solve business challenges for our clients.

“Reema‘s world-class creative lens fuels our ambitious consumer marketing team and Aiza and Candi deepen our specialist knowledge across corporate and technology practices to ensure we create meaningful impact where it matters.”