HMN UK Hires Emily Fairhead-Keen as Group Head of Strategy

Havas Media Network UK has appointed Emily Fairhead-Keen as group head of strategy. Emily arrives from Wavemaker which she joined in 2012, rising to senior strategy partner and working across some of Wavemaker’s biggest accounts. Heading up a 10-person strong strategy department accessible across the business, Emily will help reimagine the strategy function with more diverse strategic thinkers to support HMN UK’s clients’ marketing and digital transformation.

She will be instrumental in developing a fully integrated business strategy across HMN and provide top-level counsel to some of the UK’s most innovative and forward-thinking brands, including BBC, Domino’s, Bumble, British Red Cross and Ocado. She will play a pivotal role in identifying new opportunities to grow client businesses and outsmart competitors through comprehensive cross-business diagnosis. Fostering greater creativity in HMN UK’s approach to solving client challenges, she will help clients become more customer-centric organisations by delivering more seamless marketing experiences.

In a 20-year career, Emily has worked across the London and Sydney markets building a diverse portfolio of award-winning strategic work across government, entertainment, FMCG and finance. She is famous for her seminal 2015 The Future of Brands is Superhuman paper which was awarded the IPA President's prize for an outstanding body of work and published in ‘What is a 21st Century Brand? New Thinking from the Next Generation of Agency Leaders’. She was Campaign Magazine’s ’40 over 40’ winner in 2022, as well as being mentor and judge for the IPA Diploma and shortlisted for the Women of Tomorrow Awards and the iList.

At Wavemaker, she led strategic output for the UK Government’s Public Health England (now Department for Health and Social Care), tackling the nation's toughest issues, such as smoking, mental health and obesity. Her work has included key behaviour change programmes such as Stoptober for smoking cessation, launching the Better Health brand and more recently an Effie finalist for Every Mind Matters for mental health. She played an integral part in winning the Australian Grand Effie for NRMA insurance’s Car Creation work and most recently, was shortlisted on Media Week’s ‘Best Use of Retail Media’ for Alpro, Danone.

Emily also established Wavemaker’s inclusive planning offering which equips teams with tools, partners and process to bake inclusivity into every plan.

In 2017 she co-founded with Camilla Bruggen and set up “Women at Wavemaker”, an entity to empower women in the advertising industry to take leadership positions. The initiative has showcased some of the industry’s most inspirational thinkers including: Yvonne Rhoden MBE, previously Detective Constable and Netball Development Community Coach at England Netball; Fiona Freund, photographer and creator of #corporatequeer and co-founder of #motherworks; and Karen Blackett OBE.

Emily joins HMN UK on 14 October.

Emily Fairhead-Keen, group head of strategy, Havas Media Network UK, said, “There is a momentum and dynamism in the business, a real desire to do amazing work. It’s an energy I’ve not seen at other agencies: entrepreneurial and agile; charismatic and down-to-earth; and brutally honest. The feeling of being a boutique agency with global backing is palpable. I am excited by Havas’ growing village of agencies as well as it’s distinct offering when it comes to both cultural insight and creative excellence. I’ve already met the team, who are absolutely brilliant, and am excited to get started and get to know the clients.”

Patrick Affleck, CEO, Havas Media Network UK & Ireland, said, “As the blurring of lines between the different marketing disciplines accelerates, strategy is the ultimate connector that can bind together a diverse range of capabilities in a seamless experience for customers. The group head of strategy will be critical for the future success of our business, as we look to reimagine the agency model, delivering new forms of value creation for us and our clients both in the short- and longer-term. Emily’s breadth of portfolio and success in media strategy speaks for itself. Her seminal work around what being superhuman will really resonate with our clients.”