Returns and new talent boosts Meerkats planning team and adds strong global experience

Meerkats Head of Planning Melanie Wiese has welcomed Hayley Parker back to the agency’s planning team.

Parker has rejoined Meerkats after three years in the US, where she was a senior planner at Wieden + Kennedy New York, heading up the global planning team on the fashion retailing giant Gap which recently won a Silver Lion in Cannes for the ‘Spring is Weird’ campaign.

Wiese said Parker boosts the agency’s capability in omni-channel retailing, branded UX and the importance of connecting physical and virtual branded experiences.

The agency has also added the significant experience of respected digital planner Tammy Cooksey who joined earlier this year. Cooksey brings extensive experience on brands such as Murdoch University, Brownes Dairy, MRA and the Water Corporation. With Meerkats she has gained further international experience on WelleCo, an Elle MacPherson co-owned natural supplement brand selling in upscale retailers like Harvey Nichols.

“Global planning experience is becoming pretty crucial as Perth matures into a commercial market where consumers are as sophisticated as any major city in the world, “said Wiese. “And conversely, I think Meerkats’ belief in a purpose-driven economy, activated through a new kind of deeply human insight, is helping make Perth more attractive to those planners”.

Wiese herself is an Effies and Cannes Lions winning planner, who joined Meerkats lastyear from Grey New York, where she worked as Global Strategy Lead for the Procter & Gamble global fabric care business, throughout the USA, UK, Russia, South Korea and Japan, as well as on DIRECTV and Diageo business.

She believes there’s gathering evidence that attracting world-class talent to Perth has a valuable reciprocal effect, citing Meerkats’ recent co-creation project for Youth Focus – a user experience so unique, she has been invited to present the case study at this year’s International Conference of Youth Mental Health in Montreal.

Fresh talent is also a feature of the Meerkats planning team with Hayley Read, the only WA delegate at the recent IPA Strategic Planning Course in Melbourne and the brains behind the recent Perth College ‘Gritty Beats Pretty’ campaign. And Hannah Muirhead is about to return from maternity leave. The team of five also benefits by continuing to work under the eye of Meerkats’ original global planner and co-founder, Ronnie Duncan.

Pictured above (left to right): Hayley Read, Tammy Cooksey, Melanie Wiese, Hayley Parker, Ronnie Duncan and Hannah Muirhead.