Pitch, the employee-owned agency for brands that want to win in culture, has today announced two new senior hires to its leadership team with Deborah Villiers joining as Director of PR and Sandy Doran as Head of Strategy.
After a 15-year stint at MHP Group, most recently as Senior Director at Mischief, Deborah Villiers takes over the helm of Pitch’s PR division. Villiers 20-year career in consumer PR has seen her lead teams to deliver award-winning creative campaigns for brands including the LEGO Group, ECB, Just Eat, Ocado Retail, Team GB, Avanti West Coast, Klarna, American Express and TalkTalk.
Deborah Villiers, Director of PR, said: “Its noisy out there and the brands that cut through will be the ones who can connect with an audience over something they truly care about. When it comes to having a deep understanding of some of the nation’s biggest passions and fandoms, the team at Pitch are simply the best in the business. I can’t wait to work alongside a stellar leadership team to take our creative campaign credentials to the next level and help even more brands cut through in culture.”
Sandy Doran joins Pitch as its new Head of Strategy after 9 years as MullenLowe’s Global Strategy Director where she worked across Unilever brands, winning Effie and WARC awards for Persil’s Dirt is Good brand platform, as well as Bupa’s ‘Is it Normal?’ mental health campaign and the ‘This is Health’ rebrand. She has also led strategy work for Aptamil and Cow & Gate, CRM for Danone and the IPA awarded, ‘The Truth Project’. Prior to that she held roles at ITV and The Brooklyn Brothers.
Sandy Doran, Head of Strategy, commented: “As marketing budgets shift more towards earned and social media, I think it’s the perfect time to offer clients the combination of rigorous big brand strategic thinking with the immediacy and cultural instinct that comes through everyday collaboration with our brilliant PR and social teams. It’s exciting to see how the entrepreneurial spirit of Pitch fuels new insight and creativity at a brand level and lets us tackle all sorts of business challenges in fresh, culture-winning ways.”
The two senior hires come off the back of a strong 2024 for Pitch, during which the employee-owned agency celebrated new business wins with Molson Coors, Tinder, Les Mills, Step One and MiXR, resulting in double digit revenue growth. These consumer brand wins have bolstered an already impressive client roster which includes ASICS, Beats by Dre, EE, Red Bull, NatWest and Stonegate Group.
While Pitch continues to grow and develop its consumer and lifestyle credentials, it maintains a strong foothold in sport, recently winning 5 campaign awards at the UK Sponsorship Awards. Whilst the agency’s founder and CEO, Henry Chappell, was recently named as the leading sport’s agency professional for the second year running in PR Week’s 2025 Power Book.
Pitch’s Managing Director, Chris Allen, said: “2024 was the agency’s most successful yet, but we can’t rest on our laurels. The industry is more competitive than ever, which means we need to continue to recruit the best possible talent. Debs has exceptional big brand consumer PR experience, and her ambition and vision for taking our PR business to the next level is very exciting. In Sandy we’ve hired one the industry’s leading strategists who can apply her deep understanding of audience and brand strategy to support our drive to deliver stand-out work that helps our clients to win in culture. We’re delighted to have them both as part of the agency’s senior leadership team.”
https://www.prweek.co.uk/article/1916072/ex-mhp-group-senior-director-joins-pitch
