Barnado’s is to draft in Suzanne Heaney as its advertising and
communications head.
Heaney joins the children’s charity at the end of November to take up
the newly-created role which has merged the top PR and advertising roles
at the charity into one.
She moves from Royal Mail, where she was marketing manager responsible
for customer satisfaction PR and internal and external
communications.
She will take control of a pounds 3 million budget and a 40-strong
department which covers internal and external communications, including
the charity’s offices in the regions, as well as the advertising and
creative departments.
Heaney joins the charity as it is in the process of rebranding and
raising public awareness of its work through a new advertising campaign.
Part of her brief will be to continue overseeing the process and to work
alongside Barnado’s retained PR agency the Forster Company and
advertising agency BBH.
She said: ’There is a lot to do in terms of upping Barnado’s image and,
in a more general communications sense, in terms of influencing
policy.’
Communications director Andrew Nebel, to whom the role reports, created
the post in July this year after then head of PR Leon Choi announced his
departure and with the head of advertising post still vacant from
Phillipa Stewart’s departure in April. It is the first time advertising
and communications have come under the control of one person since the
departure of John Grounds for Action Research for Children in 1998.
