Learmouth will found Teamspirit Corporate & Business, which will offer ‘strategic advice, stakeholder mapping and relations, media relations, risk assessment and crisis and issues management'.
Fifty-strong Teamspirit is part of the Chime Communications group and its PR unit is two years old. It focuses on consumer PR and wanted to extend its remit
in order to compete with agencies such as Lansons Communications, Penrose Financial and Polhill Communications.
Learmouth has a threemonth notice period to see out before moving to the new role. He said one of his first priorities in the new job would be hiring a team.
‘I have nothing but good things to say about Hanover, but I have been thinking about setting up my own agency for over a year now, and the chance to do so under the umbrella of Chime Communications was too good a chance to miss,' he added.
Learmouth joined Hanover as business development partner from City agency WMC three years ago (PRWeek, 11 March 2005). In addition to overseeing ‘company-wide business development activity', Learmouth was responsible for Hanover's professional and financial services team, with clients including Nationwide, Mizuho and Celerant. Before that he worked at Lawson Dodd in a corporate role. He joins the Teamspirit group board.
‘This was the natural next step for Teamspirit and I am delighted we can now offer PR targeting both corporate and consumer audiences,' said Teamspirit chief executive Joanne Parker.
Current Teamspirit clients include Scottish Widows, Qatar Financial Centre, ICAEW, Prudential and Aegon Asset Management.
Learmouth's current agency, Hanover, made headlines last year when it was drafted in to run a UK press office for the family of missing toddler Madeleine McCann (PRWeek, 20 September 2007). The brief ended after two months (PRWeek, 21 November 2007). ain article text here. You may paste from Word by using the 3rd icon in on the 2nd row.
