Lewis PR launches digital brand Lewis Pulse with hub in Singapore

The five other hubs are Barcelona, Boston, Eindhoven, London and San Francisco. 

According to Asia-Pacific senior vice-president Andy Oliver, the digital arm has been three years in the making. "We started a formal digital marketing practice (PageOne PR) in 2010 off the back of an acquisition in the US and have been building our proposition globally until we've reached this pivotal stage," he said.

The agency has aggregated its capabilities around brand strategy, social-media marketing, SEO, design, production and web teams from around the world under the new arm. In addition, Lewis Pulse has just launched social advertising and paid-search services in each of the hubs.

Clients already using the agency’s digital marketing services include Cisco, eBay, McAfee, Porsche Asia-Pacific and SAP.

While Lewis PR has always had digital capabilities, the agency saw a need to focus its resources and brand its capabilities. "From a presentation point of view, customers and clients prefer to know that we have a specialist digital arm with the necessary skills," Oliver said. "The brand is a means to formalise the investments we've made." 

The Singapore hub will be led by Sanjana Chappalli, director of digital marketing, Asia-Pacific, who joined Lewis last June. Currently the team stands at around six people, hired over the past year, but at least four more members are needed, said Oliver. 

"I need a team of 10 as soon as possible," he said. "Finding really good digital people in Asia is still a challenge. The key talent we're on the lookout for are content producers—in particular, talent capable of producing shareable visual and video content."

It is content marketing that gives PR its long-sought-for edge in digital, said Oliver. "Organisations are starting to realise that you need great content to have thriving digital channels," he said. "PR has always been good at creating content, right from the days when we've been pitching content to journalists. The nature of the news has also given PR a heritage of real-time, always-on speed, in contrast with traditional advertising, which has a legacy of campaigns that take over six months to launch."

Chris Lewis, CEO of Lewis, described the rollout of Lewis Pulse as "part of our evolution into a full-service content marketing agency, with PR at its core".

The long-term ambition for the agency, continued Oliver, is to launch the practice across all markets where Lewis is present. This, however, follows the planned establishment of a production hub in Bangalore this year and growth of the parent agency into 10 new markets. The agency is also working on further acquisitions in the digital marketing space.