Penny Burke

Penny Burke is an award winning marketer, facilitator and author of ‘Forced Focus – The essence of attracting and retaining the best people. She is the Director of Essence and the strategic mind behind many of the longest living, most effective television advertisements the country has seen.

She has worked in marketing and advertising in Melbourne, Sydney and London for all her 25 years in the workforce. Prior to starting Essence Communications, Penny spent 12 years at Clemenger BBDO as Strategy Planning Director, overseeing strategic developments for major communications projects. She holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing), and has lectured and tutored at Melbourne Universities such as RMIT, Monash and Swinburne.

Penny Burke sits on the board of Kennards Hire, a privately owned tool hire company, and is a full member of the Australian Market & Social Research Society (AMSRS).

More about Penny Burke:

Penny began the Essence consultancy after many years experience with a wide range of projects, large and small, in a range of sectors from traditional packaged goods and retail to services and social marketing. Her experience in Government in particular has given her an appreciation of the importance of stakeholders – how to identify and manage them in a positive way that adds to a communications project rather than disrupts it.

Combining theoretical models of marketing with practical experience and sensitivity, Penny conducts many focus groups with various demographics each year, and is keenly aware of the drivers of segment stereotypes.

Penny also facilitates a large number of workshops and strategy meetings for a range of clients, and has a particular skill in getting agreement and forward direction from disparate members of a team.

Penny and her team are change agents, keen to explore new boundaries and horizons and find better ways to do things. They bring fresh eyes, intuition and grounded thought to a scenario. In identifying the key issues logically and debating them articulately, they’ll help you develop a way forward and form a plan of action encompassing key stakeholders.

Penny Burke speaks about:

How to create a more engaging employer brand – a one day workshop to help you attract an ‘unfair share’ of the top talent in your industry. Penny will help you identify strategies to retain staff, manage generational clashes within the workplace and define your workplace brand.