Andy Murphy, principal and cofounder of Boston tech shop Davies Murphy Group, has been named U.S. PR head at global communications agency Lewis.
Murphy cofounded Davies Murphy Group in 1998 and served as the agency’s principal for more than 15 years. DMG, which also held offices in the U.K. and Germany, was acquired by Lewis in 2013 and fully assimilated into the agency in late 2015
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Murphy was a journalist prior to entering the PR field.
As U.S. PR head, Murphy will oversee Lewis’ U.S. PR operations and will coordinate PR efforts across the agency’s four U.S. offices, as well as strengthen its integration with the agency’s digital marketing services unit, Lewis Pulse.
Speaking on the U.S. leadership team expansion, Lewis U.S. executive VP Morgan McLintic told O’Dwyer’s that Murphy’s skillset and experience are “exactly what we want at the core of our PR practice.”
“Andy is a story teller. Stemming from his days in journalism, he can work with a brand and distill their complex messaging down into a succinct compelling narrative. That’s a one-in-a-thousand skill to do it well,” McLintic told O’Dwyer’s. “Andy is well known and respected for his in-the-trenches leadership style. That puts him in a great position to unify the practice across each of our offices, and to integrate with our digital marketing, advertising, creative and research teams. Anyone who has tried to deliver an integrated marketing campaign will know how hard it is. That’s our value as an agency, and requires people like Andy to make it happen.”
Lewis also announced that Michael Brito, who in March was named senior VP of the agency’s Pulse operation, has also been named senior VP San Francisco and U.S. head of digital marketing. Brito, who previously led social marketing at W20 Group, will now be responsible for leading both the digital marketing and PR divisions at Lewis’ U.S. headquarters.
San Francisco-based Lewis, which was founded in 1995 and holds 27 offices worldwide, is one of O’Dwyer’s top ranked firms. The agency charted growth of nearly 12 percent in 2015 to account for nearly $69 million in net fees, according to O’Dwyer’s 2016 ranking of PR firms.
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