About Trevor

I kicked off my professional career in journalism. I worked for a couple of regional Victorian newspapers as a reporter (with some editing stints) before heading to Melbourne – “the Big Smoke” – to try and break into the public relations industry.

I joined PPR, Australia’s biggest independent PR network at the time, and quickly adapted to the consulting environment.

More PR senior consulting gigs followed – with Grey Buchan (now WE Communications), The Rowland Company, and Porter Novelli – before I got the entrepreneurial bug and struck out on my own.

In 1998, I got together with a former colleague (Richard Chapman) to form a new agency called Spark Communications.

Over the course of eight years, Richard and I built the company into one of Australia’s leading consumer brand PR agencies, eventually selling the business to Harold Mitchell’s Mitchell Communication Group.

Spark made an immediate impact. By focusing on strategic consumer brand communications when major agencies at the time were heavily invested in the corporate arena and only paid lip service to the marketing side of PR, Spark’s message to major brand marketers quickly paid off.

Spark evolved quickly. We pioneered the concept of experiential-based PR when, in 1999, we established a national network of ‘Street Teams’ for brands requiring guerrilla marketing tactics. We later rolled this service into a stand-alone brand experience agency called Ignition Marketing. 

Experiential-based PR is common today but was rare back in the early 2000s; the Spark/Ignition combination worked together on a great number of projects before Richard and I sold our stakes in the business some years later to a third equity partner.

Over the journey, Spark boasted an unparalleled client list that included a veritable ‘who’s who’ of blue-chip brands including:

We worked with sports properties and organisations such as F1 Grand Prix (for five years), Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, 2007 World Swimming Championships, NRL State of Origin, Victorian Racing Club, Athletics Australia, Hockey Australia, the Mark Webber Challenge and the AFL Players’ Association (AFLPA).

Spark also managed PR programs for a solid portfolio of tech startups and fast-growth B2B enterprises. Our roster included Multi-Channel Network (Foxtel) and Commander Communications, as well as community-based nonprofit organisations such as Banksia Environmental Foundation, Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation (OCRF) and the Clown Doctors.

My role at Spark cut across the spectrum of duties including new business development, account direction and strategic advisory for clients, staff training and mentoring, as well as marketing of the business.

One of my most pleasing accomplishments was the role I played in helping build a vibrant and respectful ‘can-do’ working environment. Some of our long-standing team members have gone on to senior positions at Jetstar, Australia Post, NAB, Nike, L’Oreal and the AFL.

At its peak, Spark employed up to 30 people across offices in Melbourne and Sydney, as well approximately 50 casual staff, through Ignition Marketing.

After leaving Spark in 2008, I took the opportunity to dive more deeply into the world of social media, becoming one of the country’s first social media consultants in the process. In hindsight, I was probably a bit too early in this regard 🙂

A year later, I joined forces with a former client from CUB, David Park, and we established a boutique communications firm called parkyoung. We later merged this business with the Melbourne office of Edelman, the world’s biggest PR firm.

In my role as Director, Strategy & Innovation at Edelman, I helped to re-energise Melbourne’s consumer brand service offering, as well as worked on strategy planning and new business development across both Melbourne and Sydney offices. 

I left Edelman after two years to explore other options outside of a traditional agency structure.

In essence, I became a ‘solopreneur’ with a portfolio of roles.

In 2013, I released my first book through Wiley – microDOMINATION: How to Leverage Social Media and Content Marketing to Build a Mini-business Empire Around Your Personal Brand.

Today, I provide PR and content marketing consulting services to fast-growth companies and progressive nonprofit organisations, including professional member-based associations.

I still speak professionally, and as well as coach and mentor professional experts and emerging business and community thought leaders.

I continue to write books (my latest being Content Marketing for PR), plus I produce and host a weekly podcast called Reputation Revolution.

I am an experienced and passionate educator and have in the past guest lectured at Monash University and RMIT in Melbourne, as well as taught PR subjects at Box Hill Institute and Swinburne.

I am a former member of Swinburne’s PR industry advisory panel, the brand advisory group for The Reach Foundation, and the sponsorship, media and marketing committee for Athletics Australia. I recently spent several years sitting on the Marketing & Development Committee for Melbourne Youth Orchestras.