Manchester-based, Campfire, has welcomed two new hires to its senior leadership team, as the agency transitions from social media and TikTok specialists to social-first digital performance agency.

Vic McKevitt-Smith joins as Managing Partner, from Dentsu X where she was Performance MD. She will head-up Campfire’s performance arm, driving new business, developing market-leading insight tools, and establishing its social-first performance methodology.

Kate Roberts joins from Beauty Bay as Account Director and will take charge of key accounts including The INKEY List, St.Tropez and Revolution Beauty.

CEO Joe Gradwell said: “These two appointments represent a huge milestone for Campfire. Since we formed in 2019 we’ve made sure our clients succeeded on TikTok and across the social media mix. But we’ve also understood the power of harnessing emerging trends and what this can do for wider performance channels. With Vic and Kate on board, we’re now in a position to deliver on our vision for the next stage of Campfire.”

Vic brings with her 14 years of network agency experience. She started her career at MediaVest, before heading up SEO at Carat and leading iProspect’s performance channels across Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Dublin. She joins Campfire after 10 months as Performance MD at Dentsu X.

CCO Alex Brown said: “Vic is the perfect blend of seniority and experience. But she also fully understands the culture we’ve built at Campfire. We couldn’t ask for a better person to complete the picture for us. Our evolution from a social media agency to a social-first digital performance agency plays on our existing strengths around creative-led social media campaigns, human insight and our collaborative culture.

“Vic’s experience means she’s the ideal person to enable our clients to understand the value of our approach to performance marketing. But she isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty too. She’s immediately started with the development of Spark – our proprietary keyword mining and trend monitoring tool. She’s also re-organised our team structure and implemented training plans for our existing teams. All in six weeks of being here. Her impact on the future of our agency is likely to be immeasurable.”

Vic said: “The potential for this role is huge. It’s been impossible not to see the impact that Joe, Alex and the rest of the Campfire team have had since 2019. For me, after 14 years at the same network agency, I’m ready to be part of something new. And the unique way Campfire approaches performance is something I’m already proud of.

“With a smaller, more agile agency model you get to really focus on the people and skills within it. You also get that cross-pollination of skills. The Campfire team consists of multi-talented and multi-skilled people that work on all channels. With that comes a real opportunity to grow and deliver market-leading work for our clients. It’s an exciting place to be for me, but also for our existing and new clients.”

Kate joins Campfire after four years as a Key Account Manager at Beauty Bay. Coming from previous roles in digital marketing, she worked alongside Vic at iProspect for two years, where she led the Social Media department after her time at ao.com leading the growth and strategy of the Social team. She takes over from Sophie Angell who has been promoted to Business Director.

Alex said: “Due to our expansion across beauty, we knew that Kate would be the ideal person to lead the accounts team at Campfire. Her experience at Beauty Bay means she’s well versed in dealing with multiple brands and relationships simultaneously.

“From our very first meeting we knew instantly she would fit with our culture too, which is always a key component for us. Kate is the next evolution of the Account Director role. She’ll be tasked with making the accounts team even more robust and adding that rigour that you only get from a decade in the industry.”

Kate said: “It’s incredibly exciting to come into a business that inherently understands how important social is. That understands trends and the importance of getting ahead of them. Right now, there’s a huge buzz around getting on things first. All businesses want to do it, but they don’t know how. This agency knows how.

“I was really attracted by the culture and the ethos at Campfire. Coming back to the agency world, I had the desire to break away from the traditional corporate agency style and come into a place that nurtures the right people to create great content. This is it.”