Radioactive PR has appointed the former head of external communications for GoCompare as its managing director – and, in a surprise swoop, also appointed an exited agency co-founder as managing director to parent company Radioactive Group to ramp up its service offering.
In a video shared in early February and viewed more than 6,000 times, Radioactive PR founder Rich Leigh invited ‘entrepreneurial leaders’ to apply to become the agency’s first managing director, to keep the agency ‘growing, profitable and having fun’.
The agency was inundated with talent—so much so that an additional role has been created.
Anders Nilsson has been named as the managing director of Radioactive PR, as announced in this company blog: radioactivepr.com/mds.
Richard Leonard joins the company in its first parent company hire, named as the managing director of the Radioactive Group.
Nilsson spent eleven years at GoCompare where he led product, brand and financial PR, investor relations, public affairs, social media, SEO, and content. Having started his career at Chepstow-based tech PR firm Cohesive, he returned to agency life full-time in 2020 by setting up communications consultancy Feral, working with a wide variety of clients in the financial services, crypto, energy, fintech, motoring and charity sectors.
With more than twenty years of experience, Leonard joins the Radioactive Group to support the development of current companies and lead its expansion into other service offerings.
Leonard co-founded integrated comms agency Brazil at the age of 26, building a client portfolio that included 118 118, Honda, Dixons Group, AXA, Swiftcover and GfK NOP before exiting eight years later. Since exiting, Leonard has been the head of PR for Three Mobile, and worked closely with Honda Motor Europe and Honda UK, managing major briefs across events, video, media relations, CSR and more.
Nilsson will take over the day-to-day management of the PR business and team, working closely with head of client services Angharad Planells and head of new business Jade Beddington.
Leonard will work closely with Nilsson, Leigh and Radioactive Talent managing director Will Roberts to finetune, develop and launch service offerings, having handled significant budgets across the marketing mix.
Rich Leigh becomes the Group CEO and will direct all company development and expansion, while maintaining an active role in creative, marketing and new business functions.
Leigh said, “I was blown away by the talent and experience of the people I spoke to, but when it came down to it, Anders and Richard were stand-out.. The more we talked and discussed our ambition, the more I saw this being the catalyst for something truly special.
“This is a real growing-up point for us as an organisation. I’m proud to have built something that can attract this level of talent and can’t wait to kick-on from here.”
Nilsson said, “Radioactive has a well-deserved reputation thanks to the work the team develops, which is creative, credible, and consistently achieves results for clients. So, when Rich spoke to me about this role I had to give this opportunity my full attention.
“An agency like Radioactive is a dream for any client. It combines experience, imagination, drive, and accountability, which results in measurable outcomes that everyone at the client’s organisation ‘gets’. Having spent a long time as ‘the client’, I know that this is hard to come by. I’m looking forward to working with the team to grow the agency and set the bar for the sort of work we do.”
Leonard said, “Over the last ten years I’ve been fortunate enough to have had several conversations about teaming up with someone else, but never quite found the right fit. Within an hour of talking to Rich I knew there was a brilliant opportunity here, a hunch further sealed within a few minutes of meeting Anders and Will. I’m over the moon to bring a bit of silver to this young and extremely talented team, and can’t wait to see what we can all achieve together.”
