Women to Watch 2020: Renee Hyde, CHE Proximity

Renee Hyde

Managing partner
CHE Proximity
Australia

By the age of 23, Renee Hyde had a stint with Droga5 under her belt and was the youngest-ever senior account director at M&C Saatchi in Australia, where she won one of the market’s most hotly-contested pitches, for Commonwealth Bank. She became managing partner at the recently opened CHE Proximity Sydney office in 2018 following a sojourn to New York with Anomaly and Co:collective. In her post, she has “led every step of the way” as the agency grew from 20 to 400 people and racked up an amount of awards for creativity and effectiveness that is frankly discouraging—to competing agencies.

Today, at 33, Hyde is the youngest executive-team member and leads a team of more than 70 serving the agency’s largest client, Samsung. That remit covers technology, brand, data, media, creative, production and customer experience, with media investment measured in the tens of millions. With what colleagues call a balanced approach to client relationships and an expansive understanding of creativity, she has been instrumental in new business wins such as the very recent Genea IVF account, worth $2 million in annual revenue.

Hyde’s CEO describes her as “a titan of our agency, our clients and our industry”, an assessment based in part on reasons beyond her stellar client leadership. She focused on equality and inclusion “well before they were socially demanded” and established values, attitudes and behaviours that not only celebrate everyone’s contributions but make for a more cohesive team that can still function in top form even under duress, such as the pandemic.

Hyde leads the agency’s diversity council, executing a comprehensive plan that addresses gender, age, disability, and ethnicity. In addition, she serves as a mentor at The Trenches, represents CHE Proximity on the diversity-championing organisation Agency Circle, and is a marketing advisor to several female-owned startups.