Penny Burke

Penny Burke has worked in marketing and advertising for her entire career. Most recently she spent 12 years at Clemenger BBDO as Strategy Planning Director, overseeing strategic developments for major communications projects.

She holds a Bachelor of Business (Marketing), and has lectured and tutored at Melbourne Universities such as RMIT, Monash and Swinburne. She also sits on the board of Kennards Hire, a privately owned tool hire company.
Penny Burke began her own consultancy company after many years experience with a wide range of projects, large and small, in a range of sectors from traditional packaged goods and retail to services and social marketing. Her experience in Government in particular has given her an appreciation of the importance of stakeholders - how to identify and manage them in a positive way that adds to a communications project rather than disrupts it.
Using a combination of theoretical models of marketing with practical experience and sensitivity, Penny and her team are change agents, keen to explore new boundaries and horizons and find better ways to do things.
Penny Burke is an accomplished public speaker who has added value to a wide range of client conferences. Her addresses are entertaining and provocative, tailor made for each individual client. Whether she's talking about marketing, the key elements of Forced Focus thinking or the focus of her first book, Employer Branding, Penny delivers an inspiring message that challenges the status quo of current thinking.
Penny Burke has worked in the field of marketing and advertising for over 20 years. Some of her most famous ads have included Pro Hart Stainmaster Carpet (‘Oh Mister Hart, what a mess!’), Milk – Legendary Stuff (the randy milkman ‘still doing the rounds’) and Yellow Pages (‘Not Happy Jan!’) She was a Director of Australia’s largest advertising agency (Clemenger BBDO) for over eight years.
Penny is an expert in marketing, pitching and selling – as they say in the classics, she could sell ice to the Eskimos!
Organisations engage Penny for two main reasons – first, they need help understanding the ‘story’ of their organisation, their brand essence. Penny facilitates a huge number of ‘brand essence’ workshops each year, helping companies understand how to build their company ‘story’, how to align their staff with that story, and how to communicate the story to their customers.
Second, companies hire Penny to deliver a keynote either internally to their staff or as a speaker at an industry event. Penny is a marketer first and foremost, who still makes her living helping client’s market better day in and day out – so her keynotes aim to provide practical tips and suggestions from an expert who has ‘sold’ everything from yogurt to road safety, from internal workplaces to pharmaceuticals.
‘There are some speakers who can engage and entertain, but impart few if any useable insights. There are others who can impress with sheer intellect, but send you to sleep just when things should be getting interesting. Penny Burke is one of those presenters whose grasp of marketing and communications is unsurpassed and better yet has the ability to lead an audience on a journey through detail and nuance that leaves them wanting more. A confident and engaging communicator, Penny Burke can make you laugh and think at the same time.’
Finally, Penny can now add the title ‘author’ to her credentials, She has just published her first book Forced Focus – the essence of attracting and retaining the best people, which explores how to create an internal workplace brand that encourages employees to commit to the workplace.

Penny Burke was the recipient of TEC's Best New Speaker Award 2008.

Speaker Topics Include:

The three laws of marketing and how you can make them work for you
The importance of functional AND emotional sell (‘Why condoms don’t come in size SMALL!’
The impact of the skills shortage on employment
How to pitch and win every time
The seven secrets of Australia’s best marketers
How to lead and inspire employees to commit
The seven critical success factors in social marketing
How marketing can help you attract and retain the best people
What do different generations want from their workplace and how to give it to them!
- The seven secrets of researching your customers