About us

Leilani Abels starts the event Starry Starry Night for The Alannah Madeline Foundation, which goes on to become Australia's most successful celebrity charity gala. From good intent, good things grow and the idea of Thrive is conceived.

Thrive is born in Melbourne where the agency moves into its first office in South Yarra.

LVMH Watch & Jewellery including TAG Heuer and Dior, and National Gallery of Victoria are amongst Thrive's foundational clients. The agency becomes famous for delivering some of AU’s most successful campaigns and events.

The company diversifies to deliver corporate communications to its consumer expertise.

As the first of many campaigns in New Zealand, Thrive runs TAG Heuer's sponsorship program for the Louis Vuitton Cup and sets up an NZ satellite office.

Thrive’s National Best Practices platform launches, becoming the backbone to the accountable services Thrive offers.

Thrive pitches and wins the national Nike account in an Olympic year and redefines sports PR.

The agency launches its Media Training capabilities and brings on board a panel of AU & NZ’s best working journalists.

Thrive moves into new offices in Abbotsford, Victoria, where we still call home today.

The world's largest toy manufacturer, Mattel, seeks out Thrive to manage its global product recalls and take on its crisis comms and corporate counsel.

Thrive expands and opens its second office location, in Sydney.

Coles signs Thrive as its national consumer and local agency working with Curti Stone, managing its community partnerships and delivering major national campaigns.

Thrive sets up its creative / digital service offering. Thrive Studio is born.

In an industry first, Thrive launches Thrive360, a content production warehouse and events centre in response to a changing media landscape. It kicks off a new era as our HQ moves to Sydney, above The Grounds of Alexandria.

Twitter appoints Thrive as their first AU?NZ agency in charge of managing crisis, corporate and consumer PR. The agency goes on to manage all policy work for the next decade with AU program’s rolled out globally.

Thrive extends its social media/digital practice with the appointment of a Head of Digital and Content Producer.

The agency sees more big wins with Optus and Cisco tapping up Thrive. Thrive’s muscle in technology continues to grow with the agency’s appointment to Square and ANZ Bank soon after.

Continuing to expand, Thrive's Brisbane/Gold Coast and Auckland operations open their doors within the same week.

Industry-leading parenting policies are put in place by Thrive, extending the agency's commitment to working parents and making national headlines.

Thrive sets up West Coast services in Perth for clients including AGL, Coles and Optus.

Client ANZ Bank takes home a Gold & Silver Cannes Lion for Thrive’s work with TBWA on ‘Signs of Love’. The campaign showed support for the LGBTIQ+ community across Australia transforming Oxford St signs around the country into fabulous Mardi Gras sculptures.

Thrive responds to the Australian bushfire crisis and galvanises the industry to form the Bushfire PR Alliance. Agencies unit to commit to pro-bono work for communities affected by the devastating fires.

Another milestone in the history of Thrive as the agency exclusively signs LEGO, Airbnb, Reddit and Tinder for PR services across Australia and New Zealand and Afterpay in New Zealand.

Coming off the back of COVID and historic growth across corporate, consumer and digital, agency founder, Leilani Abels, lands the PRIA Golden Target Leader of the Year, PRovoke Media Innovator 25 Asia-Pacific 2021 and Campaign Asia Women to Watch.

Thrive launches an industry first Technology Training Academy to address a local and worldwide skills shortage in technology communications.

Thrive (finally) puts up its hand for Awards and takes home B&T & Mumbrella’s Agency of the Year in back-to-back wins.

The agency spearheads a call to government for immigration visa reform to address the AU / NZ skills crisis. This leads to the PRIA progressing a submission to government to lobby for ‘public relations’ to be moved onto the long term skills list.

Thrive elevates its key leaders and appoints Clare Basire, Snezna Kerekovic and Carol Qiu to the Executive Leadership Team across AU & NZ.

At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Thrive is part of the winning team led by Accenture Song, snatching the most prestigious award of the show, the Dan Wieden Titanium Grand Prix, for the Government of Tuvalu, ‘The First Digital Nation’. The campaign goes on to win tens of prestigious creative and PR gongs around the world.