Havas has added two creative teams to its creative power – Lily Linfor-Hurst & Emma Penz and Jonny Durgan & James Rooke. Both teams join Havas London’s creative department on a permanent basis after a brief stint of freelancing at the agency.

The four senior creatives will report directly to executive creative director, Dan Cole, and global executive creative director, Reckitt, Kate Pozzi, and will work on a variety of Havas London’s accounts, and across the agency’s pitches.

Linfor-Hurst & Penz teamed up in 2024 as freelancers. Since then, they’ve worked at Ogilvy, Mother, FCB Inferno and NCA, across a variety of clients such as Škoda, Google Pixel and Snapchat. They have over 13 years of experience between them and have worked separately at some of the industry’s top agencies including adam&eveDDB, Droga5, and BBC Creative, working on accounts like Walkers, The BBC, John Lewis, Paddy Power, P&O Cruises, Lloyds Bank and Amazon. Throughout their careers, they’ve earned recognition at Cannes Lions, D&AD, the British Arrows, Campaign Big Awards and the Clios.

Durgan & Rooke also partnered up as a creative duo while freelancing, in 2022. During that time, they’ve worked at Saatchi & Saatchi, Publicis Groupe, FCB, VCCP and Grey. Before freelancing, rooke was a creative director for six years at Karmarama (now Droga5) working on Confused.com, Auto Trader, Kenco and the British Army – where his Your Army Needs You campaign won at Cannes Lions. Durgan worked full-time at BBH, RKCR and Ogilvy and won D&AD pencils for his work with Yeo Valley at BBH and Sipsmith at Ogilvy.

Lily Linford-Hurst and Emma Penz commented, “We’re so excited to be joining Havas London. The agency’s creative collaborative spirit makes it the perfect place for us to do our best work, and we can’t wait to get stuck in.”

Jonny Durgan and James Rooke added, “We’re thrilled to join the team at Havas London. The chance to join the agency’s ambitious creative culture was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”

Mark Whelan, chairman and UK group chief creative officer, Havas London, stated,  “Lily, Emma, Jonny and James bring different shaped thinking to the agency – both as individuals and as creative teams. They’ve already made their mark on the creative department, and seeing the work in the pipeline tells of good things to come.’’

Cover image l-r: James Rooke, Jonny Durgan, Lily Linford-Hurst & Emma Penz