Robbie Brammall leaves Mona: ‘Eight years in a cult is enough’

Robbie Brammall, Mona’s marketing and communications director and former creative director at Adland, has left it to take what is arguably the best marketing job in Australia – running 30 creatively driven brands for Tasmanian gambler David Walsh.

These brands include the Museum of Old and New Art, the Mofo Festival, the Moo Brew Brewery, three wineries, four restaurants, eight bars, a fleet of ferries with fiberglass animals on the seats, a recording studio with an original Abbey Road mixer, a luxury hotel, and several e-commerce companies.

“Eight years is officially nonsense enough,” Brammall said. “We had a good chat about Mona’s future and, as always, David wants to experiment, so it seems like the right time to give someone else a chance.”

During his tenure, Brammall helped shape Mona’s internal agency and played a key role in steering the company through expansion, the Covid pandemic and subsequent recovery driven by tourism and e-commerce.

“I’m leaving behind one of the most talented and award-winning marketing and communications teams in the country, so Mona is in great hands. Better hands.

Mona CEO Patrick Kelly said the group was lucky to have Robbie at Mona.

“He leaves behind both commercial success and incredible creativity. We can’t wait to see what he does next.”

Brammall’s most important achievements at Mona include launching an airline and giving all the seats to the Pentecostal Christians of Wollongong, inventing a beer roulette machine that pays out occasional warm Fosters, having no complaints about the festival thanks to placing a complaints box 100 meters from the museum, commemorating the last three employees of Video City Tasmania with cans of similarly rare beer, smuggling Torana into a swimming pool in Bondi, creating a billboard with a direct phone number to The Whitehouse, revamping Mona’s mostly joke website, and creating a virtue out of Mona’s craziest one-star reviews that checked out everything from yodeling and exotic cuttlefish to asthma attacks.

As for what’s next, Brammall said it’s time to take some cleansing, deep breaths.

“I haven’t had a proper vacation in eight years, so I’m taking a break and then coming back to something that I hope will be as fun and challenging as Mona.

“I’m not sure if it will be more about marketing or communications. I’ll cast the net and have some fun. If you feel like planning something, email me at my new email address.”

Brammall, who started in advertising as a copywriter, is a former creative director at DDB Melbourne, Campaign Palace, Saatchi & Saatchi and George Patterson Y&R.

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