Independent creative agency Argonaut has appointed industry veteran Jeff Sweat as head of PR & communications.  

Sweat, the founder of the PR consultancy Sweat + Co, wound down his company earlier this year after more than a decade of serving agencies like Argonaut, Observatory, Giant Spoon, Barkley, FlyteVu, North and more.  

The hire signals a departure from traditional agency communications. Instead of merely amplifying finished work, Sweat will bring his proprietary “How to Be Famous” methodology to Argonaut’s creative process and internal culture. 

The main idea, as Sweat puts it: “For work to be noticed, it has to be designed to be newsworthy. But most agencies bring in PR at the very end of the process, if at all.” 

Sweat wrote an op-ed piece for MediaPost a few years back on the concept of PR being part of the creative process early on and not just when it’s time to “alert the media.” 

“The right time to bring in PR is not before launch, or even before production,” he wrote at the time. “It’s before a client ever sees it. Once the client signs off on it, there’s nothing PR can change. Once you’ve narrowed down what you’re showing to your clients, show them to your PR team first. They can tell you which ideas are most likely to break through, and what tweaks will make them even stronger.” 

Sweat will be part of Argonaut’s growth team, working with strategy, creative, and brand management teams to ensure that Argonaut’s output remains culturally resonant, and that creative briefs embrace "PR-ability" as a core metric before production begins. 

"We’ve always been in pursuit of work and a culture that's impossible to ignore,” says Hunter Hindman, founder, CEO and CCO of Argonaut. “After working with Jeff, it became clear that PR isn’t the final step in that process, it’s fundamental to it. He’s the partner who can help us build that into how we think, how we create, and how we grow." 

Sweat will report to Argonaut president Katie Miller.  

Prior to forming his PR company, Sweat served at Deutsch and 72andSunny. Earlier he pioneered content marketing at Yahoo! He’s also written two novels (“Mayfly,” “Scorpion") and owns The Weller House, a boutique hotel on the North Coast of California. 

Argonaut, part of Project: Worldwide, was founded in 2013 in San Francisco and has worked with brands like Fitbit, Infiniti, Cricket Wireless and more.