Robbie Brammall has announced his departure from Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) after eight years as its director of marketing and communications.
The role saw him run 30 creatively motivated brands for art collector David Walsh, including the Museum of Old and New Art, Mofo festival, Moo Brew brewery, three wineries, four restaurants, eight bars, a fleet of ferries with fibreglass animals for seats, a recording studio with the original mixing desk from Abbey Road, a luxury hotel, and several eComm businesses.
“Eight years is officially enough nonsense. We had a good chat about Mona’s future, and as usual, David wants to experiment, so it feels like the right time to give someone else a crack,” Brammall said.
During his tenure, Brammall helped shape Mona’s in-house agency and was instrumental in steering the business through expansion, Covid, and a subsequent tourism and eCommerce-led recovery.
“I’m leaving behind one of the most talented and awarded marketing and comms teams in the country, so Mona’s in great hands. Better hands,” Brammall added.
Mona CEO Patrick Kelly said: “We’ve been so lucky to have Robbie at Mona. He leaves a legacy of both commercial success and amazing creativity. We’re excited to see what he does next.”
Highlights of Brammall’s time at Mona include launching an airline and giving all the seats away to Pentecostal Christians from Wollongong, inventing a beer-roulette vending machine that sporadically paid out with warm Fosters and generating zero complaints for a festival by floating the complaints box 100m off the museum.
Brammall also had a hand at memorialising Tasmania’s last three Video City employees on cans of similarly rare beer, sneaking a Torana into a pool in Bondi, creating a billboard that direct-dialled The Whitehouse, re-building Mona’s website with mostly in-jokes, and making a virtue out of Mona’s most unhinged one-star reviews that name-checked everything from yodelling and exotic cuttlefish to asthma attacks.
Looking ahead, Brammall said: “I haven’t had a proper holiday in eight years so I’m taking a break, then I’ll jump back into something that’s hopefully just as fun and challenging as Mona.
“Not sure if it’s going to be more on the marketing side or the comms side. I’ll cast the net out and have a play. Hit me up on my new email if you feel like plotting something,” he added.
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Top image: Robbie Brammall