GPY&R Melbourne celebrates retaining the Australian Defence Force Recruiting business
After a statutory review George Patterson Y&R, Melbourne has retained the Defence Force Recruiting advertising account. Seen left is agency staffers celebrating the win last night.
The agency has held the account for an unprecedented 10 years and hasagain successfully defended the business pitching against at least 7other agencies.
Says GPY&R national CEO Russel Howcroft: “Defence has undertaken arigorous process to ensure they chose the right marketing partner forits future needs. This is a significant endorsement of the agency, itswork and its vision for the business.
“The Patts team worked tirelessly throughout the process and theirtenacity has paid off. There is a formidable commitment to continuallyimprove our capability and partnership with Defence Force Recruiting.
“Defence is a unique account and Patts will continue to service it withgreat pride. We are looking forward to this new chapter.”
When Defence first appointed George Patterson Y&R recruitment wasat 56 per cent of their target. Today it is over 90 per cent.
69 Comments
Congratulations everyone. A fucking mammoth (mammoth) effort.
Dan
Awesome news Patts people, well done!!
A very deserved win.
Well done. I reckon they deserve to keep it.
Isn’t pitching to retain an account the worst thing you ever have to do in advertising?
The whole pitch process is driven by fear. If you lose, you either get made redundant yourself, or you’ll have to be the one having the ‘quick chats’ with the poor bastards who are.
And if you win, it’s just business as usual on Monday.
Everything to lose and nothing to gain.
So even though I’m happy for patts because I know people there, I’m generally always happy when clients stay where they are.
Unless I’m pitching against the incumbent. Then the gloves are fucking-well off.
Congrats to all involved, a big win and well deserved!
A good result, it would have been sad to see it go anywhere else.
Winning as the incumbent is farking difficult, winning for a 3rd time is almost impossible. A terrific effort.
They are do really good work on defense, they should keep the business.
WWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Go PATTS. Bloody MAMMOTH
Yes, that’s how you do it smooth pants!
Mammoth Patts. Great to keep the business in Melbourne town too! Woo!
Boooom booooom boooom.
Go Watto and team….. Great result Patts. Well deserved.
Not Praveen’s best angle.
Excellent result Cuz, Jim, Smooth Pants et al.
An absolutely sensational performance.Every single day for eighteen months…..
Great news for Russ, Watto, Steve and the other thousand people who all did their bit. Far too many to name. CONGRATULATIONS
And a brilliant job by the guys who ran the business every day whilst the machine did its job.
Onya’s
That tall guy up the back looks like a creep.
All you guys need now is a web hit where you all sing to the tune of “I’m so excited.”
Awesomeness!
Maybe a few of the young creatives at GPY&R in Melbourne should enlist in the military themselves (excuse me, the “defence forces”), or at the very least do a little public service not mandated by a judge.
We’re guessing that after a tour in Afghanistan, they might not be so keen to use their skills toward the recruitment of young Australians like themselves to put their lives on the line for oil and natural gas. The vision of a pile of hammered faces sitting safe and warm in a Victorian office, celebrating winning the opportunity to convince other young Aussies to take up arms, travel to dangerous parts of the world, and put their lives on the line is more than a little disconcerting.
The times they are a changin’ . . . back.
Well to Ben and the team.
1:46 if you infact did your research you would find that there are a few GPY&R people who are in the reserves! Maybe you should make fewer assumptions.
@1:46 PM.
Don’t hate the playa. Hate the game!
@ 1:46
That’s a haunting and powerful point you make – no doubt one which others here will attempt to shoot down (pun absolutely unintended).
When you look at it through THAT lens, it does make the photo seem grotesque. And it reminds us just how removed from the world we ALL become at times in this business.
Through another lens, this is just a bunch of hard working people letting off steam after doing THEIR jobs and achieving a (relatively) difficult task in their own (less deadly) theatre of battle.
Depends on your lens.
Brilliant.. Great work guys.. A well deserved win..
Sid
Oh geez, now we’re getting all moral.
@ 1:46, worked at Patts for several of the years on ADF, with a brother who just finished a tour of ghan, honestly, wake up. Australia needs a defence force and if you don’t like the fact that we are in Afghanistan, shouldn’t you be redirecting your anger at the polling booth, not the guys who work in the ADF?
Cause guess what, the soldiers don’t decide where they go, Krudd does.
Grats Ben and team.
Jesus 1:46 PM you are in the wrong business.
We’ve been killing consumers with booze, cigarettes, gambling fastfood and cars etc for decades.
@Zac
Result of Damo crash; and twelve beers already…
What happened to the ‘Fuck Yeah’ poster in the pic? Now you see it… Now you don’t
I like that Navy poster. Hope that is why they won.
Congrats guys, huge effort and great win.
BUT what’s with the dodgy photoshop effort?!
Click on the pic of the team and see the bottom right hand quarter of the bigger version… WTF?
Good pick up, 3:23.
I’d call that ‘collateral damage control’.
Is there an opening in their studio department?
I could photoshop better than that!
What a great bloody coup!
This is great news for the industry, not just Patts.
Obviously the ADF don’t like the F-word.
Praveen.
I want you in my next campaign.
Seriously. Call my people.
CK.
Well done Ben and Russ.
Statutory review or not you guys never deserved to lose it.
And you didn’t.
Hey 1:46, the Defence Forces even protect fuckwits like you. If you care so much you go to the hard places and let one of them stay at home.
But then again perhaps you could stay stay here and volunteer for target practice…..as a target
Grouseness!
That’s a great win. You can’t knock that.
Account service are much better at shooting things down 1:46. Where I work we outnumber the creatives on blog about 15:1.
One word. MAMMOTH MAMMOTH!
From 1:46
I’d hoped for a more intelligent debate on the issue of young men and women in the rather safer battlefield of advertising working to encourage other young men and women (generally those who can’t afford the education, or who see the military as a step up economically) to join the armed services and put their lives on the line in foreign political adventures . . . but alas, it’s the CB Blog.
No, 6:55, the ADF is not protecting me, or you for that matter, unless you live in Kabul, or Baghdad. They’re not “coming South”. From your adept use of the multi-syllable “fuckwit”, however, I’ll deduce that you work in the art department, and that writing is a foreign discipline, so you’re forgiven.
2:49, no anger to direct, at Patts, your brother, or the polling booth, just a bit of concern about the moral compass of the ad industry in general when it comes to what we sell, and to whom.
Rock Solid Ben And Team, as usual.
10.07,
we help organisations sell anything that is, indeed, legal to purchase. Except for tobacco, because we’re not allowed to.
Should the advertising industry not be allowed to promote a career in the defence forces, because some sections of society believe such forces to be immoral?
How about soft drinks?
Factory-farmed meat?
Expensive products manufactured in sweatshops?
Companies found guilty of anti-competitive behaviour?
Fast cars?
What’s morally correct to advertise, and what isn’t? And who decides this? You? Me? Senator Fielding? Rudd? Do we have online polls every month to determine what our industry can and can’t promote?
And if we can’t promote an industry or a particular brand, should other professional services organisations also be banned from dealing with them? If it’s ‘immoral’ for us to advertise KFC, is it also immoral to work there… to provide accountancy services to them… to let them bank with you… to build their next restaurant… to concrete their next drive-through? To work in the packaging company that makes their cardboard boxes?
Or is it ok for these organisations to exist, and ok for everyone to make a buck from their existence, unless you work in the advertising industry? And then it’s immoral.
Your ‘argument’ is so full of holes it’s incredible.
If you don’t agree with the morality of a brand, a business or an organisation, then by all means question the fact that we allow it to exist. But by singling out the advertising industry, and suggesting that somehow there should be a greater moral imperative on us to not deal with them, is naive and very poorly thought-through.
It’s the kind of argument I’d expect from a Year 9 student. Surely kids don’t read the CB blog, do they?
Well said 11:01.
10:07. I understand your argument, but isn’t the source of this problem society, as opposed to the hard working people pictured above?
Our defence force isn’t protecting us directly right now, and, yeah, it shouldn’t be in Afghanistan, but we still depend on it as a nation. We need it. And where there are needs and wants, there’s advertising. That’s the game we’re in.
Just curious. Do you work in advertising?
Truthfully, the arguments from many intelligent Year 9 students are a good deal more thoughtful and morally questioning than those of the theoretically more mature individuals who read and contribute to this blog, or for that matter work in this industry, as you and I do, because they’re less beaten down by the pressures of survival and the compromises one inevitably makes to one’s own morality along the way . . . so that tag is probably much more of a compliment than was intended.
One would think that it’s specifically the responsibility of those within an industry or practice to question the morality and the ethics of their trade . . . who better really? Questioning and debate are a healthy way of achieving better practice.
If, however, simply questioning the actions, decisions of those within the industry is to be branded as “naive” and “poorly thought-through”, then I suppose we are moving toward a more closed, insular, and insecure industry that will have a good deal of difficulty honestly examining it’s own values.
The ad business has a special responsibility which sets it apart from individuals who make products and place them in the marketplace, because in essence it’s the propaganda ministry of consumerism. The marketplace will inevitably decide the morality of purchasing a product and decide in a vote with their currency whether the people who make and service that product will be allowed to continue doing so. With it’s special skills, however, the ad industry creates the myths that justify the use of products good and bad, necessary and useless, benign and dangerous, and has the capacity, when it’s done well, to convince individuals to make choices that are not in their best interests, or society’s . . . . and while truth in advertising is probably an oxymoron, there are still some behaviors that can be fairly criticized, aren’t there? Should an agency work on a campaign promoting blood diamonds, or for a product made by child labour? The question is where the line is drawn.
My posting started by questioning whether a drinking celebration by young Australians who create the myth that the military is an adventurous and exciting career choice, a myth which has the capacity of sending other young people into a potentially life-threatening decision, might not be reconsidered in a more sober light. Certainly there must be ad people out there who have some moral qualms about having promoted, in another era, the glamour of smoking and the lack of danger associated with it, only to witness the devastation wrecked upon cancer sufferers by their clever and seductive marketing? Is the NDF and the work done by GPY&R on their behalf above criticism?
As an alternative for those who feel the need to support the troops, the necessity of the NDF’s job in our society, then let me suggest that they get behind a mandatory national service for all young Aussies (including the “Young Guns” – all puns intended), make the NDF more democratic and not subject to how much money your dad makes, and as a consequence eliminate the need to spend our tax dollars advertising for recruits. Sorry Patts, but you’d survive without that client, and we might be a better, and fairer society for it . . . maybe in the end you’d win the campaign to push for mandatory national service and have something positive to celebrate.
What job number are you using for that? 🙂
Some good points.
A young team celebrating with a few drinks – a branding exercise, yes, but not for the NDF by any stretch, especially in this forum.
Do you believe the NDF is an ‘immoral’ client? Perhaps some of their actions might be, which are beyond our industry’s control, but as a whole they are not.
I agree that the manner in which young people are recruited can be immoral, but not so much in Australia. And if Patt’s and every other agency refused to advertise the NDF, what then? Would this lead to a fairer society? I’m not sure it would. If low socio-economic areas were targeted with advertising (and maybe they are) then I would see your point, but the Defence Force is a product this nation needs, pretty or not, and for it to function it needs advertising. (The nation never needed a tobacco industry so I disagree with that analogy.)
There is a need for this industry to question morality but I see no villains here.
Instead of churning out 300 word paragraphs, you could’ve just cut to the chase of your entire argument. Which is that advertising is “the propaganda ministry of consumerism”.
I take back the Year 9 comment, and upgrade you to self-important undergraduate status.
This might help clear things up. Maybe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYEf8XZKlUU
11:01 – 2:21
Aw, feelings hurt? I know it’s hard to read detailed arguments for you “cut to the chase guys”, more or less digest their meaning. Undergraduate is probably as far as you were able to manage with that attention span, but there is more to the literature you failed to read than you would have found in your synopsis Cliff’s Notes.
Take a little time to think, because it’s not all about :30 and sound bites. Thanks for the word count though. Shows you were paying attention on some level at least.
2:28
I think this might be more on point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fclYmVaORbM&feature=related
Hey 1:46 it’s 6:55 again. Do you think this is the place for your moral superiority masquerading as 70’s pacifism or is a blog about advertising?
Having been a planner on the ADF (prior to it being at GPY&R) I can tell you it is a piece of business with many challenges on many levels. The agency have done a great job and the ADF has the same right to advertise as any other client, and you have the same right to be a total tosser.
No I’m not in the art department and I suspect neither are you because in my experience the atr dept is staffed by humans not fuckwits.
Mate,
Lengthy diatribes don’t make you look intelligent. Because it’s far more difficult to make a point succinctly, than it is to crap on the way you do.
If anyone fails to wade through your poorly-constructed rant, the fault isn’t with them. It’s with the author.
@1:46, 10:07 etc.
Ok, so we’re in the myth business. Mythmaking cuts both ways. Do you really think one of the great idealistic liberators of downtrodden peoples, Ernesto Che Guevara, would be quite as remembered if it wasn’t for a certain iconic stencil of a godlike, wild haired, beret wearing figure staring off into the middle distance?
He used lethal force. And by evoking his image, humans have done everything from incite well-meaning revolutions to selling a shitload of streetwear. People WANT to feel what he projects. Images are what we WANT them to be. Not ‘everything’ is manipulation. Stop taking all responsibility away from the freethinking individual. The viewer decides. All the archetypes are already within the individual – waiting to be awakened.
What I want to know is: why would a morally-superior, Nobel Peace Prize aspirant, such as yourself, be wasting their afternoon lecturing a bunch of CB blog degenerates like us? Wouldn’t you have something far more pressing to do than trivialising our livelihoods?
Let’s face it; Advertising has always been a big, easy target, so there are no real marks for ‘difficulty’ there. But seriously, my friend, the only place for an overly righteous lefty is fronting a rock band like Midnight Oil, U2 or The Boomtown Rats. So go make some fucking music and earn your keep… Next!
6:55
Didn’t realize that pacifism was a 70s concept, but then you seem to be as historically knowledgeable as you are articulate.
Of course the ADF have the right to advertise, and if they or the agency who does the business are going to post on the blog, then they’re fair game for critique, not only of the ad work but of the product itself . . . that’s the nature of this social medium, and the anonymity that allows individuals to speak their minds openly.
By the way, since it’s a word you seem to have some intimate personal knowledge of, can you define “fuckwit”?
A “planner” huh? . . . says it all really.
I LOVE THE WAY PATTS GET SO MANY COMMENTS FOR WINNING A PITCH…ARE THEY ON A BONUS FOR BLOGGING….COME ON TWATS AT PATTS YOU AIN’T FOOLING ANYONE WITH YOUR RAMPANT SELF BLOGGING ABOUT ADS AND WINS…..IT IS SOOOOOO SEE THROUGH!!!!!!!!! DESIST.
Guess that didn’t work 5.23!
5:04
I love the smell of brevity in the morning. It reminds me of . . . advertising.
But a lengthy, poorly-constructed rant, rich with the crap that you have to wade through, from a faulty author trying to make himself look intelligent? Well that’s just heavenly.
1:46 you want me to define fuckwit?
A picture is worth 1000 words, look in a mirror.
Didn’t suggest pacifism was a 70’s concept just that you were voicing a 70’s version.
Pay attention , you’re spoiling the dialogue.
Planners do sometimes overeimate their audience. Will try to be less subtle.
“A picture is worth a thousand words?” . . . clearly not part of the creative department are we 6:55, 9:31?
Stick to what you do best, earning a living from the ideas of others. I would have thought that in order to be able to define anything (“fuckwit” inclusive), you would have needed to consult a focus group, maybe do some market research.
As far as overestimating your audience, it’s common knowledge that you lot never estimate anything on your own, or even venture a point of view unless it’s tested.
The accepted definition of a Planner: a person with someone else’s opinion.
Cousins?
Here.
Ingram?
Here.
Northam?
Here.
Muller…… Muller………Muller?
1:46 try to spend the day not being a fuckwit and a tosser.
You will notice the difference, your friend will notice the difference, and the world will be a better place.
6:55, 9:31, 9:18, et. al.
Your advice, or the consensus of the focus group?
Have you had the actual terms “fuckwit” and “tosser” cleared by legal, and approved by the suit and the client yet?
We really can’t move forward with this until there’s a thorough vetting. You remember what happened the last time you tried going off the reservation and writing your own brief don’t you? Well you should, but it was some time ago, now wasn’t it.
Kumbaya.
I would call it ma very good win. Congrats troops.
1:46 you’re right of course.
None of this is mine.
The suit, the client and even the guys in legal reiterated what the focus groups said: You’re a fuckwit and a tosser.
In fact all agreed there was no need to quantify the finding so clear was the result.
I was going to add wanker but legal said no.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah… Blah Blah blah. Blah blah blah blah. Blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah. Blah blah blah…
In the end – Bloody well done guys! You did well.
I’m going to have a poo.
I think 6:55, 9:31, 9:18, 5:35 already did . . . several times.