Not so Happy Soldiers as the innovative 18 month old Sydney agency to cease trading next month
18 months after forming as a full service agency, Happy Soldiers is to cease trading next month. The partners have decided to go their separate ways and concentrate on new challenges.
It’s been an amazing time, with their work for Tontine, Virgin Money and Nova being well received. Happy Soldiers won both the ‘Campaign of the Year’ and ‘Media Campaign of the Year’ for Tontine at the AdNews Awards recently. At AWARD last month they received a Gold pencil for ‘Creative Innovation’ and recently they picked up the winner and runner up for ‘Idea of the Year’ for the second year running from Australian Creative Magazine.
In September 2009 John Kane (above right), the founder of creative collective Happy Soldiers joined forces with Mark Sareff (above left), founder of brand consultancy Prophecy and former national planning director of The Campaign Palace and Lindsey Evans (centre), former managing director of The Campaign Palace Sydney, in a new incarnation of Happy Soldiers.
Happy Soldiers was originally founded by John Kane as a creative collective in 2007. The collective became Australian Creative’s ‘Hotshop of the Year’ in 2009.
22 Comments
Lest We Forget.
Sad to see them go. But I’m not sad to see these stupid agency names disappear Happy Soldiers, Prophecy! Please can we stop this – it’s pretentious and tiresome. Go back to your sir names, for god sake and stop making me vomit.
10:05, I can’t think of anything more pretentious than putting your surname as your business name.
very sad
Massive shame this. Lindsay and Mark two of my favourite people in the business. Good luck with whatever you do next guys.
Cheers
Nic
I heard Saatchi’s were buying them.
it’s ‘surname’ you twat.
Cannot believe the stupidity of the person commenting at 10.05 (besides their inability to spell, that is).
In their world, would we have Branson Records and Branson Airlines?
Or should the world’s biggest soft drink be called ‘Candler’?
Or perhaps you should go shopping for new pair of ‘Bowerman & Knight’ trainers?
Seriously pal, if you have the entrepreneurial ability to set up and run your own business, you deserve to brand it however you choose.
But I doubt you have that ability – you’re too busy slagging things off using your ‘Jobs’ computer.
A good time to start approaching all their clients
Wow. Anonymous writes things that are both true and mean. Mad skillz.
People buy people…..that’s why nearly all great agencies are named after people.
Even after they’re long gone, people still quote them…..Bernbach, Ogilvy….and try and live/work by their philosophy.
When you ‘brand’ your agency with an stupid name, you make it more like your client, and therefore one step closer to being a disposable commodity.
yea, look at ‘mother’ that never worked did it…
Sorry to hear that guys. Better days ahead I’m sure.
BDM – Has anyone told you how incredibly instinctive you are?
You are just so “right now” and “finger on the pulse”….it’s incredible….
Every one of their clients would already have another agency by now….you dope
it seems that the maths didn’t work out in the end for the soldiers – big people, big salaries, small client list – too much happy too little money
At least they gave it a go!
must have gone past their Tontine use-by date
So sad. Such good people. Such talent.
should read – so sad, some good people, some talent
So sorry to hear this. Mark and Lindsey, all the very best. Ditto what Nic said.
After all the grand statements and breathless predictions it was only a matter of time before reality would bite. An entirely unremarkable line up of people who were incapable of building lasting success without the comfort of a big agency name behind them.
rearrange these three words into a relevant phrase
in
flash
pan