JWT Melbourne: Mumbrella Creative Agency Review – Old school agency reinventing itself
The newly published Mumbrella Creative Agency Review examines Australia’s top 30 ad agencies. Today Robin Hicks examines how JWT Melbourne has fared over the last 12 months.
As international networks go in Australia, JWT’s Melbourne office is
one of the few that threatens to make a real impact on the market this year.
The bosses on Balmain Street are all too aware that JWT is – like the Sydney
office – lumbered with a reputation as an old school agency dependent on
internationally aligned clients and are keen to reinvent an agency that seems to have spent a while in the wilderness.
A new positioning should provide impetus to internal changes led by Michael Godwin, who joined the agency as MD from DDB less than a year ago. The ratio of local to international business is now a much healthier 50:50, with less reliance on globally aligned clients Ford, Shell and Kraft.
The management team of ECD Richard Muntz and planning head Angela Morris, with Sydney-based national CEO John Gutteridge in support, looks more like a force its rivals would be foolish to disregard. Hiring Josie Brown from P&G to run its digital department was an interesting appointment.
