‘The big end of town’: Charting M&C Saatchi’s eventful journey to adulthood
As M&C Saatchi celebrates its 21st birthday Simon Canning looks at some of the highs and lows of one of Australia’s biggest creative shops.
Twenty one years ago I sat in a penthouse room atop the Regent Hotel with Maurice Saatchi, Bill Muirhead and Tom Dery, one of a handful of reporters witnessing the birth of a new agency from the ashes of one of the greatest splits in the industry’s history.
The Saatchi brothers, Maurice and Charles, had been ousted from the eponymous agency they founded – Saatchi & Saatchi – and the response was to start straight back up again – with two of Saatchi’s biggest clients – British Airways and Qantas.
Qantas required an Australian agency, so it was left to Dery, original creative director Roy Meares and MD Simon Corah to build the business from scratch.
Great read, it’s been a hell of a journey. From hotel room to powerhouse, quite extraordinary. Well done Tom, even the Bingle Bungle has proved iconographic. This is an agency that Can.
Tom & Tom.
Simply the best.
At last, the sort of intelligent, measured and well-researched story-telling that we’ve been missing over the last decade.
Well done Mumbrella and terrific stuff Simon … ditto with the Cleo story
Congratulations to The Toms; one of the most spectacular partnerships in advertising history.
And they sure know how to throw a party 🙂
Thank you for setting the record straight.
Really nice piece of long form writing, great stuff particularly for those of us with a less than extensive experience of the local ad market.
Congrats Tom & Tom. So thrilled to have been a part of something so special.
Congrats Tom and Tom. So glad to be part of the Melbourne office start up back then. That team are still some of my greatest friends.