Defence Force moves to Havas from George Patterson Y&R
Mobile Medic
George Patterson Y&R Melbourne has lost one of its biggest clients with the government Defence Force Recruiting account moving to Havas Worldwide after a six month pitch.
The move will surprise many after GPY&R held the account, its biggest in the Melbourne office, for 13 years and won a string of awards for the client, including several Lions for the Mobile Medic app last year.
It is a boost for Havas, which has a small satellite office of seven in Melbourne, but is expected to manage the business from its North Sydney base.
interesting lack of reference and spokesperson here… questions?
Congratulations Mr G what a huge effort
Biggest win for any agency this year and well deserved to the guys at Havas, not only did they beat the long standing incumbant, but also some of the best – Host, Clems, Droga..
Solid work guys and congratulations.
Why? No really, why?
GPY&R consistently turn out great work for this client, especially digital.
In fact, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve used their work as the digital benchmark in presentations.
Another case (TAC being a recent example) of changing agencies for the wrong reason.
If it isn’t the quality of the work that triggered the change, it must be budget.
Agree with @KGB…the recent http://www.defencejobs.gov.au/anytimeanywhere/ was absolutely OUTSTANDING
Would have to be one of the toughest gigs going.
How do you sell a product no sane youngster is remotely interested in?
Lots of awards, industry loves the work. Any info on recruiting success rates over the past decade?
It’s always sad to hear of the loss of a major long term account but these things don’t happen for “no reason”. Cost cutting is sighted as one reason in these comments but, there is almost no mention of how the campaign performed over the past 13 years. As a guy working in digital I was always intrigued each time Patts launched a new interactive site for defence forces – but I could never get past the sign up process before being confused or loosing interest. As “creative” as they were – I suspect they were in reality convoluted. How many people really engaged with them? It’s a fair question to ask how successful the Patts work over the last 13 years has actually been in driving recruitment.
That is a fair question to ask.
I was a judge at this years Effies and read the long term effectiveness paper that Patts wrote for ADF.
I vividly remember the 10 year shift in total target achievement as i was astounded. When Patts won the business target achievement was in the mid-50%, in 2013 it is sitting at around 96%.
I’m sure that there are some roles that are harder to fill that aren’t performing as well, but overall that in my opinion is long term success.
This decision it would seem had nothing to do with creative or effectiveness and plenty to do with bureaucracy and procurement.
Hopefully the boomerang will return Defence Force back to Melbourne.
Re Effie’s Judge’s comment above, the “effectiveness paper that Patts wrote” May not be the most source of information on ADF recruiting data. Simply Google “Defence Force recruiting statistics” to see the situation for yourself. It’s not great at all, with recruiting figures way down across the Navy, Air Force and Army. And our recruiting rates fall well behind the UK and the US results.
Of course this isn’t all the fault of advertising. But it should be cause for some of us in the industry to step back and look at the big / real picture.