Leo Burnett Melbourne: Mumbrella Creative Agency Review – ‘Big brand boutique’ trumps Sydney office with Cannes win
The newly published Mumbrella Creative Agency Review examines Australia’s top 30 ad agencies. Today Robin Hicks examines how Leo Burnett Melbourne has fared over the last 12 months.
It is not easy having a sister agency in Sydney that is twice the size and many more times as famous. Leo Burnett Melbourne does not have a boss who has been on a top-rating TV show. Or one, for that matter, who has climbed Mount Everest. And it has not produced a campaign like Earth Hour. What a difference Cannes can make.
Leo Burnett Melbourne was one of only two Australian agencies to take home a grand prix from Cannes this year, for ‘See the person’ for Scope. This was followed by four golds at Spikes Asia, plus some exposure for the band in the ad, Rudely Interrupted, on Singaporean TV. Winning gold at the 2011 Effies for Sportsbet, while the Sydney office won no more than a silver, must have been extra satisfying for MD Melinda Geertz and her creative partner of six years, Jason Williams.
Not that the effervescent Geertz, a Burnett lifer, has ever seemed uncomfortable operating in the shadow of Todd Sampson’s Sydney office. Indeed her position as one of the few women on the board of the Communication Council is evidence enough that here is an executive prepared to put in the extra yards to boost the profile of the industry – and her own agency while so doing.
Geertz knows that a higher profile, built off the back of ‘See the person’, could do wonders for the agency. Which, largely due to a series of global clients realignments that saw business fly out of the back door, is not the business that is was when the Iowa-born suit arrived in Melbourne 20 years ago.
In our survey, the agency falls into the bottom half for every category, scoring best for momentum and integration and worst for planning and effectiveness. It is worth noting that the agency scores far worse among Mumbrella’s readers than it does our expert panel, which would suggest that the agency has a perception problem. Just as worrying, though, is that overall the agency averages a bit below the half way mark – with a score of 59 out of 100.
This suggests that judges and Mumbrella’s readers view the agency as vanilla. Not awful, but not great either. But the agency that calls itself a ‘big brand boutique’ looks in healthy shape to kick on next year, as long as it can ride the wave of its Cannes triumph.
Though Nintendo is its biggest client, around 85% of its business is now local. This is crucial for survival in the conservative Melbourne market, where clients like to stay put and new business does not come easily.
To read more about Leo Burnett Melbourne, including full details on how it was scored by both our expert panel and Mumbrella’s own readers, to view examples of the agency’s work and read its own assessment of its performance, buy a copy of the Mumbrella Creative Agency Review priced at $75. The book features an assessment of the country’s top 30 ad agencies. To buy the book, click here.
