When I first started out in the ad biz I went to show my homemade folio to the Grand Dame of Melbourne adland - Claire Worthington of Apple.
She smoked furiously throughout the fifteen or so minutes she spent with me. Bits of ash falling on my folio pages as she spoke.
As you can imagine I was incredibly nervous at the time. Yet she made me feel like I had something to offer.
She remarked on the fact that I was the only Weights & Measures Inspector she had ever met. Then gave me a list of agencies and CDs in Melbourne.
She circled names like Ted Horton and Nick Trumble and told me that they were people similar to myself in that they had had careers in an unrelated field before they got into advertising.
That meeting with Claire seems like a lifetime ago. So much has changed in my life and also the industry that I had chosen for my next big adventure.
On the weekend I was clearing old papers and junk from the cupboard in my study and I came across the list of agencies and CDs that Claire had given me.
As you can imagine the paper had yellowed and it was kinda dog-eared.
The big surprise for me was just how many of the agencies on the list were no longer a part of the Melbourne scene.
Names like Masius, Monahan Dayman Adams, Saatchi & Saatchi, DDB Needham, Wunderman Cato Johnson and dozens of small local agencies.
It's funny how we all talk (a lot) about how much our industry is changing. Yet we never really stop to think about how it always has. And probably always will.
Labels: advertising, industry, melbourne
