Here he comes again

As any creative knows, the sight of the HR Director heading towards your office is always a cause for concern.

Not because you've done anything wrong, but because you know he's going to twist your arm into buying raffle tickets for his kid's school.

Which is exactly what happened to Stanley and Lee today.

Suffice to say they've been in this business long enough to know that the offer of raffle tickets is one they should never refuse. Ever.

We're in pitch mode

It's Saturday. It's 2.40pm. And Stan and Lee are hard at work on a pitch, struggling to come to terms with the wisdom of Goethe that hangs on their office wall.

The Greensaver

We are always ones to love a good idea, even when it comes from the London Wunderkids. And especially if the idea starts conversations.

Did you know that leaving on your monitor overnight uses up the same energy overnight as printing 800 colour copies?

Download now and turn that screen off http://www.thegreensaver.co.uk

Doing our bit for Earth Hour

Here is some innovative work that has just gone live by the Wunderteam in Sydney for Earth Hour.



It uses groundbreaking augmented reality technology, in conjunction with data streaming, personalisation and data capture.

Please have a look, hold the earth in your own hand, and take a snapshot to pass on to your friends. And most importantly ... turn your lights out!

Click here ... www.earthhour.org/earthinyourhands

Back in black

It's time for a multiple choice question:

Why are so many Wunderkids wearing black today?

* It's Friday the 13th

* They're in Melbourne

* They work in an agency

* All of the above

Service with style

Four members of our Melbourne account service team stepping out in serious style. From left to right, that's Suze, Lydia, Anna and Kelly.

New kids in town

That jovial chap in the picture is Ian Sawers our new Planning Director who has made the big move down the corridor from our sister agency Patts Y&R.

Ian tried in vain to impress us with his story about having won awards for his work in a variety of media, but we were more impressed when we learnt that he gave up learning to fly during his very first lesson.

Pictured below is another recent addition to our Melbourne team - Abinash Dash. He joins us as Marketing Analyst after a career that has included stints in the financial services team at Dell and securities at Deutsche Bank. Suffice to say this man knows his way around numbers.

Meeting room #5

Note to all Melbourne staff - Meeting room 5 is now open for bookings.

Seen here is Kelly Swan putting this much under utilised room to very good use.

Wastage is a waste

In the late twentieth century, a billion trees were cut down,
to make paper to print advertisements on.
Two billion litres of oil were burned,
to power televisions during commercial breaks.
But the most horrific fact is that most of those trees and
most of that oil was wasted.
Because most of the ads never reached the right people.
We cannot go on like this.
There has to be a better way.

Simon Sylvester, Wunderman Stratagey

"How To Think Digital"

Kind of scary isn't it ..... how is your targeting going??

This is now

Ford Fiesta - Test Drive

http://tinyurl.com/dgn9ne

Some of the Wunderkids star in our latest work for Ford Fiesta.

Starring @annakw and @MiishyMoo.

Make yourself comfortable

At Wunderman we're always on the lookout for interesting environmental ideas. This video from Ford in the US is well worth watching, especially if you've ever had the urge to sit on a soya bean. Which of course you have, haven't you?

She's one of us now

One of the great pleasures of working at Wunderman is spending time with Eglantine Pollet. That's her on the phone by the way.

When she talks on the phone she does it with a very chic sounding French accent. We're hoping this doesn't come to an end when she becomes an Australian citizen.

You see she passed her citizenship test with flying colours this week and will soon receive a ceremonial twig of wattle. Hopefully she won't have to hand over her accent when she goes to pick it up.

Back to school

Sad day at Wunderman Melbourne today. Our creative intern Lorraine is heading back to uni to finish her degree.

We're all going to miss her. And wish her well in her future career.

Hopefully she'll remember who it was that gave her that first break in the business when she goes on to become rich and famous.

Pancake Tuesday

Our go to girl Mishy laid on pancakes with all the trimmings for us today.

And although no one in the agency could actually explain what Shrove Tuesday is all about, it didn't stop us from feasting on pancakes.

Fearing a visit of the team from finance, Chris Jeffares (above) swooped on a sugar 'n lemon pancake with a side order of strawberries.

Wunderkids make a donation

Always on the lookout for ways to help the community, the Wunderkids sent Mishy, Toni and Stan off to give blood today. As you can see, Mishy took it all in her stride. She's 100% unflappable.

Young Toni was also pretty nonchalant about the whole blood giving experience, especially when you consider this was her first time.


And what about Stan, you're probably thinking. Well it turns out he has a history of keeling over and fainting at the doctor. So the Blood Bank people gave him a cup of tea then sent him home. Aaw!!

Monday morning Melbourne

Monday morning at Wunderman kicks off with what we call Kick Start. It's really just a work in progress meeting to be honest. And as you can see, it's a blur of activity.

The big move!

Friday afternoon and it's time to get the account team back where they belong. This is Lydia showing off her biceps as she lugs files across the building.

Below is recent birthday girl Melanie Elliott. She's come full circle, having relocated to the desk where she used to work two previous office moves ago.


Meanwhile Melbourne MD Chris Jeffares is captured here showing off the spirit level app in his iPhone. Suffice to say we're expecting a happy buzzing workplace when we arrive on Monday morning.

Ford drives social media

Excellent interview with Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford in the USA. Scott's a big Twitter user. To follow him click here.

Ain't she Tweet

This is Suze. She's part of our Origin team at Wunderman Melbourne.

To the casual observer she probably looks like she's hard at work. But she's not.

She's on Twitter!

Like many of the Wunderkids, Suze is hooked on the 140 character world of Twitter.

She'd love you to follow her. Which you can do by clicking here and visiting her Twitter page.

Anyone seen Kelly?

This lovely lady is Kelly Richardson. She's the Senior Account Director on our client Origin.

She wasn't at work yesterday. She's not here today either. Hopefully she'll get out of her sick bed and back into the agency tomorrow.

We miss her. A lot.

Movement at the station

Last year the entire agency went on the Trusted Advisor workshop. Believe it or not, it was a lot more fun than the name suggests.

One of the things we learnt at the workshop was admiting mistakes and embracing failure.

The biggest mistake we've made as an agency of late was moving our account service team to a different part of the building.

It seemed like the right move at the time, but our creative crew soon grew tired of looking at the unloved cubicle pictured above.

So next week we're going back to how we were. Creatives are excited. Account team are excited. And that unloved cubicle is excited too.

Stay tuned for pics of the big move.

Throwing away Vegemite

These are concepts that were developed for when we pitched for the Vegemite digital business.

We won the pitch. We've done some good work. We don't need these concepts anymore.

So they're off to the recycling bin. Bye!

Anyone for a polish?

Don't ask us why, but a shoe shine stall has mysteriously appeared in the downstairs foyer of our Melbourne office. Definitely not what you'd expect from an agency. But then we like to think we come up with a lot of unexpected ideas.

Cheese for Cheese Day

When Stan brought his young son into the office last year he was amazed to discover that they had cheese afternoons on Fridays at his dad's work.

Here at Wunderman we like to refer to these Friday treats as Cheese for Cheese Day.

That's Mishy in the pic. She's our go to girl for just about anything. Especially cheese!

Hooking customers

This is a fun DM pack we created for our client Ford. It was developed to demonstrate to Ford Dealers how effective the Ford owner dialog program was in luring and landing new customers. As you can imagine, a pack of this type was very well received by both client and target.

Creative team on this was Lee Callister and Stanley Johnson, with finished art by Toni Palumbieri. Michelle Rochman handled production and client liason was by Lydia O'brien. Great work Wunderkids!

Where are the Smarties?

At Wunderman we keep a 5kg bag of Smarties for client meetings and presentations.

To stop our pesky creative people from eating them Mishy keeps them hidden in a secret drawer in a secret cupboard.

Well it used to be a secret.

As you can see from the photo, the bag of Smarties is no more.

Creatives can be a bit weird

This Lee and Stan. Two of our finest creative brains.

This is a pic I found of them getting ready for the ADMA Awards in Sydney late last year.

No idea what they were thinking when they took this photo. But I'm glad I got to share it with the world via this blog!

Christmas remnants

Back in December Mishy and Toni created one of the loveliest Xmas trees Wunderman Melbourne had ever seen. And they did it under cover of the night.

Unbeknown to the rest of the Wunderkids, Mish and Toni worked tirelessly after hours. They designed, printed and mounted their tree on an unloved stretch of wall in the agency.

Every person who wandered into the agency over the next few weeks remarked on just how beautiful the tree was.

Come January however the wall mounted printout tree became a bit of a problem.

The girls couldn't get the printouts off the wall. Resulting in the abstract art work featured in the pic above. Oops!

A Christmas to remember

Our Creative Director Lee Callister took a lot of photos with his camera phone at our Wunderful Xmas party.

We combined them into a huge wall poster for the office. It's called the Wunderwall.

There were a lot of very funny photos taken on the night. Especially those of our MD Chris Jeffares.

You see we told him it was fancy dress. Rocky Horror to be precise. And he took to dress ups with gusto.

What he didn't realise was it was a set up.

So he turned up dressed as Frank 'n Furter and everybody else was dressed in their normal clothes. Suffice to say, you had to be there.

Talking of Chris, here he is:


For more Wunderman Xmas party pics visit Lee's blog.

B&T Agency of the Year

We received some very exciting news today - Wunderman Melbourne has been shortlisted for the B&T Magazine Victorian Agency of the Year.

That’s agency of the year by the way. Not direct agency, or digital agency or some other specialist category. Just plain old agency. Which is hardly surprising really, given the broad nature of the work we do these days.

Over the last 12 months we’ve won awards for direct mail, data planning, online advertising and CRM. We’ve also picked up new business from BP and Vegemite and done some stunning digital work for them. And we’re just finishing production on some great little stop motion movies for our client Ford. Fingers crossed!!

Wunderman rocks ADMA

It was a momentous evening for Wunderman Melbourne recently at the annual ADMA Awards in Sydney. We picked up 6 awards for our work our clients Ford and Origin. It was especially pleasing as we won an award for every piece of work where we were a finalist – 100% success rate. Gotta love that!

Melanie Elliot our Senior A/C Director on Ford and our Production Manager Michelle Rochman are seen below enjoying the trappings of success on the night.


The evening was one of real Wunderman pride across-the-board, with Wunderman Sydney winning 2 awards for Microsoft & Westpac. Plus Lee Callister and Matt Batten (Melb & Syd Creative Directors) presented Direct Creative School awards and Ian Kennedy (Our Chairman) presenting the first ever Lester Wunderman Award for Effectiveness.

Unbelievably our king of copy Stanley Johnson managed to get his name on all six of the Melbourne awards. He's seen below comparing the colour of the awards we won with the stunning bronze tan of Michelle Rochman.

Looking into the future

David Ogilvy was one of the first people in the ad biz to recognise the power and possibilities of direct marketing. If you have a few minutes, be sure to watch this video. You'll soon see that much of what he had to say all those years ago is still totally relevant today.

Canadian discovers Pavlova

This is Kelly Swan, one of our interactive producers. She's originally from Canada, but has taken to the Australian way of life with gusto. As you can see in this pic, where she experiences for the first time that great Aussie delicacy - The Pav!

The ultimate pitch win

Great news for Wunderman Melbourne as BP Ultimate appointed us to their business. This win followed an exhaustive pitch against Ogilvy, Tequila and DraftFCB. A fantastic effort by all and a special thanks to the Wunderkids in Canada for their help!

Impactful conversations

This is a talk given by Nick Moore from Wunderman New York at Cannes this year. In it he challenges agencies to stop creating ads and to start initiating conversations.