Desktop

From Desktop magazine.
Words: Jo Spurling.

The offices of George Patterson Y&R (GPY&R) are housed inside one of Melbourne’s many beautiful old stone buildings, harking back to a time when creating an abode or commercial building involved more than simply throwing some concrete slabs together. Inside is a marble foyer, and the lift soon drops you at GPY&R’s new home. When I visit they’re still settling in, jovially putting up with the builders hammering and drilling. The receptionist greets me with a ‘this is only me temporary desk’ smile and directs me to take a seat. Russel Howcroft, the man of the hour who I am here to see is just finishing up another meeting, but I do not have to wait long before his charming smile and outstretched hand appear around the door of his office. Aside from his busy role as chairman and managing director of GPY&R (now chief executive of Y&R Brands), you may recall Howcroft from his time on the panel of The Gruen Transfer (third season currently airing on ABC) alongside Leo Burnett’s Todd Sampson.

Image Copyright theage.com.au

Howcroft finished his Marketing degree back when it just wasn’t cool, back when Monash University in Melbourne was still called Chisholm. “It’s now a really cool thing to do,” says Howcroft. “When I did it, it was because I didn’t get really good marks, and in a way I did it under sufferance, but I finished it.”

While he was finishing his degree, Howcroft was also working at a newspaper called The Melbourne Times. “I was selling space and I was running the artwork down to the studio, and I’d go and see a band on a Saturday night and write the review of the band. It was just a fantastic place to be.  It was a privately owned newspaper, owned by Glen Rowan and Shane Higgs, and they printed ‘fuck’ in 1986… I was 20 – 21, and no other newspaper would do that. It was cool.”

During this time Howcroft also picked up a week’s work experience at advertising agency, McCann Ericsson. “I’ve been doing advertising ever since,” explains Howcroft. “So I didn’t really choose my career, I just finished up being in the ad game. Then after a little while at McCann, every senior person was saying to me: ‘You must go and work in London’… So I went to London and walked the streets, got a job, and stayed there for five years at a place called Lowe Howard Spink. At the time Lowe Howard Spink were red hot, and I got to work on amazing things. Then I came back to Australia, had a family and started an agency.”

The agency he is referring to is Leonardi, which Howcroft co-founded back in 1995. He then stayed with the company for 10 years, through it’s transformation into Brandhouse, then becoming The Furnace. “It was a big adventure, and I learnt an enormous amount, not the least of which is that it’s important to make money because if you’re not making money you’re not paying people’s salaries. So you learn the significance of that, and you learn to love your clients, because in a way you think: ‘Why are they giving me their business?’ Because they could give it to someone else,” he says. “You learn that the key asset that an advertising agency has is its client base, and you must look after them passionately and do all you can to help them do great things and help grow sales. It was pretty hard core to do it, but I loved it really.”

It was then time for a change, and this came in the form of George Patterson Y&R, who enticed Howcroft away from the agency he began. Surely no easy task, but Howcroft advises that it was the proverbial offer he couldn’t refuse. “George Patterson is the oldest agency brand in Australia, and last year we celebrated our 75th birthday. There are very few corporations in Australia that haven’t at some point passed through George Patterson, and most clients have heard of it,” Howcroft explains. “It’s a famous agency brand, and the thing I like about it is I can speak to pretty much anyone and they’ll know about it. A lot of the battle in advertising, and in marketing services, is explaining who you are – and we don’t have to explain who we are. That has a certain strength, in its own sense.  Also, advertising agencies can be schizophrenic and George Patterson isn’t, it’s very clear about what it is, and that’s what I like – I like that too.”

Howcroft also describes GPY&R’s specialty as creating iconic moments in business. “We believe we create these iconic moments and we’ve done it forever. In 1948 we launched Holden. In the eighties we launched Nissan.  We gave new birth to Ansett in the mid-nineties, and we did the Carlton Draught ‘Big Ad’, and we created Schweppes Burst,” he says. “We really focus on creating something wonderfully relevant, ruthlessly relevant for consumers, and something that they just get a real thrill out of it. For our clients, we like to make things that they will remember. So really iconic moments is what we really strive to do.  That’s the bigger purpose.  We don’t feel like we just make ads.”

So what is it about advertising that sucks Howcroft in and keeps him coming back from more? “I just love ideas, and the great thing about advertising is that you’re surrounded by them all day, and they’re different ideas for wonderfully different clients. One minute you’re talking to a banker, the next minute you’re talking to someone who is working for the Defence force, the next you’re talking to someone who needs soft drink advertising. That genuinely is one of the really interesting things about it. And then to sell an idea and to make it – that’s one of the things about an advertising agency that is underestimated, that they are wonderful at making stuff.  Ultimately, that’s what we do, we make things and the things that we make are designed to generate an outcome. I get a great thrill out of that and I enjoy it; I really enjoy the client relationships and helping them do good work.”

Recently GPY&R have been working with Cadbury to push the Picnic brand, leading to a fun and engaging competition, which has become one of Howcroft’s favourite GPY&R projects. “That would be the ‘It’s No Picnic’ campaign. It’s a really good idea because we’re asking people to eat a Picnic within 30 seconds, which they can’t do. So it’s a really neat little program – and it’s working. I believe they’re having some great success at Cadbury. It’s not self indulgent on our behalf. It’s astute. I really like it because the creativity is disposable, and I think it’s a really important part of the new world.  One can be too precious about ideas… I also love the idea that they are the public’s ads, that we’re helping them make ads and then those ads are going on air. So there’s content creation, there’s social media, there’s use of mainstream media. Good stuff.”

So as a not-so-famous character, whose name is not important, was once said in a well-known book, ‘great things are afoot’ and the same can be said of GPY&R. I have already taken up enough of Howcroft’s time and another meeting awaits him. Before he disappears however, I ask him what we can expect from him next. “My focus for business is very obvious, but I think there is a point to be made. We’re going to focus on making sure we are ruthlessly relevant. The reason why that’s important is a lot of work is getting done for work’s sake, and perhaps the online world is allowing us to just make stuff.  So we’ve got to really concentrate on making sure that what we’re making is relevant, and there’s a purpose to it, that it’s relevant to the audience and it’s having an effect.”

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