BATTEN TO WUNDERMAN SYDNEY CD GIG
Top DM creative Matt Batten has been tapped as the new Creative Director of Wunderman Sydney.
Battenwas previously a member of award-winning DM teams at BMF and Saatchi& Saatchi. He is also chairman of the ADMA Agency Council and a keyplayer in the DM Creative School.
A highly credentialed integratedspecialist, Batten has worked on campaigns for Aussie, Emirates, BPAY,Austar, Australian Red Cross Blood Service and ADMA. He has garnered along list of accolades including Cannes, Caples, Echo, AWARD and ADMA,and took out two spots in the top ten of Won Report’s ‘World’s Best DMCampaigns’ in 2005. At the recent 2008 ADMA Awards, he collected moretrophies than any other Australian creative and had a finalist for theGrand Prix award.
At Wunderman, Batten takes over from BrentonBleechmore, who has transferred to the GPY&R creative department,and will bring a strong focus to new business and driving the agency’screative success.
Says Batten: “Wunderman is a very strong globalbrand in its own right – after all, the network has a 50 year heritageand Lester Wunderman actually coined the term ‘direct marketing’. Ilook forward to expanding the agency’s portfolio with other strongbrands.
“There’s a great philosophy at Wunderman – ‘if it isn’teffective, it isn’t advertising’. And Wunderman’s performance at thelast ADMA Awards is proof of that. They helped their clients get fivetrophies and two finalists – all for effectiveness. 2009 will seeWunderman turning a corner. It’s going to be a big year.”
34 Comments
If Wunderman is so fantastic already, and Matt is going to help them “turn a corner” in 2009 …
Didn’t Howard Draft coin the term “Direct Marketing”?
Good Luck man, its gonna be tough.
There’s at least 5 old coots that claim to have coined it, but it was Lester. See “Being Direct”.
Congrats, Matt. You’re a good creative, but shit at fussball.
I didn’t realise you could be so successful in Direct Marketing. All those awards!!!
Collected more trophies than any other creative at ADMA 2008?
Most of them were for the ADMA 2008 call for entries kit.
Batten down the hatches…
Judging by that PR blurb, DM is where it’s at.
Forget television, give me an envelope.
Yeah 11.33 am that shouldn’t have even been entered! Next year perhaps, but you surely can’t enter the ‘call for entries’ stuff into the show it’s promoting?
Harder to win in competition you’re promoting than any other…just ask the judges.
ADMA Call for Entries was also a finalist in AWARD tho.
1.28 and 11.33…
You CAN enter the ‘call for entries’ in the show its promoting. Its been entered every year. Its practically tradition. We entered it in 2007. We won too.
10:06, What’s FUSSball?
I think you mean foosball. And yeah, he’s a much better creative than a foos-player.
Come on 12:59 PM. Get with the program. DM is where it’s been at for years.
Dave, I just counted through the awards book. It’s true. He did get more. The clever bastard.
He deserves a CD gig more than most. Well done.
A top bloke and one of the best. He’ll show Wunderman how it’s done.
Congrats, Matt.
That other Justine wasn’t me, by the way.
Justine A
at adma this year you could only enter one campaign over a certain amount of categories.
the adma stuff was clearly entered in more than those allocated categories.
hmmm.
Ahhh…working on what clients at Wunderman? There are no DM clients.
Good luck Matt, it will be challenge for them…and you
You’re an inspirational person Matt.
Wish you the best!
1.28 pm And I bet your mum is so proud.
@ Powell –
the adma stuff wasn’t entered into more categories than allowed. I thought so too, but did a count. They played by the rules and it was a great campaign. Good on ’em.
I’ve done a stint at Wunderman. They have more clients that most people realise. And my contacts there say he’s already helped them win a new client. Apparently he’s pretty awesome.
Matt rocks!
I hope he sends the Wunderman crew a pic a day, that was awesome
http://www.happyjester.com/inprecis.html
Wunderman only have online clients since Westpac walked, hence only having about 15 staff and continued rolling redundancies.
Maybe Nigel Marsh can lay a magic touch to the place if he’s not too busy saving GPYR
1:26PM doesn’t know what they’re talking about. There are no “continued rolling redundancies” at Wunderman. You’re probably thinking of Ogilvy.
Just to let you all know, the ADMA Call for Entries was very similar to a past DMCS winner. Check out the ADMA award book from 2004 (I think it’s that one).
3.48 I think you’ll find it’s 2003 and was done by Gillian Browne.
And the brief was the same, promote the next ADMA award show!
The Billasaurous had also been done before too. I guess we need some Direct judges with a bit of nouse as to what’s run before and/or is any good….?
Wow Dave, those grapes sure are sour.
For the record Dave and Matt, the concept for the 2008 ADMA Awards was triggered by the fact that last year was very widely publicised as the “Year of the Scout”, rather than any studious poring over old ADMA Awards annuals for some scrap of inspiration.
I think it’s important to look at the detail here before trotting out a sweeping and damaging accusation. Yeah the broad “Scouting” theme is the same, but the line “Be prepared for work that works” and the subsequent work are different – no tent cards and no cookies, not to mention the thousands of words of original copy penned which bear no resemblance at all to what’s in the book.
Know also that the similarity was detected and discussed with both the agency and Ms Browne before the campaign was ever launched. It was the wish of the agency NOT to pursue the campaign based upon the similarity, however they were reassured by their client following a chat with Gillian, who at that stage did not have an issue with it.
Dave, the AdPolice once claimed Billosaurus as having been done before in Singapore but Billosaurus was a protracted campaign that had been running for 12 months before the Singapore version. 1 point to BMF, 0 to you.
For someone who clearly doesn’t like Matt, you sure do follow his career quite closely.