Aussie ad industry condensed into :30 seconds

When creative director Martin Manning realizes he’s dropped to double figures in the Campaign Brief Creative Rankings – thanks to a ruling by the agency’s new CEO to ban the agency from entering awards – he has a meltdown. He then sets out to create an award-winning campaign to get him back to number one, a play for power that has unexpected consequences.

Manning, played by Joel Tobeck of Lord of the Rings fame, is one of the stars of :30 seconds, a six part satirical drama set in the Australian outpost of a multinational agency called BND Worldwide whose motto is: ‘BND. Truth Well Sold’.

Airing mid-year on Foxtel’s The Comedy Channel, it’s a co-productionbetween Andrew Denton’s Zapruder other films and Foxtel. This isDenton’s second foray into portraying the advertising industry – thefirst was panel show The Gruen Transfer, which has been a ratings hitfor the ABC.

The series is the brainchild of Tim Bullock of Prodigy Films, JustinDrape and Scott Nowell of Three Drunk Monkeys (pictured) who firststarted working on it six years ago.

“It’s true to the industry, we are trying to keep the themes and the issues as authentic as possible,” says Drape.

Bullock, Drape and Nowell previously worked together at Saatchi &Saatchi Sydney which is when they first started thinking it would befunny to take the real-life incidents they experienced in daily agencylife – such as flying to Melbourne to judge the grill marks on aburrito – and turn it into a TV series.

They presented the idea to Denton who came on board as executiveproducer and Andrew Knight from Sea Change, Tripping Over and After theDeluge worked as a script consultant. The four-week shoot for the sixhalf-hour episodes started on Monday at Black Sheep Productions.

Other agency staffers portrayed are CEO Bill Brooker (Peter O’Brien) a man who likes rules, conformity and large graphs;senior art director, Sumo (Gyton Grantley) the ambitious creative with a powerful lack of conscience; producer, McBaney (StephenCurry)  a man who can get you a giant singing udder inside five hours; copywriter, Kath Bullock (Jenna Lind) the industry newcomer with a still-functioning moral compass; and account directorBarbara Main (Emily Brennan),  better known as Boobera, who has never been known to say no to a client freebie. Theclient side is represented by head of marketing for DaiyondaAutomotive, Marion West, determined to break glass ceilings without damaging her biological clock, played by Kat Stewart, most recently ofUnderbelly and Supernova.

While industry types familiar to those working in advertising inspired the characters, they aren’t based on real people.

“Everyone will recognize themselves or people they worked with. There’sa creative director type in the show, there’s a CEO type, there’s acreative type, and client type,” says Bullock.

Andrew Denton, of Zapruder’s other films said: “An extraordinary cast,three talented new writers and a great director – the ingredients,hopefully, for champagne television. :30 seconds is an exciting newdirection for Zapruder’s and we couldn’t have found a better home forit.”

Brian Walsh, Foxtel executive director of television and marketing,predicts that :30 seconds will be one of the strongest shows on theFoxtel platform in 2009.