Retail advertising trailblazer David Mattingly has been inducted into the AdNews Advertising Hall of Fame. The announcement was made at last night’s Agency of the Year awards at Star City.
Mattingly was retail director at
Melbourne agency Monahan Dayman Adams in the 1970s and was the driving force behind Myer becoming the first department store to use television
advertising.
Following the establishment of the retail agency MDA Mattingly, Myer closed its advertising department and appointed the agency to handle its print and catalogue work. Others followed suit, including Safeway, which also
appointed Mattingly for all media.
From billings of $4 million in 1981, the agency grew to be Melbourne’s second largest in 1987 with billings of $89 million and staff of 164. By 1989 the Mattingly network had offices in all mainland capitals and Auckland. Between 1990 and 1997 it was ranked third or fourth nationally. In Melbourne it was first or second from 1987 to 1997.
The key to the success in retail was Mattingly’s re-engineering of the ad agency model. Instead of using outside talent and premises, everything was handled in-house. The operation, called Gasworks, was big enough to employ its own photographers, film directors, producers, editors, sound engineers, illustrators, typesetters and retouchers all under one roof, which included photographic and recording studios and complete pre-press facilities.
It proved so efficient that the agency ended up doing all Myer’s advertising Australia-wide, another first for a national department store.
David Mattingly retired from advertising in 1998. He is a director of Austereo, Radio Rentals, Wilson Everard and Drummond Golf, and the only Australian inducted into the US Retail Advertising Hall of Fame. His successor Ian Herdman described him as the greatest salesman he has ever met.
Jeremy Light
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