To produce campaigns that really push the envelope, agencies need clients who will go out on a limb and take risks. As Jason Williams, CD of Leo Burnett Melbourne, told Gawen Rudder, Michelle Mazzarello, GM marketing at Melbourne train operator Connex, is one such client.
Michelle Mazzarello
I’ve been in my current role at Connex – a French-based global transport operator – for five years now. We run the train network here in Melbourne. Prior to that I worked with Connex in Sydney, which operates the monorail, the light-rail network and various bus companies.
We work closely with the multi-modal marketing body for our privately-run transport network, Metlink, and my friend Anne Randall has a similar approach to me on advertising and risk (see AdNews “Power of Two”, 26 August 2005). Like her, I see part of my job as protecting what the agency gives me and getting it through – championing the work.
Our relationship with Leo Burnett precedes my time here. It started when cummins&partners were our agency, but Leo’s looked after our SMS products and actually developed them. The concept was connecting with customers via mobile phone technology – they built it and worked with us to advertise these services to the train-travelling public – in fact, they won a Cannes [Lion] this year for the SMS campaign.
We weren’t a big account but they were really passionate about what they did for us . . . anyway, when we had to change – working with Sean [Cummins] was all good and healthy and we still like them – but we needed to find a new agency. Because we had such a great working relationship with Leo Burnett, we didn’t need to go to market. No pitch, we were happy with the relationship and the creative.
The transition has been excellent and we’re very, very happy. Connex has always had a really interesting approach to advertising public transport. We’re not conventional or traditional and like to push the boundaries, and Cummins were very good at that. This culture emanates from our CEO and chairman and, if you remember, the Harry Connick Jr campaign set the scene – the positioning, if you like – and we’ve simply built on that non-traditional, non-public service operator image.
Agencies love to push the boundaries, and we let them. We’re together on how big a risk we can take and how far we think we can take it. Speaking for myself, I’m not risk-averse and that might well be because of the support I get from our CEO.
I think the Dr Martin Merton campaign [see boxout] would have been a no-no for many risk-averse advertisers. Because we’re public transport and we affect so many people on a daily basis, and everyone has a strong opinion, we can’t be invisible. We’re experiencing huge growth in patronage – 25% in the
past two years – which is quite phenomenal. In fact, since 1999, it’s been something like 45% growth
on Melbourne trains. Pretty unbelievable.
We had some serious incidents earlier in the year with braking problems, which caused the biggest crisis management for our brand at that time. And yes, we had a lot of unhappy customers. So I guess we’re rebuilding our confidence, and we thought the Merton campaign would go some way towards that.
I first met Jason fresh out of Mojo, and we struck up a really good relationship straight away. No ego, and [since then] he’s always been there. In fact that’s what I like about Leo’s; they always bring their creatives [to meetings].
Anyway, with Jason, there was a lot of banter and good humour in that first meeting. He resonated really well with our team. At that particular time we were working with a below-the-line agency on the design of a brand mark for an internal program and were really frustrated.
Jason simply said: “Let us do it.” I thought some things don’t fit into the agency bucket, but he said: “We won’t charge you,” and I replied: “Okay, you’re on!”
It was a pretty good offer and one I couldn’t refuse, although I did feel a bit guilty and thought, he’s brand new in the agency, I’m not sure. So I said: “If I like it, I’ll pay for it.” It was great. Then they pitched for a campaign on the image of ticket officers . . . it wasn’t quite on the mark, but it gave us an idea and triggered our thoughts on train etiquette.
Out of that came the idea of creating a fictitious character, tongue-in-cheek and, I tell you what, we just loved it. We thought it was absolutely brilliant. This campaign was born out of years of customer feedback . . . every day MX would publish a litany of complaints.
The agency presented the concept late last year, so we had time to really develop the three campaign phases. Leo’s were living and breathing this. In fact, it became so much a part of them that [managing director] Melinda Geertz was, I think, a little concerned there was a lot of studio time going into the Doctor . . . but she loved it as well. Everyone did. The enthusiasm and the passion from the creative team was amazing. And it just goes to show the size of the budget doesn’t necessarily affect the creative input.
The agency loves our brand, and I think that’s because we give them the freedom to be creative. If we’re confident it meets our campaign objectives, we let them run with it. Jason’s a good leader and his team understands this. We’re not a big account. We don’t have big dollars, but we push the boundaries and everyone loves it.
Jason Williams
The campaign was based on the premise that the modern commuter can be loud, rude and obnoxious. So, if you’re a Melbourne train company, how do you possibly go about improving poor passenger behaviour? Enter Dr Martin Merton, fictional author.
We kicked off the campaign by developing an American website that announced the author was heading downunder to research and write his next title, There’s no ‘I’ in Carriage: a self-help guide to becoming a more considerate commuter.
Through introductory press ads featuring the good doctor, Melbour-ne train travellers were asked to email their own encounters with poor passenger etiquette. Literally hund-reds of contributions flowed in and the media, both locally and overseas, hooked into the story.
The launch of the book was announced through press, outdoor and online, and, simultaneously, a commuter etiquette “at home session” was sent out virally as a teaser to the book launch.
The book launch followed literary tradition with Dr Merton making a number of advertised appearances to sign books. Melbourne was abuzz with the integrated campaign.
Back to my beginnings . . . I started in Melbourne at Grey, straight out of RMIT, Bachelor of Advertising, and was there for about four years until I needed to move on and reinvent myself. So, I went to Sydney and worked at The Palace, then D’Arcy, before it was bought out by Leo Burnett, and ended up with Leo’s for quite a few years. In fact, I was one of the people behind the formation of Young Guns, and I’m still involved in it today.
After about five or six years, I came home to Melbourne with Publicis and, about 12 months later, got a call from Burnett’s again and took the gig up here. It’s been about 18 months now, and a very fast journey in learning.
You know, I wasn’t actually thinking of a CD gig at that time. It wasn’t really top of mind, I was enjoying Mojo and doing some good work there, but I guess these sorts of opportunities don’t come along that often, really, do they?
The campaigns that have been good for me were Heineken long neck print, the Toyota AFL spots and the new Seek advertising.
When I was given the mantle here, I could see, from the work that’d been done, Connex seemed to be a pretty innovative client, open to ideas and quite unique, given the product they’re selling. I met Michelle and she was fantastic – they all are there – they love to do work that genuinely engages people. They get numerous complaints every day and no matter whether they’re doing the most sterling job in the world, they’d still get complaints.
So is it really a dream job for a creative? Advertising a service people love to hate can be tough, and I guess it takes a bit of energy to get it right.
Sometimes their biggest problem can’t be addressed in advertising, and Connex – god bless them – are playing in the government arena as well as their own brand. There are myriad things that can go wrong with a train in any one day – they have to keep thousands and thousands of people happy.
The best word I could say is they’re incredibly gutsy. I mean, they’d gone out with some campaigns before Burnett’s got involved. Cummins did some incredible stuff for them and created an agenda that got people talking about them.
After their braking problem Michelle said: “We’re going to release this etiquette campaign because there’s never a perfect time for Connex.” It’s hard to imagine another train operator interstate doing something like this. No way. I think it humanises an otherwise anonymous train operation. But it takes guts.
The genesis of the Merton idea probably comes from the fact that we work slightly differently here – it’s very collaborative, we all sit down and talk about a big brief.
This came from the fact it could never be a “Don’t do this, and don’t do that” strategy, so we came up with the self-help idea – a more subtle way of pointing the finger. Whether borrowing from this American culture thing was the most original idea in the world may not matter, but the packaging of it was great.
We wanted people to discover the doctor – at no stage did we go out and say he’s real – although some did you know. Funny how advertising can be perceived as real life sometimes.
Another thing we do here is we start with an idea, but, when we present to Connex, we show them the full integration upfront so they can see what they’re buying. We never present an idea unless it has numerous touch-points and real depth.
Michelle and the gang are so receptive about everything and very sensible in their decision-making. The organisation really values its brand and likes to put out stuff that’s engaging. We’re lucky to have clients like that, to the point where it’s really exciting, and challenging to present new work to them. It goes past answering a brief to getting really involved.
The landscape of Australian advertising means there aren’t a lot of clients like this. Sometimes
it’s just that their culture has always been risk-averse. Obviously, integration, online and digital space is becoming more dominant now and that’s where traditional clients have to be a little more untraditional and trusting.
The end reward is the creative team doesn’t give a toss about the budget, if it’s a great client they give it their all, and go in harder. That’s gold . . . what you come to work for. The truth is, consumers engage with good thinking. So it’s great to have people like Michelle who believe in the power of an idea.
Gawen Rudder is manager of business services and advice for the AFA.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.
