Back in the agency, the Art Director and I were able to generate our share of successful campaigns. We had established ourselves as a successful team, and were enjoying working well together.

 My friend, who had originally lent me the money for the 'farm', and his partner had by now built one of Australia's most successful advertising agencies, based in Sydney. They had the ability to transform often quite large advertising problems into simple infectious jingles that were almost impossible not to join in and sing along with.
One of their simple, but in reality, actually hard to generate, philosophies was :

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“You’ll be sweet, sweet
if you repeat, repeat, repeat!”

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Surprise!Surprise!!Surprise!

Suddenly, it was announced that a Sydney agency and our Melbourne agency were merging! The Sydney agency was my friends!

There was a distinct difference between the two agencies, one very successful at creating jingles and one in more diverse styles. 

The Melbourne Creative Director was a great writer and idea man, but was not enamored with the jingle style of advertising.

He loved clever headlines and beautiful pictures matched with great typography for press ads, and more 'creative ideas' for television.

My friend  came down from Sydney to meet all the Melbourne staff and was immediately whisked away by the Creative Director to show his latest, beautifully crafted press ad, to which the reaction was simple:

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"Mate, never heard anyone sing a press ad in the shower."

The Creative Director decided that he did not subscribe to what was shaping up as a new direction and headed off to explore exciting options available to him. That left the newly merged agencies with a large hole to fill.

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Next time he came to Melbourne and popped his head into our office and said:

"Mate, got a minute? Come to the boardroom!”

Thinking he just wanted a chat about old times, or hopefully he had brought the mask, I trotted down to the boardroom and we sat at

the conference table. He looked at me and said :
                                                                     “Phil, we want you to be Creative Director.”

‘Gob smacked'! Being offered the Creative Directorship of one of the offices of one of Australia’s most successful advertising agencies.
I gave it deep thought...for a split second.... and accepted, but asked the Art Director become Associate Creative Director as we had worked together, not only would this recognize his contribution but would help share management of the department.
Agreed.

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The advertising was taken seriously, while the approach to the world of advertising was often light-hearted. At Annual Creative Conferences where the offices came together for a couple of days to share their latest work, build a team ethos, and share a beer or two. Or twenty or thirty!

At one conference, I did the T-shirts with the art director.. Sydney had many beer brands, so we decided to do them in the image of a beer barrel...and print them only in one size, small. As a large number of Sydney people were rather shortish and roundish the appearance when they wore the T-shirts, the resemblance to walking, talking beer barrels was hysterical. Well, we thought so. 

We had a very talented, and very fun-loving, creative department, and the agency was rated one of the best two in Melbourne, each in the department winning their fair share of awards. 

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Before too long, another merger was announced!