Former AdPartners chairman, Trevor Fearnley, publishes a memoir called Midnight at OASIS
Former chairman of AdPartners, Trevor Fearnley has published a memoir, Midnight atOASIS, which tells the story of his career in advertising and his work with various charities including the OASIS YouthCare Centre for street kids, which he helped start in 1989.
As well as providing an insight into running a sustainable charity, Midnight at OASIS outlines Fearnley’s early life – he was expelled from boarding schoolat 16, married at 20, and he and his wife moved to Australia a year later as ten poundPoms. They fell in love with Australia and have lived here for the past 40 years.
“I had a ball writing it, I wouldn’t change a word,” he said.
Fearnley sat on the board of a number of charitiesincluding The Salvation Army, Fred Hollows Foundation, Scouts, Austcare, theAustralian National Council on Drugs and Legacy.
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He consistently worked 65-hour-weeks, with 45 hours in the office and theremaining 20 hours dedicated to various charities.
Fearnley was also on the board of the AFA (now part of the Communications Council), which after initially dismissing the idea of a homeless shelter for kids as “too big a job”, got behind it.
As well as helping him launch OASIS the advertising industry has continued to support it, helping raise over $5 million and assisted 25,000 kids.
Fearnley was awarded an Order of Australia in 1997 for his work with Oasis and the Salvation Army.
He retired from advertising in December 2009 after 30 years at AdPartners, whichhe joined in 1979 when it was a fledgling shop and built it up to a mid-sizedagency, becoming a partner, CEO and then chairman.
The agency was sold to The Photon Group in 2002 and was folded into BWM last year after the holding company ran into financial difficulty.
“We left a healthy, sustainable company that had been going for thirty-two years,and within two years it is part of BWM,” he said.
While an insider’s view of the machinations of the Photon Group would no doubt help the memoirfly off the shelves, Fearnley said he’s not going there and only has positive memories from hisexperience with Photon.
The financial troubles experienced by the debt-ladenholding company occurred after he’d left.
His memoir was written throughout 2010 while he was traveling through Europe in aVW campervan with his wife and he’s about to return to Europe for another eight month trip.
Rather than waiting around for a publisher to makea decision on whether they would publish it, Fearnley opted to self-publish viaVivid Publishing, which also delivers him a greater share of the margin.
He hasalready sold 200 copies via word-of-mouth with the ebook due out in about amonth’s time.