Hunter, Booker and Moss form Grown-ups – promises experience with focus on results
Respected industry professionals Grant Booker, Mick Hunter and Andrew Moss have come together to form a new, results focused, company called Grown-ups.
A collective of experienced specialists, Grown-ups offer clients a simpler, less painful, and more effective way of building their business.
Says Booker (far left): “Agencies have been dealing with ever decreasing margins over the last five to ten years and so have reduced the number of senior people on staff. I can understand why agencies are doing this, but it’s potentially detrimental to their clients.”
Adds Hunter (seated): “Younger people coming through have fewer experienced colleagues around these days to teach them and remind them what they’re there to do: sell the client’s product.
“Experience cannot be overlooked nor underestimated, take the recent Oscars, no-one under the age of 40 got to clutch one of those little guys: experience equals results and that’s exactly what Grown-ups is all about. I doubt there’s an agency in Australia that has 13 effectiveness awards, including The Gold Pinnacle, yet we do.”
Adds Moss (above right): “And what that means for clients, is that they will only be working with people who know what they’re doing and who have a massive track record of getting it right first time. Grown-ups is built to deliver results, and that’s especially critical in the current world climate where every marketing dollar has to work harder and smarter and be more accountable than ever before”.
Before Grown ups Hunter worked with long-time former partner Ian Morton at Brain Surgery, formed after the pair departed the joint CD role at JWT Sydney in early 2006. It was a short lived stint, a mere three months. Before that, they worked for a year at Whybin\TBWA Sydney after a highly successful, award-winning decade as the top team at The Campaign Palace, Sydney.
At the Palace they were responsible for such highly acclaimed campaigns as the Westpac “Athlete’s Parents” Olympic campaign and the “Red Meat. Feel Good” campaign which won the 2003 Gold Pinnacle at the AFA Effectiveness Awards.
Booker has worked freelance since February 2008 after a long stint as a senior art director at BMF.
60 Comments
Good stuff. About time.
This kind of business thinking has a seriously good vibe about it.
Good luck guys. Sounds interesting.
You have Ian on a short leash now?….good luck with it all guys.
Good move guys. This industry is full of too many inexperienced people and few have been training for over a decade. The youngsters seem only interested in titles, their pay packet and awards rather than their clients interest. It”s all Me, me, me.
The grown ups know award winning work can enhance the client’s brand and sell product at the same time and that requires experience.
Ones creativity doesn’t die when you hit 45, 50 or even 60.
If you are a good creative it is there life and it doesn’t take you 4 hours to make a decision and you know how to handle difficult situations and not throw a tantrum.
Time this industry grew up and hope the grown ups start a new trend.
Having worked for Mick can say he’s a top creative and has ideas that are genuinely fun. Good luck
Embarrassing.
FFSake – Huh?
Hey over 40,
We’re not all like that. We’re also not all narrow minded dicks who make broad sweeping generalisations.
We need less dicks in the industry, not less old / young people.
13 effectiveness awards….Clems Melbourne won more than that last year alone.
Get with the pace you old farts.
just checked out the site. their reel/work is stuck in 90’s. no digital. no dm. no experiential. just tv and print.
What the hell is the Internet….
Not one digital project among them. But hey. I hear print media is booming…
Good luck guys
My mum could of made that site. And she still doesn’t know how to copy and paste
Was that made in frontpage? Or word 2000?
Unimpressed: My Mum could’ve, not “could of” sucked off all your grandfather’s friends. By that, i clearly mean YOUR Mum, not mine.
What about Ian?
Thing is Worldly – show me a decent digital piece. Oh yeah and does online work?
It works for the digital agencies selling it but ask any client and they will tell you TV still reaches the big audiences. I reckon the next thing Grown Ups should do is hire a young team. A Grown Up young team.
Great to see a specialist agency in a sea of try hard generalists.
We will be very happy to partner with you guys.
As for the ageism bullshit throughout this thread – its just that.
Perhaps you kids will grow up one day too.
well said digital hotshot, and good luck to the Grown-ups, no doubt they were prepared for all the ageist comments, something that seems more prevalent in australia than in other markets where experience, proven talent and wisdom is acknowledged and embraced.
Look at your positioning and business model it’s impossible to scale that. You’ve done a positioning for where you ate today without any point of difference or direction to grow into in the future. Would have expected more.
God luck boys, wish you al the best.
Had a meeting with these guys about their non – advertising work the other day and they are definitely guys with good ideas.
Question for most of the poster’s: What do you all want to be when you grow up?
Maybe the young guys don’t need to grow up! Maybe the older guys need to get an imagination transfusion from the young ones.
As for the young ones throwing tantrums!
One of these older guys in the photo has been seen throwing more tantrums in public than any of the younger ones! So is that form part of the qualities he wants to instill in the young ones?
Good Luck anyhow.
Best of luck guys. Any digitally minded person knows that to succeed in today’s environment you need to target niche audiences. Being grown ups I’m sure you’ll find the right client fit. I do know Booker and Hunter and they are lovely buggers. I’m not sure they won’t throw tantrums. Those two love a good tanty.
Back in the original days of the Palace they only hired Senior creatives. That’s when they were great and did some of the best work in the world. They had principles.
Go for it guys. I’m sure you’ll do exceptionally well.
God luck Guys.
Good luck Gents. Great name – great proposition.
Just a heads up guys. On your site your background image is over 1mb and you are loading a different version of the same image over and over again every time you change a page. That’s why it takes ages to load each time.
I love the smell of desperation in the morning.
It’s all relative. Back in about 1923 when I was CD of a tinpot North Sydney agency, Mick & Ian came to see me with their AWARD School book. I saw some potential but didn’t hire them, to my eternal shame. The work they went on to do at The Campaign Palace was consistently brilliant, witty, original and highly effective and put my legacy at the Palace in the shade. They’ve done extremely well for a couple of young tackers.
Booker on the other hand is rumoured to be even older than me which hardly seems possible. Next to talent, experience is probably the most important thing in marketing and advertising. It gives you judgement and wisdom, amongst other important credentials. The industry has culled its seniors with the resultant loss of business credibility and standing. It seems seniors are far too opinionated for the new breed of nervous young creative directors, which seems odd for what is a business of opinions.
Good luck guys. Clients don’t take anybody under 35 seriously, so I believe these guys will do well.
Monty when I was a suit and you were a writer you expected unreasonably good briefs, expected me to go down on the client to sell an idea, and I was scared shitless of you. If I had known you were so bloody young I wouldn’t have taken you seriously. I recall others did too, though one client said even my best fellatio wouldn’t get one concept through. I explained it was a choice of him or you and he weakened. Its good to see you are still an opiniated young bugger.
These guys will do OK if they are still good, and quietly disappear if they are not.
The most successful agency in the USA is McGarryBowen – run by a 70+ ex-Y&R guy and supported by a tribe of older experienced hands. So, watch out kids!
Nice one Booker. Best of luck mate.
“43 points said:
Thing is Worldly – show me a decent digital piece. Oh yeah and does online work?
It works for the digital agencies selling it but ask any client and they will tell you TV still reaches the big audiences. I reckon the next thing Grown Ups should do is hire a young team. A Grown Up young team.”
Are you serious 43 Points, “does online work?”
Please tell me its too early in the morning to notice sarcasm.
I can tell you right now, the decline in retail spending, print sales, TV advertising sales and budgets, the music industry, the movie industry, etc, is because people like you were too ignorant and stupid to realise how much the world has changed.
And if digital doesn’t work, why are you reading and commenting on this ONLINE blog, why aren’t you reading the print version whilst not even knowing it was possible to comment on an article in the first place.
Maybe you should search the interweb for a clue
you know what i don’t think you can survive in todays marketplace without an understanding of digital and social media that’s almost second nature. however thats not their fault as its purely a generational thing, just great to see these guys after all these years and great past success still with the hunger!
best of luck, you all still have a great deal to offer.
Chill Wordly, it’s all good. This is a good debate to have. That’s all it is.
Just one thing, answer honestly, when an online ad creeps in to what you’re reading like a spreading disease, or an online ad starts playing randomly, do you hit the CLOSE button as fast as I do? And as fast as I hear my mates do? So fast the ad gets less than 5 secs in?
I rest my case.
All the best guys,you’ve already ruffled a few feathers,keep it up and just do great work.That’s the secret.
The hardest job will be getting the door open to the marketing/ product managers who would be old enough to be your kids.
Hope it does work for u guys.
These guys are experts at creating big ideas for big brands.
Once they have the big idea, they will simply farm out the digital to a freelancer – god knows there are heaps around.
While digital is important, it doesn’t lead the creative process.
Having said that, I’m with “43 points” (above): when any type of online advertising appears, I spend the first few seconds trying to find a way to turn it off/ close it down etc.
The last thing I want is to “become engaged” and have some marketer continually sending me even more unwanted marketing crap.
I reckon that the digital side of the business is due for some changes; no longer will we be able to convince a client to create an expensive online campaign/ documentary that will be seen by relatively few people (a large proportion of this is often the client and the agency anyway).
After all, why would you spend precious time being marketed to when images of Jessica Alba in a bikini are only a click away?
(Pre-baby of course)
Why is Booker standing like Angelina Jolie at the Oscars?
Oh Groucho, who the devil are you? The suspense is killing me. Do a tiny bit of detective work to find me, then get in touch so that we can kiss and make up after all these years. For a suit you’re quite a decent writer.
“Digital” is the reason advertising is in such a shithole state nowdays.
Can’t afford TV and proper creative? Get a bunch of minimum wage part time web designers together and steal ideas from youtube videos.
Produce them cheaply, looking crap and email them all around at random.
Call yourself a “digital agency’, and job done.
Is it any wonder advertising revenue is down a couple of billion…
I worked with some digital experts on a bunch of stuff recently, they were mostly in their 20s. Turns out they weren’t experts at anything, just a bunch of nerds who watched The Social Network a few too many times and now have a perpetual hard-on for themselves. It’s what happened with the Internet a while back, and it’s happening now with social media – suddenly anyone with a an iPhone is an expert and quality ideas get lost in the hype of a “new” medium. The piss stain on Mick Hunter’s jocks is worth more than the entire bunch of iPhone humping hipsters getting around these days. Good luck lads.
The Internet, television, print/press, banner ad, page takeover, in-store activation etc, etc – are all just places consumers see ads.
Unless you’ve got a big, impactfully relevant idea in the first place, the rest is simply academic.
I’m as sure the grown ups can come up with the thinking as I am they’ll find plenty of eager young kids to help out with the doing.
Just like the rest of us do.
Good luck, lads.
Great News…!!! and good luck guy’s..
Phil, that superfluous apostrophe in a plural is the sort of thing one expects from today’s kids, not a grown-up like you.
Yes 43 points,
I have and commonly do close expandable or take over banner ads, Partly because they interrupt my reading and general web experience. Thats not to say all of them. but most of them.
I am sure you have never flicked channels or gone to to toilet in the ad breaks while watching tv. Advertising will be skipped, because most ads aren’t relevant for 80-90% of us. simple fact that ads usually only speak to a certain target.
I simply do not agree with traditional advertising. In recent times (read the last 10 years) the traditional model has proven to not work.
The reason i am in love with the digital world is because it is collaborative. It isn’t an art director and a copywriter going away in a corner and coming up with a ‘big idea’ with the ‘big reveal’, and protecting their work at all costs while making sure their names are on the award entries.
The right way forward is a group of people from any discipline, sitting in a room together and coming up with ideas. Not to sit back and do anything the client wants. but to come up with creative, innovative and USEFUL ways of selling a product. Not just telling the odd punter to buy ours because we have 5% more banana extract.
If the ideas suck, trust me when i say, the digital world will let you know about it.
Unfortunately for these 3 grown ups, at the moment years of experience means nothing from a holistic approach because the majority of platforms used have only been around for the last 5-10 years.
So unless they would be willing to re-learn everything the most amount of experience would be the same as most of the rest of us.
This is a great example of what will happen to people who aren’t willing to change with the times. You eventually get old, with all this “experience”, no one will hire you, so you decide to start a company which simple premise is that we are old.
If i start a company, and its time to hire staff, the first people i hire will be people young and hungry to do awesome stuff, with no ego.
not old guys with bloated salaries and client rates that have no experience in where all the consumers are.
nuff said
I know Grant Booker and I can confirm he’s never grown up. Grown old? Yes. Grown up? NEVER.
Worldly, people like you come across as stupid because you’re way too black and white about all this. Anyone who claims that digital is the ONLY WAY is a fool. Just like anyone who would claim the same about Shelf Wobblers or Small Space Press Ads or bloody planes that write shit in the sky.
What’s important is the IDEA. Whether it’s in a huge TV spot that gets shared across the internet (and let’s face it, most big “VIRAL” spots are just TV ads that are actually good enough to get passed around), or a banner ad (unlikely) or a poster tattooed on my arse.
Most great campaigns are a mix of lots of different media – or more importantly, the media that’s right for the IDEA. That might be digital. That might be TV.
The good news is, if you can have ideas there’s always some earnest ipad-tapper around who can put them online for you… bit like you “Worldly” perhaps?
@Worldly if you start a company it will fail because you are a twat. These 3 guys are having a go, and if they are any good they will do OK. You will never do anything because you are too self absorbed, too orientated to failure, and too up yourself. You don’t appear to be able to think rationally. Given the choice I’d take a half of one them to five of you.
“Iphone humping hipsters” – bahaha that is gold. There is an ad idea in that somewhere.
Take a trip to the US or Europe. Experience is not only respected over there, it is valued, and the kiddies that tell themselves they are doing a gig because they are hip and know better, you’re not, you’re just cheaper.
Wordly – wrong again.
You say: “where all the consumers are” ie online. Seems to me you believe your own bullshit. Which in advertising is a cardinal sin. I am online right now on the SMH site and 5800 people are there too. Is that a big number? No. Sure there’s probably a way to spin in but essentially it’s a miniscule number.
Like I said ask any client and they will tell you online is part of the mix and regular TV ads still reaches mass audiences. You’re stuck. Read get real’s post. Then read it again.
Ideas. That’s the game and these dudes have come up with a ton of them.
Wordly has a point. Advertising is not kind to its elders. That’s been proven before. Time to think about that pizza shop.
To Get Real and 43 points
When i say the digital world, i pretty much mean the world. To me there is no above the line, below the line, digital, dm, print, tv, etc, etc
To me there is only digital.
TV to me is digital. Considering the likes of Hulu, Youtube, etc serve more “tv” ads than actual tv channels ever could.
Print to me is digital. The sudden impact of tablet computers mean more and more people are reading their print media on digital platforms. And if not, they have their phone handy while they are reading actual printed media.
And so on and son. To me everything is digital, to the people we advertise to, 100% will use these digital platforms more than traditional ones. And more of them will react to advertising because its most likely related to what they are reading/watching/hearing.
This is not my bullshit that i am believing, it is simply fact. this is how the world is at the moment. And tomorrow that might change, and i will role with whatever that is.
Right now i just honestly believe the “big Idea” is not effective. As most often than not it is to build awareness. And the best form of awareness has always been word of mouth. only now it is so easy to build word of mouth with digital platforms.
You can honestly call me whatever you want. I’m quite happy knowing i have never had problems getting work, because i am constantly learning the ways that the world work. Constantly adapting.
Whereas you guys are still going on about the “big Idea” the same crap that has been going on for decades.
Take an honest look at your everyday life, and tell me how much time you spend in the digital realm. the time on email, researching other campaigns on youtube, reading blogs, listening to music, online shopping, etc, etc
and compare that to the 30 odd minutes you might watch tv, and when was the last time you spent more than 20 minutes reading the paper or a magazine.
Big ideas translate across all media. Fragmented ideas driven by technology and love of so called new media, don’t.
It can’t get more basic than that.
Plus this is a short post, which is even more of a winner.
Agencies hire 20 somethings because they
are cheap and their margins are tight.
Big ideas are for wankers who are trying to get awards. Useful ideas are for people who want to sell a product and build a brand.
I’d always rather go simple than big
Big Ideas.
Useful ideas.
Simple ideas.
We agree on one thing – simple.
Simple is good, in it’s own way simple can also become big.
Stop it Worldly, you’re just digging a deeper hole.
Are Mick and Ian still a team? Probs the best ever, but not without Ian.
does this mean I can’t get a job?