Tom Cooper departs Palace Melbourne
As a result of the Origin Energy loss, announced this morning, The Campaign Palace Melbourne managing director Tom Cooper (left) has departed the agency.
TCP executive chairman Mark Mackay said he was grateful that Cooper had agreed to oversee the agency’s recent pitch for the Origin Energy business, but that both sides had agreed it was time to move on.
Cooper transferred to the Palace md role 2.5 years ago, following a three-year stint at GPY&R Melbourne.
Mackay, who returned to lead the Palace in June, said he would take over running the Melbourne agency.
Cooper said that running one of Australia’s icon agencies had been a great experience and he was proud of the creative work the agency had produced. He will announce his plans shortly.
Following the announcement of the departure of national CEO Jacques Burger, Campaign Brief hears the Palace Sydney is close to securing a new MD.
24 Comments
The hits just keep on coming…
Mackay will turn the place around.. He has re built it once before and will do it again.
No doubt in that
down low…Merger… GPY&R and Palace
I freelanced at gpy&r a few years back when Tom was there. The guy is all class. Great suit, knows his shit. Get back on the horse Tom, you’ve got plenty more to give buddy.
Aren’t we meant to be the world’s biggest geniuses when it comes to branding? Surely, the Palace brand no longer means anything to anyone in agency or client land. Whatever equity it had has surely been eroded by now. Call it something else. Start again. Pretending that it can rekindle past glory is just silly.
Good luck, Tom. I worked with you at M&C and thought you were a great suit.
4:50pm more like Wundermann and TCP. You can bank on that news….the new Y&R brands CEO flagged it in one of his interviews last week.
The Palace no longer means anything to anyone?
You have to be kidding.
I’m hoping Tom moves to Sydney.
5:42 PM
I reckon you are kidding yourself. It was a great shop in the ’80s and into the early 1990s. It has done very little since then – nothing worthy of the brand that it claims to have. It certainly hasn’t been on the cutting edge of advertising (as viewed by Cannes et al) for a very long time.
5.42PM.The Palace still means a lot to all of the very clever
people that worked there over the years.Sadly you sound like
so many that have spent their whole careers working
for agencies that have NEVER meant anything to anyone.
All the best for the future Tom.
7.30 stop being so emotional. The Palace brand died years ago. For god’s sake, they even called it Red cell at some point! It died when WPP took it over, and what a horrible death that was.
David Abbott, I once read, says that agencies’ reputations lag reality by three years. In the Palace’s case, I think you can safely add a zero.
sorry to hear Tom is leaving, he is a good guy but I bet Mark loves his role running Melbourne Palace with trips to Sydney. Reality is, Palace is perfect for Mark, not too big, not too small to fund him. Mind you, adding Bergers and Coopers salary, sounds about right.
Sorry Tom.
90% of Australian agencies have no brand equity in the market whatsoever. And that’s being kind. Most could go under and who would really care or remember them.
The Palace is a brand that can ignite fierce debate. Love it or hate it – you’d be a fool to kill it.
I just hope that whoever is writing off the Palace here is not managing my brands or business.
When they only hired the best senior creatives, no middle weights, no juniors. When clients would sign off a script and then not see anything until the ad was finished (they weren’t allowed to attend the shoot). When other agencies didn’t have planners. When other agencies would be quaking in their boots being on the same pitch list. That’s when the Palace was good, really good. Now it is just another agency that struggles. That’s what happens when you sell an independant to a big behemoth.
I’d deabate whether the Palace fizzled out in the early 90’s with Lynchy 6.25 pm. He gave it agency of the year in 1998.
Someone point out for me one agency that has lived on beyond their founders. Maybe Saatchis. Maybe. The rest?
umm Leo Burnetts, DDB, JWT – just a couple of little boutique shops that have done ok since their founders kicked the bucket.
You’ll no doubt trigger lots of debate on that proposition, 12:29. I would challenge the premise that any of those agencies have consistently been creative powerhouses throughout their lifetimes . In fact, they have all been extraordinarily mundane for most of the past 30 years. Small flashes of brilliance, but nothing more than that. Those of you who’ve been in the ad business for 5 – 10 years wouldn’t fully appreciate that.
Besides, the agencies you mention are all multinationals with many, many offices in many, many countries. The Palace was and is a uniquely Australian brand which has only ever had a maximum of two offices. It was consistently brave, daring and creative.
For those who haven’t known The Palace during its period of omnipotence, it’s hard to appreciate just how powerful its aura was, and absolutely head and shoulders it was above the other offerings in agencyland in the 70’s and 80’s. Any creative person worth their salt would have killed to work there. I did, and I’m still on the run.
Certainly, the subject of whether The Palace has lost it or should be re-branded is a fascinating one and should be the topic of an extensive, fearless and no-holds-barred article in an up-coming Campaign Brief magazine.
If I thought that’d happen, I just might renew my subscription.
In the last couple of years The Palace Melbourne has lost most of the accounts that Mark Mackay secured.
Thank God he’s back, just in the nick of time..
Lets look at the world of WPP from a client’s perspective….
So I’ve got a choice between GPYR or The Campaign Palace.
I can go with the global agency brand with a degree of local flair (GPYR) or I can go with the 2nd string agency that only exists to satisfy client conflicts (The Campaign Palace) and shares a fair degree of back end stuff with GPYR anyway.
Hmmmmmm….let me think about that for a micro second.
Good to have you back Monty , errm 2.57, I’m guessing you want to write the article? Subtle as ever. How is the Ferrari?
Not quite sure what you’re saying 2.57.
If you are looking for an agency that has been consistently brilliant for 30 years, you won’t find one anywhere in the world, far less in Australia.
If you are looking for agencies that failed to outlive the charisma of their founding partners, there are hundreds of them round the world, and plenty in Australia.
If you are looking for agenices whose founding vision was so successful they became an international force, then let’s welcome on stage all the multinationals. BBH and Fallon are the latest additions.
If your point is how many Australian agencies have become worldwide forces, you’re setting an impossible bar. It’s down to the US and UK giants to pull that off. And I’m guessing you didn’t mean that anyway, or else why mention Saatchis.
So what are you saying?