GPY&R Brisbane has collected the 600 sounds of the Armor All Gold Coast 600 to promote ‘600 Sounds,’ the music festival component of the V8 Supercars event.

The sound effects – everything from engine revs to seagulls fighting over a chip to a dirty pash on the beach – have been loaded into an online music studio at 600sounds.com.au for wannabe musicians to tweak, loop and mix the ultimate V8 Supercars soundtrack.

Says GPYR Brisbane Creative Group Head Brendan Greaney, “Collecting the 600 sound effects was quite an undertaking. It got particularly weird recording people pashing on the beach, especially on the third and fourth takes.”

The campaign was seeded on Facebook as well as music and motorsport fan forums and supported by radio advertising. The website will run during the lead-up to the event from October 21 – 23.

GPY&R Adelaide wins its first major account
http://www.adnews.com.au/adnews/great-southern-rail-steams-ahead-with-gpyandr

As part of the “This is Greatness” campaign for the 2011 AFL Finals Series, GPY&R has launched ‘Game Signatures’, a collection of unique autographs created from player GPS tracking data.

During the four-week AFL Finals Series, players will wear GPS trackers during the game, creating ‘signatures’ as they play. The most heroic performances will be translated into one-off prints and displayed throughout the finals, culminating in the ultimate ‘Game Signature’ of the Grand Final’s Norm Smith Medalist. All signatures will be auctioned to benefit Ladder, the AFL charity supporting youth homelessness.

Medibank is rolling out a new series of TVCs positioning the brand as ‘The insurance your health deserves’ via GPY&R Melbourne.

The campaign positions Medibank as the right choice for the health of Australians as the brand evolves from a health insurer to a company that stands for better health.

Chris Northam has been promoted to Creative Director at George Patterson Melbourne, overseeing the Defence Force Recruiting business.

Chris has worked at GPY&R Melbourne for four years and has been a major contributor to the agency’s current Adnews 2010 agency of the year title, working across the entire client base as a senior art director. Prior to that Chris has worked in Sydney and Melbourne for GPY&R and BMF.

Recently Chris co-created the Navy ‘Human Fleet’ campaign which picked up heavy local and international metal, as well as various award winning work on Cadbury and Schweppes.

Chris is also a Virgo, he likes water sports and meeting people.

Says George Patterson Y&R ECD, Ben Coulson “Chris is a big part of the Melbourne agency. He is an advertising A-grader and has great natural leadership, this is a well deserved promotion. Personally, I look forward to him doing more of the really hard meetings around here.”

GPY&R’S Big Ad for Carlton Draught has been voted the bestBeers Commercialof the last 15 years by The One Club.

http://www.oneclub.org/oc/press/-top-10-beer-commericals-announced

Patts Sydney planning director Moensie Rossier  on what goodwill really means …. http://www.bandt.com.au/news/comment–goodwill-hunting

GPY&R’s recent Don’t Rush campaign for the RTA will run in Bosnia.

See the story here: http://www.bandt.com.au/news/bosnia-to-use-rta-safety-ad

Colgate’s new TVC from GPY&R Sydney aims to reinforce its position as the brand most trusted by Australian consumers and dentists for more than 90 years. The new campaign will run nationally over the next few months.

Colgate was recently voted the most trusted brand in the Australian Reader’s Digest Most Trusted Brands survey of 2011. The survey asked more than 1200 Australians asking which products were dominant in their day-to-day lives and why they believed in them.

See the story on AdNews.

GPY&R Sydney has launched its first campaign on behalf of News Ltd’s The Australian since winning the account in February.

A challenging brief: to deliver a campaign that reflected the paper’s constantly changing editorial content, meant that the agency had to perform at the speed of a news room said The Australian’s marketing director, Lisa Bora.

The resulting new creative executions position The Australian as the definitive source of breaking news stories, penetrating analysis and independent thinking. The campaign is running across TV, digital and static outdoor, radio, online and in‐paper and incorporates live radio reads of breaking news and talkback with leading journalists. Readers are also invited to connect with The Australian via email, Twitter and with RSS feeds across various digital networks.

Patts managing director, Phil McDonald says the new work builds on the original and unique values of the newspaper.

“It takes a leadership position and provides a window for more readers to experience the quality analysis provided by Australia’s best journalists on a daily, even hourly basis. For the first time, an advertising campaign is launched without knowing next week’s creative.”

Pelikan Artline have recently launched a new brand campaign through GPY&R Sydney with a series of quirky spots highlighting how perceptions of the everyday can change at the stroke of an Artline pen.

The campaign is the latest instalment in a new positioning and promotional drive for the market-leading Artline range of pens and markers, under ‘The Mighty Artline’ banner.

The campaign of six 15-second vignettes includes a vulture symbolizing the probable fate of a lone smoker; the instant transformation of an ugly urban environment and frying pans highlighting the danger of excessive sun exposure.

The TV executions are supported online at themightyartline.com.au where visitors get a chance to add their own visual commentary to a suite of images from the campaign. Future functionality will allow them to upload and adapt their own images, as part of a fun way to interact with the Mighty Artline brand.

Says GPY&R ECD Julian Watt – “Out of awareness comes change. The campaign is there to provoke thought, and show how a few strokes of the right Artline pen can lead to powerful expression, and ultimately change. Philosophical and deep indeed. The owls are not what they seem.”

GPY&R offices in Brisbane and Sydney have taken home metal at leading New York festivals over the past week.

Brisbane has bagged its 12th award for South Pacific Breweries ‘Beer Coasters’ annual report, taking another gold at the NY Festivals International Advertising Awards. The agency has also won gold at the PICA, Andy, BAD (including Best of Show) and Clio awards and silver at Cannes, London International and AWARD.

The Sydney office won a Bronze Pencil in the POP and Instore category for the Alliance Francais ‘French Film Festival’ poster series at the New York One Show Design awards.

Alex Hay has been named head of broadcast production for George Patterson Y&R Sydney.

Hay joined the agency last year from Luscious International where she was marketing director of the group’s commercial, film and music video divisions. She also helped establish and produced film projects for Viscious, Luscious‚ emerging director division.

She also has significant account management experience, before transitioning to production, Alex worked on various accounts locally, before heading overseas for a three year stint in New York with Y&R Brands, working on Citibank, AT&T and United Nation’s business.

George Patterson Y&R has developed a new social media tracking mechanism focused on crisis management enabling them to respond to the recent spate of natural disasters in Australian and NZ.

An extension of the Pulse programme developed by the agency three years ago, the social media monitoring tool has been used by government bodies and local councils across ANZ to help identify and manage issues arising from the NZ earthquakes and the Queensland floods.

GPY&R head of digital Rob Hudson said that in the immediate aftermath of the disasters the agency’s PULSE teams were able to tap into the mass of online conversation and provide advice to government authorities on the public’s response to the crisis.

“We were in the position to offer minute-by-minute information and insights, enabling authorities to immediately adapt action plans and augment existing disaster management procedures. We uncovered many issues over the four most recent events including the over sharing of personal data, the need for more portaloos in certain suburbs as well as correlating silt build up with people suffering from respiratory issues.”

Hudson said that as social media evolves, the agency will be able to build on the insights for subsequent disasters to guide authorities on their disaster management communication plans.

“While the tools and team were originally put together for brand health monitoring, the Pulse programme has really come into its own as an effective crisis management tool. The team worked 24 hours a day when needed and many of our recommendations were reported in local and international news media.

“At a time when no one is slightly interested in buying a product or viewing marketing messages, the fact that Patts could harness its social media resources to help in a crisis is evidence of the great power of the channel and how it can be used for good.”

Our society continues to be greatly influenced by an experiment that turned out to be the most controversial movement of modern times – the hippie revolution.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a huge countercultural experiment took place; at its heart was a quest for utopia – an ideal place where individuals could live together in harmony, with complete freedom to fulfil their personal destiny. Through love, music, drugs and communion with nature, hippies – a tribe of idealists – realised this utopia. It was an experiment that redefined mainstream radical rethinking, teaching the world to stand up and challenge the status quo. The hippie revolution not only lifted the lid of oppression and conformity, but created choices for individuals and groups that didn’t exist before. From environment to natural foods movement, women’s rights to gay liberation movement, alternative medicine to Eastern spiritual movement, the world owes a lot to the hippie revolution.

Ironically, the greatest impact of the hippie revolution wasn’t cultural, it was technological.

It was the hippie revolution that led to the personal computer movement. Wearing sandals, eating seeds and bathing in India’s Ganges River, hippies, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, created Apple 2 in the late 1970s; it was the world’s first commercially viable personal computer. The idea behind this computer was to empower every individual and make him a master on his own, changing the way we work and play.

It was the hippie revolution that led to the Internet movement. Stuart Brand, another hippie, created the Whole Earth Catalogue – something like the Google in paperback form – influenced by the commune movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was instrumental in forging the paradigm that led to the World Wide Web. The Internet empowered individuals even more, taking away the power from mediating institutions and putting it in the hands of people, changing the way we connect, make differences and stay in control.

Empowering individuals and putting them in control, are in many ways, the logical outgrowth of the philosophy of the hippie revolution.

The hippie revolution has ended, but its ideals continue to influence our thinking, reset our priorities, and open the doors to a whole universe of innovative products and businesses.

GPY&R Melbourne has taken out top spot in Adnews inaugural agency rankings for advertising awards based on individual agencies.

Patts shared the No 1 ranking with Three Drunk Moneys.

Adnews reports that both agencies performed consistently at award shows and that Agency of the Year nods from Adnews and B&T boosted the two agencies, which dominated the local and international award shows.

GPY&R’s works for Defence Force Recruiting and Cadbury Picnic were among the agency’s top award performers helping bag gold, silver and three bronze at Cannes, 17 gongs at AWARD, gold and silver at NY Festivals and five Caxtons.

GPY&R also came in third in the Adnews agency network rankings, pipping creative hotshops Three Drunk Monkeys, M&C Saatchi, BMF and Droga5.

GPY&R Melbourne took out gold at Asia’s recent Adfest for its summer promotion for Cottee’s cordial. The initiative, developed in collaboration with CAW Marketing, was up against more than 200 entries in the inaugural Promo Lotus category.

The Beach Blaster attached directly onto the Cottee’s cordial bottle, transforming it into a pump action water blaster, and in doing so – a new advertising medium. It was a fresh way for kids to ‘make water fun’ and directly interact with the brand all summer long. Kids were also given the chance to participate a nationwide water fight held in every state of Australia.